| Get Jonathan Bernstein's newsletter every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. Can we finally get rid of the false claim that Republicans only care about deficits when a Democratic president is in office? Republican politicians, with few exceptions, care about federal budget deficits never. Not when Donald Trump was president, not when Joe Biden is president. Not when George W. Bush or Barack Obama were president. Never — or at least not since the current Republican mainstream emerged about 40 years ago, and became essentially unanimous about 30 years ago. The truth is that the standard Republican position is to reject budgeting altogether, if budgeting involves trying to hit a deficit target. What Republicans want is to spend at levels they think appropriate (more on defense and some domestic programs, less on others) and to tax at levels they think appropriate (generally less, especially for the wealthy). They are consistent in those preferences. They don't care — at all — about how the revenues the government receives from those taxes compares to overall government spending. Republican preferences don't add up, which is why deficits leap up every time they get to control policy. We saw that in 2020, when Republicans refused to pass a second relief bill all summer and fall, even though doing so might have saved Trump's presidency. They did support the first relief bill (which was basically a compromise between spending that Democrats wanted and spending that Republicans wanted). But that was as much as they were willing to spend. If that didn't convince you, the current debate over Biden's approach to rebuilding U.S. infrastructure should. Republicans do like some types of infrastructure spending — on highways, for example — which opens up the possibility of a compromise. The big problem? Many Democrats, perhaps including Biden and certainly including West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin (whose support would be crucial in the 50-50 Senate), want to pay for the spending with new taxes. And that's simply a non-starter for Republicans. Indeed, the whole idea of paying for government spending with new revenues is apparently so foreign to Republicans and their Senate leader Mitch McConnell that they think it's some sort of devious trick: "The Trojan horse will be called infrastructure. Inside the Trojan horse will be all the tax increases," McConnell said. "The only way I think they could pull that off would be through a reconciliation process."
Some Republicans have said that they would accept paying for infrastructure by cutting other spending. But that's not accepting budgeting. That's just seeing a possibility of spending less on things they don't like. Which they would also want to do if there was no infrastructure bill, or if revenues went up, or in any other circumstance. It is true that Republicans have tended to talk more about "deficits" when Democrats are in the White House. But their preferences on spending and taxes don't change. At no point do they treat the balance of federal budget revenues and outlays as any kind of factor in their preferences. It doesn't constrain them at all. Whether one thinks this is good policy or bad, it's impossible to understand how Republicans approach budgeting without understanding their actual policy preferences. 1. Sarah Binder at the Monkey Cage explains the history of the filibuster to McConnell. 2. Matt Grossmann on media attention and the infrastructure bill. 3. Dan Drezner on the Heritage Foundation and conservative ideas. 4. Bridget Dooling, Daniel Pérez and Steven J. Balla on the Congressional Review Act. 5. My Bloomberg Opinion colleague Michael R. Strain on the pandemic relief bill's continuity with recent policy. 6. Neil Irwin surveys economists about inflation and what an overheating economy would be like. 7. And Greg Sargent makes the point that changes in government procedures are more common than one might think. Get Early Returns every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. Also subscribe to Bloomberg All Access and get much, much more. You'll receive our unmatched global news coverage and two in-depth daily newsletters, the Bloomberg Open and the Bloomberg Close. | 
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