Jacob Heilbrunn

Republicans would be wise to listen to Rand Paul before it’s too late

‘I can’t in all good honesty, in all good faith, just look the other way because my party is now complicit in the deficits,’ Senator Rand Paul announced last night. Never were truer words spoken. The Republican party, once the standard-bearer of fiscal probity, has now become signed onto massive deficit spending. It first began to consume the deficit elixir during the Reagan years. But now it has become a full-fledged addiction.

Today, Trump signed a half-trillion dollar spending deal that will ensure that America runs trillion dollar deficits in coming years. The self-described ‘King of Debt’ is on his way to becoming the emperor of it. The dangers are obvious: a rapid increase in inflation and the debauching of America’s currency.

The contrast with what Republicans declared during the Obama years is stark. As Paul put it, ‘I ran for office because I was very critical of [Barack] Obama’s trillion-dollar deficits.

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