President Trump sits down with Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, left, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, right, during a federal budget luncheon in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington on Feb. 22. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)

Regarding the Oct. 8 front-page article "Retreat from deficit dogma":

For decades, the Republican Party has been the party of borrow and spend. The last Republican president who was a fiscal conservative was Dwight D. Eisenhower. For decades, we have watched the same show: Ronald Reagan campaigned on balancing the budget and then ran up the greatest deficit in history. Bill Clinton eliminated the Reagan deficit and balanced the budget, only to see George W. Bush send it to new record levels. Barack Obama, who cut the deficit he inherited from Mr. Bush by more than half, was blocked by the Republicans from fully repealing the Bush tax cuts to the wealthy, which would have cut it ever further.

For generations, Republicans have deliberately increased deficits by giving tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans. Then, when Democrats come into office, Republicans blame the deficits that they created on the Democrats and cite them as a reason to cut critical middle-class programs.

We are seeing the same show unfolding with President Trump and the Republican-led Congress.

Christopher Ambrose, Lorton