Harken back for just a moment to the 2004 political season when John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee, rather clumsily – even for him – attempted to explain his opposition to an $87 billion supplemental funding bill to pay for the never-ending wars in Iraq and Afghanistan by asserting “I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.”
Kerry, who later went on to be a very effective secretary of state, was understandably lampooned by late-night TV hosts and Republican operatives who were all too eager to point and laugh at the then-senator from Massachusetts, who lost to incumbent President George W. Bush, hanging from his own petard.
All of which brings us to Sen. Rand Paul, R-Bowling Green, who, by his very actions, showed to one and all that he was in favor of adding, quite literally, billions and billions of dollars to the national debt before he was against it.
But that’s our Rand for you.
Paul grabbed headlines last week when he stood in the way of a Senate vote to provide funds necessary to keep the federal government operating through March 23 because it also included a deal to raise military spending by about $160 billion over the next two years with another $128 billion going to non-defense programs, thus exploding previously approved budget caps and adding to the deficit.
Rand Paul
Paul waged what amounted to a one-man filibuster, delaying a vote on the package and forcing the closure of much of the federal government for just a few hours. He used a floor speech to explain his motivations, saying he decided to run for the Senate in 2012 “because of (then-President Barak Obama’s) trillion dollar deficits.’’
“Now we have Republicans, hand-in-hand with Democrats, offering us trillion dollar deficits,’’ he said. “I can’t in all good honesty and all good faith just look the other way because my party is now complicit in the deficits.’’
Fine.
Now go back just a few weeks to the middle of December when Senate Republicans, fueled by the need to post some sort of legislative victory before the end of the year, passed a godawful $1.5 trillion tax cut measure that will primarily benefit the wealthy and contribute an anticipated $1 trillion to the national debt over the next 10 years. The package slashes government revenues by $135 billion during the 2018 fiscal year alone.
And where was the great deficit hawk when that humbuggery passed?
“I applaud this reform, which will lead to economic growth, greater business investment, and new opportunities for the American people,’’ he said. “As we approach a new year, I look forward to continuing the fight for limited government, lower taxes, and individual liberty for all.”
There is a very technical explanation for what is transpiring here. Please forgive the difficult to digest jargon but what Sen. Paul hopes to accomplish is “have his cake and eat it too.’’ After enthusiastically, rabidly even, voting to saddle the nation with another $1 trillion in debt, he is absolutely aghast that a majority of his fellow lawmakers decided to dig an ever deeper hole.
So, is he hypocritical, naïve, out to lunch or what?
Well, let’s start by noting that Paul is (sort of) right about the budget agreement. Interest rates are climbing – the Federal Reserve reportedly may impose three hikes this year – inflation is showing signs of picking up and the economy is in good if not great shape. Now is not the time to impose more debt, particularly since the cost of borrowing the money to pay the nation’s bills will likely increase significantly.
So, yeah, it might be a good time to start spending down the nation’s estimated $20.6 trillion debt rather than add to it.
But Paul has forever been whining about deficit conditions, even when the borrowing was necessary. In his Senate floor remarks Paul scoffed at Obama’s “trillion dollar deficits.’’ But that debt was built up at a time when the American economy desperately needed an infusion of capital, the sort only the government could provide.
The crash of 2008 – oh how soon we forget – left the economy running on fumes. The borrowing was necessary to grease the wheels and put folks back to work. Besides, interest rates on that dough were so low for so long it was like taking money for free without even having to offer a thank you.
Now, with unemployment down around 4 percent, the American economy chugging along and, most importantly, interest rates rising, it might be a good time to at least think about paying some of it off. The budget deal doesn’t do that.
Despite The Great Libertarian’s protestations to the contrary, federal government borrowing isn’t bad all the time. But in the current situation he may be right.
Where he’s full of beans is on the tax cut, which is way out of bounds. The economy is not in need of the stimulus the tax cut allegedly is bound to provide, it puts wads of money into the hands of the already wealthy, could create at least modest inflation and, of course, raises the debt.
But that’s okay with ol’ Rand.
“I voted for the tax cuts and I voted for spending cuts,’’ he noted on “Face the Nation’’ on CBS on Sunday. “The people who voted for tax cuts and spending increases — I think there is some hypocrisy there and it shows they’re not serious about the debt.’’
The catch is Paul is putting the proverbial cart before the horse. He had no reason to believe, with President Trump, who could care less about deficits, in the White House and other GOP lawmakers desperately seeking boosts in defense spending that any budget agreement was going to result in reducing the deficit.
You have to ponder what ‘ol Rand would have done if Congress had adopted the budget deal he so loathes before raising the issue of the tax cut. Would that have led him to oppose the tax measure, seeings how it would dig the debt hole even deeper?
C’mon. It’s an election year. Paul would have voted for a tax cut bill even if drained the Treasury and placed Bernie Madoff in charge of the nation’s finances. That may be what he wants anyway.
Paul can rationalize his tax cut vote from here to Kingdom Come, but the fact remains he voted to increase the deficit with no assurance that steps were going to be taken to address the debt.
Like John Kerry said, he was for it before he was against it.
The NKyTribune’s Washington columnist Bill Straub served 11 years as the Frankfort Bureau chief for The Kentucky Post. He also is the former White House/political correspondent for Scripps Howard News Service. A member of the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame, he currently resides in Silver Spring, Maryland, and writes frequently about the federal government and politics. Email him at williamgstraub@gmail.com.
