The Treasury Department said the country’s budget deficit grew by $779 billion during President Donald Trump’s first fiscal year in office. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell recently told Bloomberg that recent ballooning deficits and debt were “disappointing, but it’s not a Republican problem,” even though the deficit increased by 77 percent from the $439 billion deficit during fiscal year 2015 when McConnell became majority leader.
As Bloomberg reported, one of the major factors of the deficit increase was the tax cuts championed by Republican leaders, including Trump and McConnell, and increased interest payments made on the nation’s debt. Despite this, many Republicans are not taking blame for the increase in the deficit, but rather calling for reductions in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid to solve the deficit problem.
As the story by Bloomberg reports, the Republican Party championed and passed the tax bill in December of 2017. At the time of passage, the bill was projected to add $1 trillion to the debt over the next 10 years, but McConnell said “I not only don’t think it will increase the deficit, I think it will be beyond revenue-neutral.”
As a Social Security disability law office we fight for people’s rights for disability benefits when they are unable to work. Many of these people are destitute while they have to wait years before they become eligible for the benefits they earned while paying into Social Security for decades, but now McConnell and many of his Republican allies are calling for “entitlement reform” as a way to solve deficit reduction. Make no mistake about it, when the Republicans refer to “entitlement reform,” they are talking about cutting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
The midterm elections are just a couple of weeks away. Currently, the Republican Party controls the White House, the Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives, which is a major reason the tax bill was passed and the deficit has soared. The results of this upcoming election could have a huge impact on deficit reduction, but more importantly the fate of essential programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
