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From 2018, "Sadly, Fiscal Restraint Is No Longer a Core Principle of the GOP": * https://www.cato.org/commentary/sadly-fiscal-restraint-no-longer-core-principl

From 2018, "Sadly, Fiscal Restraint Is No Longer a Core Principle of the GOP": * https://www.cato.org/commentary/sadly-fiscal-restraint-no-longer-core-principle-gop https://www.cato.org/commentary/sadly-fiscal-restraint-no-lo... When you've lost the Cato Institute… More recently in 2025, "The petrodollar, not GOP fiscal restraint, is what sustains our unsustainable debt": * https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/5465671-republican-fiscal-responsibility-illusion/ https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/5465671-republican-fisca... Not that I believe the folks at the top at the GOP really cared about it, ever, going back to (at least) Reagan; it was mostly an excuse to cut taxes on the wealth and cut social programs: * https://archive.is/https://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/14/magazine/the-tax-cut-con.html https://archive.is/https://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/14/magazi...

throwaway1492 2mo ago
Former Republican here aka Rino. It’s easily explained; the GOP ceased to exist when they all fell in line with Trump first term. Trump threatened to to form his own party with his massive following and make the GOP the third choice on the ballot. Trumpism is not conservative in any sense; it’s jingoistic nationalism to benefit Trumps interest.
- stetrain 2mo ago
  The GOP was not fiscally conservative before Trump either.
  - peaseagee 2mo ago
    Exactly. I remember hearing "tax and spend Democrats" as a slur back in the 90s/00s, but seeing the GOP spend without taxing during those years showed what it was really all about...
  - michaelt 2mo ago
    Yes, in the 1970s-1980s the GOP came up with the idea of "starve the beast" [1] which allowed them describe unfunded tax cuts and deficit spending as "fiscally conservative", like a parent taking away a child's allowance. Complete nonsense in practice, obviously - but political gold! Voters get all the same public services, lower taxes, and to think they're being responsible with money. And if you're a 65-year-old legislator, you'll be dead and buried before the consequences start to bite. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast
    - SmirkingRevenge 2mo ago
      Running up massive debt and deficits is also a way to kill appetite for D priorities that require new spending. The best way to make sense of the GOP is in it's opposition to wealth redistribution. Primarily downward wealth redistribution. That's their north star. Upward redistribution is mostly OK though, they consider it just giving rich people their own money back
  - bluGill 2mo ago
    Before Trump the GOP was fiscally conservative - when the democrats were in power! That explains a large part of why democrats were able to lower the debt - the republicans in congress wouldn't go along with efforts to raise the debt.
    - stetrain 2mo ago
      And when Republicans were in power they cut taxes and spent $2T on a war in Iraq. Cutting taxes without cutting spending raises the deficit and seems to be the GOP's most common fiscal policy.
    - preg_match 2mo ago
      The GOP is basically universally bad at fiscal policy. They spend big, mostly on warmongering and industry. Not developing industry, no no, siphoning government funds to the private sector, where I assume they have many friends. They increase the deficit because they increase spending and then "cut" taxes. Often they don't effectively "cut" taxes for you and me: the tax burden for many Americans is raised, except for a select few who get tax cuts. This was happening well before Trump, into Reagan. The only reason this works at all is because they get to say "oh we cut taxes!". But tax burden is very complicated, and nobody is analyzing that for the common voter.
- dataflow 2mo ago
  Not to veer too far off-topic but are former-Republican and RINO mutually exclusive? How can one simultaneously be a Republican (in name or otherwise) while calling themself a former Republican? Either you've stopped voting Republican (in which case you're no longer RINO) or you still are (in which case you're a current Republican)...
  - throwaway1492 2mo ago
    I’ve been voting against Trump and maga since 2016. Waiting for sanity to return; I hope it will return but at this point I’m doubtful.
