Our national debt is $20.5 trillion and heading to $30 trillion by 2030. You’d think that this would be a wake-up call for Republicans, who control all three branches of government, to finally take spending seriously. Instead, they want to get rid of the spending caps meant to constrain lawmakers’ uncontrollable appetite to spend.
The spending caps were implemented as part of the Budget Control Act of 2011. The deal itself was the result of a vigorous debt ceiling battle between those who wanted the unconditional ability to raise the debt limit and those who called for fiscal discipline going forward in exchange for additional debt at the time. In the end, the pro-debt people got their increase in the authority of the federal government to borrow even more money, and the pro-fiscal restraint ones got spending caps. Though the caps weren’t strict enough (they mostly reduced the growth of additional spending, as opposed to imposing actual cuts), they turned out to be the most fiscally responsible policy in decades.
Now, you may say that being the most successful at restraining spending isn’t that impressive when there haven’t been many, if any, real attempts to control spending. Indeed, the Republicans have, time and time again, proved that when they’re in power, they like to spend just as much as Democrats do, writes Veronique de Rugy in her latest column for Reason.
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