Shutdown pain proves the markets won’t help people on their own | Opinion

I’d rather be a tax-and-spend liberal than a no-tax-and-still spend conservative.

That thought came to me not as a partisan jab, but as a genuine question about what kind of government actually works for people. For decades, we’ve heard that cutting taxes and shrinking government would unleash prosperity. The evidence tells a different story: aging infrastructure, struggling schools, rising inequality, and record deficits.

The Republicans economic philosophy has evolved to be cut taxes, cut regulation, and cut government. Reagan’s tax cuts in the 1980s ballooned the national debt from $900 billion to $2.6 trillion. George W. Bush’s tax cuts in the early 2000s, paired with two unpaid wars, turned a surplus into massive deficits. Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts gave corporations and the wealthy a windfall (their cuts are permanent while working class tax cuts will expire soon) while adding nearly $2 trillion to the debt.

Medicare Part D, which Republicans proposed and championed in 2003, was the largest expansion of Medicare in the program’s history extending coverage to prescription drugs. No new revenue nor spending cuts were made to cover the cost, adding hundreds of billions of dollars to the debt while barring Medicare from negotiating drug prices. It was an unpaid for expansion of government.

If limited government is the goal, what have Republicans limited — or improved?

Democrats, for all their faults, have at least shown a willingness to spend responsibly with purpose. Bill Clinton’s presidency, after raising taxes in 1993 without a single Republican vote, ended with the first budget surplus in a generation. Barack Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act helped pull the nation out of the 2008 financial collapse, saving an estimated 3 million jobs. His Affordable Care Act gave more than 20 million Americans health coverage and protected people with preexisting conditions.

Under Joe Biden, Democrats passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act — a $1.2 trillion commitment to rebuilding infrastructure in all 50 states. Not one Republican voted for it in the House, but many show up at ribbon cuttings in their districts, proudly touting the projects they tried to block. While not offset completely with spending cuts or tax increases, the 10-year cost of $1.2 trillion was reduced to $250 billion because of spending cuts. 80% was paid for, 20% was not, but it is tangible change rather than completely unpaid for tax cuts or expansion of government.

As of Monday, the longest federal government shutdown appears to be coming to an end. Democrats accepted a promise from Republicans for a vote by mid-December to extend ACA subsidies, but the funding bill to reopen does not include extending the subsidies. Most Americans (78%) support extending the tax credits according to a poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation in October.

In my home state of Kansas, Sen. Roger Marshall has long been a proponent of repealing the ACA, and does not support extending the subsidies. Much like every other Republican, he has not yet put forward any concrete plan on what they would replace it with. Less the lone Democrat, Rep. Sharice Davids of the 3rd District, the remaining members of the congressional delegation from Kansas, all Republicans, do not support extending the ACA subsidies.

You don’t have to be a liberal to see that Democrat policies produce tangible results. The ACA subsidies are an example of what happens when government chooses to solve problems instead of pretending markets will fix them. The program, and other policies, are far from perfect, but they reflect a realistic governing philosophy: progress requires investment. Meanwhile, Republicans’ governing philosophy seems to be grounded in partisanship, rigid ideology, and the inability to promote solutions to complex problems other than cutting taxes for the rich and large corporations, and running up deficits.

And that is why I would rather be a tax-and-spend liberal than a no-tax-and-still-spend conservative.

Tom Leonard of Overland Park has a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Kansas.