Talking Past Each Other . . . Still

For 8 years, I watched self-styled "conservatives" rail against deficit spending, even at the height of the Great Recession. Beginning in mid-January 2017, all of these voices seemed to go silent and proceeded to pass a party-line tax bill that drastically cut taxes on corporations and did not even pretend to pay for itself.

Now, people are back to bemoaning the national debt. Case in point:

As is well-known, our deficit and debt problems stem from sharply rising entitlement spending. Without congressional action, the combination of the automatic spending increase per beneficiary provisions of these programs and the growth in entitlement program recipients as the population ages will cause entitlement spending to continue to rise far faster than U.S. national income and tax revenue.

This article, as confirmed by the link, was published in the Washington Post within the past two weeks. What is notably missing from this analysis of the failure of our nation's tax receipts to fully fund our expenditures? Any guesses?

Never interested in disappointing, the authors of this crap-sandwich column give us this:

 To address the debt problem, Congress must reform and restrain the growth of entitlement programs and adopt further pro-growth tax and regulatory policies. The recently enacted corporate-tax-reform plan is a good first step, as it sharply increases the incentive to invest and grow businesses, which will increase incomes. The revenue loss, which amounts to about 0.4 percent of gross-domestic product in 2025, is not by itself a budget buster, considering both the offsetting revenue reflow from higher incomes and the far larger long-run entitlement explosion. Moreover, over the next decade, the tax plan maintains or increases the federal tax claim on GDP compared with recent levels.

I am a lawyer, and I know sophistry when I see it.  

First off, where is the evidence that cutting taxes on high earners is "pro-growth?" Objective, verifiable evidence on this point is utterly lacking. Rest assured, the advocates of upper-income tax cuts would cite it ceaselessly if it were there. Alas . . .

Second, where is the evidence that this particular tax cut "sharply increases the incentive to invest and grow businesses?" Again, if the evidence exists, cite it and win the argument. Failure to do so implies lack of such evidence.

"The revenue loss, which amounts to about 0.4% of GDP in 2025, is not by itself a budget buster." The House of Representatives, the very entity that wrote the most recent tax cut and the one entity with the most incentive to polish that turd stated that this would decrease federal revenues by $1.5T over a decade. That's $150,000,000,000/year, every year. Further, that 0.4% of GDP is misleading, as federal policy currently will have 2025 tax rates being approximately 15.7% of GDP. Thus, the most recent tax cut bill will reduce rates by approximately 1/31 as opposed to 1/200. A fine piece of sophistry.

Third, what exactly is "revenue reflow?" 

Fourth, and back to the proof problem, where is the effect that this tax bill will boost anyone's income or boost tax receipts? We've been through this. If the proponents had the proof, they would cite it ad nauseum. They don't cite it because they don't have it.

Finally, "the tax plan maintains or increases the federal tax claim on GDP compared with recent levels." I'm confused. I thought this was a tax cut? I noticed the explicit cut to corporate taxes, so where is the rest of this "maintain[ed] or increase[d] claim on GDP" coming from?

All of this is to say that the so-called deficit scolds don't take deficits seriously. When did you see any plan, whatsoever, to pay for the enormous tax cut that just happened, or the massive increase in military spending?

Nowhere.

The only times I have seen any national politicians attempt to explain how things get paid for in recent years is when a liberal is attempting to do something, whether that liberal is Barack Obama explicitly and painstakingly requiring "pay fors" in the Affordable Care Act or Bernie Sanders meticulously explaining how he would pay for "Medicare for All."

This is why we can't have adult conversations. When one side acknowledges a problem and the other side doesn't, we simply talk past each other.

UPDATE: People with qualifications that far exceed mine in every way imaginable (i.e. Janet Yellen, former Fed Chair, among others) have written a fairly comprehensive rebuttal. You can see it here.