Budget deficits, bad faith and 'balance'

OVER the past couple of months, Republicans have passed or proposed three big budget initiatives. First, they enacted a springtime-for-plutocrats tax cut that will shower huge benefits on the wealthy while offering a few crumbs for ordinary families - crumbs that will be snatched away after a few years, so that it ends up becoming a middle-class tax hike. Then they signed on to a what-me-worry budget deal that will blow up the budget deficit to levels never before seen except during wars or severe recessions. Finally, the Trump administration released a surpassingly vicious budget proposal that would punish not just the vulnerable but also most working families.

Looking at all of this should make you very angry; it certainly infuriates me. But my anger isn't mostly directed at Republicans; it's directed at their enablers, the professional centrists, both-sides pundits, and news organisations that spent years refusing to acknowledge that the modern GOP is what it so clearly is.

Which is not to say that Republicans should be let off the hook.