By: Team Sherrod

After handing a massive tax cut to the wealthiest 1%, corporations, banks, and Wall Street, Republicans are doing exactly what leaders like Sherrod warned they would do: cut funding for programs that families rely on.

Millions of Americans depend on Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. That’s why Sherrod fights so hard to protect them. If you agree it’s ridiculous that the GOP wants to pay for their massive tax giveaway by slashing funding for critical programs like these, show your support for Sherrod:

The Washington Post: McConnell calls deficit ‘very disturbing,’ blames federal spending, dismisses criticism of tax cut

Damian Paletta – October 16, 2018

Key points:

• Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday called the ballooning budget deficit “very disturbing” but said large federal spending programs were to blame, dismissing criticism that last year’s GOP tax cuts are saddling the country with more debt.

• Republicans have abandoned numerous budget demands they put in place during the Obama administration, including an insistence that any new spending be offset by other cuts.

• They have also repeatedly raised the debt ceiling without seeking any budget changes and waived rules put in place to prevent an increase in the debt.

• McConnell’s comments came one day after the White House reported that the government ran a deficit of $779 billion in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, a 17% increase from the year before.

• Republican leaders, and White House officials, had promised that all of the lost revenue from the tax cut would be recouped from higher economic growth, though many budget experts from both parties believe this is unlikely.

• The tax cuts alone were projected to add $100 billion to the deficit this year.

• Democrats warned during the tax cut debate that Republicans would widen the deficit through tax reductions and then seek to recoup the losses by cutting programs such as Medicaid, a health care program for poor and low-income families

• McConnell blamed the recent run-up in the deficit on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, but there haven’t been policy changes in those programs to explain the major run-up in the debt in the past two years.

• The bigger changes have instead been bipartisan agreements to remove spending caps on things such as the military, and last year’s tax cut.
  
  

Read more here.