Thanks to President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, we learned last week from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, an additional $2.3 trillion (with a “t”) will be added to our national debt over the next decade. Soon, for the only time since World War II, nearly three-quarters of a century ago, the nation’s debt — what we and our children and their children owe to bankers and other countries — will be greater than the entire economy of the United States.
But wait. Republicans — ever the fiscal watchdogs — have an idea. The GOP wants to make the temporary 2017 tax cuts permanent. What genius! One more round of tax cuts to magically produce a balanced federal budget. That would be comparable to leaving the landing lights on for Amelia Earhart.
It wouldn’t be inaccurate to say that Republicans are collectively afflicted with an inability to pay attention.
• With voters rating the Republican Party negatively by a thumping margin — 59 percent unfavorable and 36 percent favorable — and the Democrats scoring just a little better (at 52 percent unfavorable and 41 percent favorable), it appears inevitable that we’re headed for a “Mae West” campaign in the fall. Mae West, for those in the audience who are too young to remember, was an original blond bombshell in Hollywood known for her earthy ways, and she once observed in a film, “When caught between two evils, I generally like to take the one I never tried.”
• Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell, I have been assured by a formerly reliable authority, actually has some wit and personality, which, I acknowledge, is not apparent to those who hear only his public utterances. This has not always been the case among Republican Senate leaders. Bob Dole has a truly devilish wit. Once, upon seeing three former U.S. presidents — Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon — at a White House event, Dole described the…
