My latest column for Bloomberg Opinion (mentioned earlier) takes on a specific set of arguments that influential Democratic economist Jared Bernstein is making for much higher levels of federal spending. So far, nobody has disputed my counter-arguments. The main pushback I’ve received is: Yeah, well what about the Republicans?

My answer: They’re too tolerant of deficits as well. That’s not a new tune from me. Just last week in the Corner, I argued against a conservative who praised Trump’s fiscal record on the ground that higher deficits were good for the economy. President Trump’s tax cut should have been paired with spending restraint to keep it from raising the deficit over the next ten years. The opposition he expressed during his presidential campaign to entitlement reform was regrettable, and his proposals as president to restrain spending on Medicaid and Medicare have been mostly laudable but inadequate. Both parties have been cavalier about increased federal spending.


One of the drawbacks of Republicans’ enacting a tax cut partially financed by debt is that it has strengthened the hand of Democrats who want to increase debt-financed spending. But it’s worth pointing out that there is a very large difference in magnitudes. The tax cut has been estimated to add $2 trillion to the national debt over a decade. The cost of free-college-for-all, Medicare for All, a jobs guarantee has been conservatively estimated at more than $42 trillion. (That’s an estimate that doesn’t count other ideas some Democrats are advancing, such as retrofitting every building in the country and expanding child-care subsidies.) Republicans’ fiscal errors may be an excuse for massive spending increases by the Democrats, but they are not actually an argument for them.