Saturday, August 25, 2018

Senate Budget Votes Are a Sign of the Trump Era's Other Legacy

One of the most enduring consequences of the Trump years will be the one on full display in the Senate yesterday, as lawmakers voted 85-7 to pass a pair of budget bills for the fiscal year that begins October 1.

It's all part of Congress' ongoing attempt to get a fiscal year 2019 budget onto Trump's desk before the end of September.

The part of the story that history will remember is how Republicans in the Trump years completely abdicated their demands for fiscal restraint.

Thursday's vote is the latest in a series of bipartisan agreements to hike spending since Republicans and Democrats adopted a two-year budget framework in February.

Getting such broad bipartisan support for huge spending increases would have been unheard of a few years ago, when Republicans were building their brand by opposing the runaway spending of the Obama administration.

Trump has not committed to signing the budget bills.

The economy grew by more than 4 percent in the second quarter, and yet the deficit has grown by 20 percent since October 2017, due to a combination of last year's tax cuts and this year's spending spree.

http://reason.com/blog/2018/08/24/budget-votes-are-trump-legacy-too 

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