The 2020 election saw Democrats maintain their majority in the House of Representatives, regain a razor-thin majority in the Senate, and retake the White House.
In response to this new Democratic power, Republican lawmakers have returned to rhetoric blasting Democrats for policies they say will further inflate the United States' deficit and national debt.
Under the guise of fiscal responsibility, Republicans slammed the nearly $2 trillion pandemic relief package that delivered stimulus checks to most Americans and allocated funds for vaccine rollouts. Now, they're using these same concerns to decry President Joe Biden's recently announced infrastructure package—an ambitious plan that emphasizes the use of green energy and would repair a total of nearly 20 thousand miles of roads in the United States. Biden plans to pay for the plan primarily with tax increases on corporations.
What Republicans don't often mention is how the national debt exploded under the party's favorite idol, former President Donald Trump. Despite the promise during his 2016 campaign to "eliminate" the national debt, it increased by a whopping 36 percent during his time in office, largely due to the Trump Tax Cuts of 2017, which Republicans continue to praise.
In an interview with Senator Roy Blunt (R-MO), Fox News anchor Chris Wallace called out their hypocrisy on so-called fiscal responsibility.
Watch below.
Chris Wallace nails Roy Blunt over GOP's exploding deficitsyoutu.be
Wallace said:
"Some of your colleagues in the Republican party are complaining about this is gonna explode debt, this is gonna explode deficits, and I want to put up what the Republican record is on those. During the Trump presidency, even before the pandemic, the national debt increased by more than $3 trillion and in 2017, every Republican in the Senate—including you—voted for the big Trump Tax Cuts, which cut revenue by almost $1.5 trillion."
Wallace had one question:
"When I hear, for instance, Mitch McConnell talking now about, well, debt and deficits, hasn't the Republican party, haven't you lost your credibility on this issue?"
Blunt conceded that no one "has a very good record for the last decade on this," but said the Obama and Biden administration's increases on corporate taxes had more of a negative impact than Republican ballooning of the deficit.
But for most social media users the answer was clear: Republicans have, indeed, "lost their credibility" on this issue.
Democrats have long been calling out Republican hypocrisy regarding the deficit and national debt.
It's unclear how much Republican support, if any, Biden's infrastructure plan will receive in Congress.
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