The Editorial Board

USA TODAY

The federal government’s massive annual borrowing was a big deal for Republicans when Barack Obama was president. Now, not so much.

Like free trade, limited government, the rule of law and presidents who set a proper moral example, deficits apparently matter just when there is some political advantage to be had.

That’s the only possible conclusion from two recent developments. The first is that federal borrowing surged 17 percent, to $779 billion, in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, and is projected in the range of $1 trillion in the fiscal year that just began. The second is that President Donald Trump has responded by proposing an election-eve tax cut, one that would be magically enacted somehow even though Congress is not in session.

Trillion dollar deficits are nothing new. They occurred in four straight years during the Great Recession and its aftermath. But they always surge during economic downturns when tax receipts tumble and spending for unemployment, food stamps and the like go up.

OPPOSING VIEW:Republican leadership betrays GOP values

During times of robust growth, they should shrink or disappear. The last time unemployment was below 4 percent, as it is now, was 2000. That year, the government ran a surplus of $236 billion.

In the aftermath of this latest budget disclosure, the fingers have come out in Washington, as they often do, with Democrats blaming Republican fiscal policy for the surging deficit, and Republicans saying entitlements such as Medicare and Social Security need to be trimmed.

The Republicans are right that entitlements do need to be addressed. Regardless of what has happened in the past two years — or 10, or 20 years — programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are pushing the government over a fiscal cliff.

Even so, the main reason that the deficit jumped so dramatically last year was the enactment of new laws. The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that this year's deficit would have fallen by about 23 percent to $515 billion were it not for a number of spending hikes and tax cuts. The biggest of these was the Republican tax cut package enacted in December, which increased the deficit by $164 billion. Other legislation, including a bipartisan spending bill, added $100 billion.

The takeaway here is that faced with an already troubling fiscal outlook, Congress and the president decided that the most prudent course of action was to — make matters worse.

Virtually every major economist said the tax cuts would not stimulate the economy enough to come anywhere close to paying for themselves. But Republicans forged ahead anyway, pitching fantasies about hypergrowth. What’s more, they chose to stimulate an economy that was already strong after attacking a smaller Obama stimulus measure enacted in 2009 in the midst of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.

The fallout is far reaching. On the positive side, the tax cuts are behind a modest and likely short-lived bump in economic growth. On the downside, the federal government is digging itself deeper into a fiscal hole.

For Republicans, the surging deficit makes them look hypocritical. What are they going to say in the future when a Democratic administration fails in its fiscal obligations?

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