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Won't Someone Teach Republicans Basic Math? [1]

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Date: 2024-09-20  

It’s a fundamental rule of economics that every choice has costs, and a fundamental rule of math that when you subtract a number from another number, then that number becomes smaller. Someone should remind the Republican Party of these facts.

For decades, Republicans like Brian Mast howled about runaway spending and the destructiveness of federal debt. Yet for two whole years, when Donald Trump was President and Republicans controlled both chambers of Congress, their biggest achievement was… tax cuts for big business. Now, Trump and the Republicans in lockstep behind him proposed replacing a federal income tax with broad and extreme tariffs, raising taxes on the average American and crippling businesses while propping up the wealthy and failing to generate enough revenue to support programs like Medicare and Social Security without a deluge of debt. And then they turn around and accuse anyone who disagrees of being an evil Communist. These stunts bring to mind the joke that Republicans are politicians that tell you that government doesn’t work for the common man, then they get elected and prove it.

Brian Mast’s own website says that he wants to pass a balanced budget amendment and cut taxes, yet says that he won’t dare touch Social Security and Medicare despite the Congressional Budget Office saying that these are the programs driving the deficit . The only reasons why Republicans have turned to crying about “efficiency” is that Democrats have successfully called their bluff: it’s just not possible to cut taxes without increasing the deficit or slashing critical benefits. News flash: if you subtract money from taxes, you subtract money from spending or add to the deficit.

That’s how budgets work, but Republicans are too scared to tell their constituents that they can’t have their cake and eat it, too. So they turn to blaming others for the problems they made: “welfare queens” in the ‘80s, “bureaucrats” in the 2000s, and immigrants today. They play this game even as they give generous subsidies and tax cuts to Big Business, routinely fail to close loopholes, hamstring the IRS whenever it tries to collect the taxes those corporation dodged, and push their Project 2025 agenda which would wreck Social Security and Medicare.

Brian Mast’s insane logic is one of the primary reasons why I am running to replace him in the House of Representatives. I recognize that good investments now, funded by smarter and fairer taxes, mean a better country later—one unburdened by debts and with a government that helps its people and businesses. If you’ve ever wondered why the IRS’s power can’t go towards making it easier to file taxes, why money allocated for housing and health care winds up in the pockets of middlemen skimming off the top, or why innovative American businesses can’t compete fairly, blame the cowardice of politicians like Mast for refusing to do the math.

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