The Republicans have finally wrangled a legislative win and passed bills in the House and Senate authorizing a large tax cut and associated provisions.
After multiple failures to repeal the Affordable Care Act, it was imperative that Republicans get one priority done before the end of the year. With a united Republican government potentially facing a dramatically abrupt end in 2018 from an increasingly likely blue House wave in the making, Republicans have been in desperate need of a win, something to show they haven't just been fighting each other all year and can actually pass tangible legislation.
Tax cuts were that win. From the beginning, tax cuts promised Republican unity since disagreements were not about whether to cut taxes but instead were about how much to cut them by. For the most conservative members it was as much as politically possible, while for some deficit hawks (or similar pretenders) it was about not increasing the deficit by too much.
One such deficit hawk, Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), was the only one to hold his ground and oppose the final bill in the Senate. All of the other pretend hawks, including John McCain, who was previously hailed as a liberal savior for his role in stopping Republican health care reform, ended up back in the Republican fold, while Sen. Murkowski (R-AK), who was also instrumental in defeating the Obamacare repeal, traded her vote for allowing drilling in wildlife refuges. Even Sen. Collins (R-ME), who has been a prominently moderate voice over the last year, voted for the cuts.
This should not be surprising and should wake up many liberals who have been falling into the dream of incorporating moderate Republicans into their anti-Trump coalitions in the Senate and House. Congressional Republicans are bound together, not as much through social and cultural positions, but because they buy into a disproven and misguided economic doctrine prescribing ever larger tax cuts, ever smaller spending (on everything except the military). This doctrine is grounded on the incorrect myth that fully unregulated markets operate at maximum efficiency and all intervention automatically results in efficiency loss.
These opinions in the Republican party are strengthened by wealthy donors looking for tax cuts on themselves and deregulation of their businesses, but it is most likely true that Republican politicians truly buy into these positions. This is revealed by Sen. Orrin Hatch's outburst during a committee meeting he was chairing on the tax bill when he interrupted a Democrat to deny that these were "tax cuts for the rich," which of course they are as seen by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office report that came out.
So, the long term focus should be on why people, intelligent people in high places, still accept an economic outlook that has been thoroughly debunked by practice and crises, and by empirical economics research. Until we solve this puzzle, we cannot avoid future tax cuts.
