Some bracing reading from Harry Enten at FiveThirtyEight , not least for those who have been arguing that being seen to ‘do something’ is what counts (my emphasis added):
A party that can’t do anything, this line of thinking contends, is worse than a party that passes unpopular bills.
But so far, there is little evidence that the general electorate is warming to the bill or Republicans as passage has gotten closer. Opposition has risen by 6 percentage points, from 46 percent last month to 52 percent this month. Trump’s approval rating has fallen from 38 percent when the House passed tax reform on Nov. 16 to 37 percent as of Sunday evening. Republicans continue to face a double-digit deficit on the generic congressional ballot. And by a 25-point margin, voters say they are less likely to vote for their member of Congress if he or she votes for the tax bill (43 percent, compared with 18 percent who said they’re more likely to vote for re-election).
So, there’s nothing in the polling to suggest that voters want the GOP to simply “pass something.” There’s also nothing in recent history that supports that line of thinking….
It is true that voters don’t like when nothing gets done in Washington. Political scientist Sarah Binder’s 2003 book “Stalemate” looked at how legislative gridlock in Congress affected the president’s approval rating, which is linked to his party’s fate in midterm elections. She found that when Congress and the presidency are controlled by the same party, the president’s approval rating does seem to drop when policy initiatives fail to advance. The effect, however, was relatively small. And as I’ve said, the alternative to getting nothing passed has typically been getting something at least mildly popular passed.
I have to say that it’s the last sentence that gets to me. With the GOP controlling Congress and the White House, it should (even allowing for the budgetary constraints that follow from pushing tax changes through without any bipartisan support) have been possible to pass a strong tax-cutting bill that was, perhaps, more modest on the face of it than the current effort, but had—and this is what counts—a decent chance of surviving the political reversals that time almost always brings. Sadly that’s not what the GOP has opted for, and all the signs so far (I hope to be proved wrong) are that the reversals to come will be far worse than would otherwise have been the case.
Meanwhile the budget hawks over at the optimistically-named Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget pour on the GOP parade:
As is, the bill would cause debt to increase from 77 percent of GDP this year to 95 percent or 98 percent of GDP by 2027, depending on whether dynamic effects are included, as compared to 91 percent projected under current law. If expiring provisions are extended and late-stage tax hikes avoided, debt could reach as high as 98 percent or 100 percent of GDP by 2027. In other words, the national debt could exceed the size of the economy.
If that were to be the peak (it won’t be), it would be not an unmanageable number in itself (there’s lot to be said for being a country with a reserve currency) but should interest rates rise too far, managing that debt load might prove—how shall I put this— a little uncomfortable for taxpayers.
And then there’s the little matter of the President’s long-awaited infrastructure plan. I can’t help wondering how that will be paid for.