Republicans are in charge of Congress and are planning to pass their agenda using reconciliation – meaning they can pass a bill without any support from the minority party. They had two options to move forward on reconciliation:
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A House plan that called for deficit neutral tax reform and $200 billion in spending cuts
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A Senate plan that called for tax reform with a $1.5 trillion deficit increase
Last night, Republican leadership quickly coalesced around the Senate plan, nixing the $200 billion in spending cuts and replacing it with $1.5 trillion in debt increases. $200 billion in spending cuts over the next 10 years is one-275th of the $53.1 trillion in government spending over the next decade. For context of how miniscule that is, that would be the equivalent of:
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A 275-pound man losing one pound
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Amazon marking down its $99 prime membership by 36 cents
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Reducing the total run time of Game of Thrones by 33 minutes
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Changing Twitter’s new character limit from 280 to 279
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Removing 4 pages from the Lord of the Rings series
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Cutting a one week vacation short by 36 minutes
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One-fifth of a single skittle out of a fun size bag
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Cutting short Taylor Swift’s new song by .76 seconds
Republicans, who have spent the last 10 years decrying spending and debt, when finally given an opportunity to do something about it, cannot even get an offensive lineman to shed a single pound. Actions speak louder than words.