    - dataflow 2mo ago
      From your reply it sounds like you're still voting Republican, just not for the candidates that you classify as "MAGA"? In which case I guess that's a (current) RINO... Assuming my assumption is correct, I hope you're just recognizing the fact that MAGA didn't get where it is today without massive help from non-MAGA Republicans (in Congress as well as outside), in numerous ways. So you're not going to see the outcome you're waiting for if that's the case.
smallmancontrov 2mo ago
Democrats Change In Deficit ----------- -------- Joe Biden -$999B Barack Obama -$747B Bill Clinton -$383B Jimmy Carter +$25.3B Republicans Change In Deficit ----------- -------- Donald Trump +$2.108T George W. Bush +$1.541T George H. W. Bush +$102B Ronald Reagan +$73.7B Gerald Ford +$47.5B Richard Nixon +$9.4B Dwight Eisenhower -$3.2B
- deleted 2mo ago
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- refurb 2mo ago
  You need to adjust for inflation. Also the correct measure is % of GDP
  - deleted 2mo ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 2mo ago
    [deleted]
  - fluidcruft 2mo ago
    Democrats Change in Deficit --------- ----------------- Joe Biden -6.1% GDP Barack Obama -6.4% GDP Bill Clinton -5.0% GDP Jimmy Carter -0.2% GDP Republicans Change in Deficit ----------- ----------------- Donald Trump +8.6% GDP George W. Bush +11.0% GDP George H. W. Bush +1.1% GDP Ronald Reagan +0.2% GDP Gerald Ford +2.3% GDP Richard Nixon +0.7% GDP Dwight Eisenhower -1.1% GDP via ChatGPT which among other things verified the original table. I didn't bother with inflation adjustment since it's normalized by GDP.
    - smallmancontrov 2mo ago
      Good call, normalizing to GDP instead of deficit fixes the flip into/out of surplus problem. Also, now that aggro "cite your sources" guy ran, it's probably worth duplicating the cite here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/information-resources/budget/historical-tables/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/information-resources/budget/... Despite being witehouse.gov, I am pleased to see that this is one page that Trump has not yet updated to read "Republicans Rule Democrats Drool" over an editorialized fever dream replacing inconvenient data. Grab it while it lasts, and let's hope that accounting remains boring enough to repel such attention!
jmyeet 2mo ago
The idea that the GOP was ever about "fiscal restraint" is one of the most successful propaganda exercises ever because this hasn't been true since probably the Eisenhower administration. What's funny is that this era (the 1950s) is often fetishized by people who absolutely oppose the policies that made that possible, including a top marginal tax rate of 91% and a CEO to median worker ratio of 20-25x instead of the 400x+ it is now. So the Cato Institute finally realized something that hasn't been true for 50+ years. What we're witnessing is the looting of government coffers and transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich on a scale never seen before. And they don't care about the consequences because capital is mobile. They'll simply leave.
- _heimdall 2mo ago
  If you go back that far, you have to keep in mind major shifts in party alignment. The two parties changed drastically coming out of the civil rights era and by the 80s had effectively flipped. I can't speak to the Republican politicians if the era, but all the Republican voters I know where legitimately focused on fiscal issues and balancing a budget until Trump showed up. Most of the older Republicans in my family have since left the party and registered independent, the younger Republicans I know are just about Trump though and, similar to Trump, don't really seem to hold any principles that underlie their views on any one topic.
  - FrustratedMonky 2mo ago
    " younger Republicans I know are just about Trump though and, similar to Trump, don't really seem to hold any principles that underlie their views on any one topic" This a big worry. I thought Trump was for old angry people shaking their fist at sky. The ones with dementia. Why are young into him?
    - _heimdall 2mo ago
      I'm sure it varies in different parts of the country. I'm in the southeast, a very Republican region for the last 60ish years. I also have family in Arizona, not as red as here but still popular. In both areas, the young people I know that are Republicans, and pay any attention to politics, seem to mostly be attracted to his energy and wild promises/claims. They also tend to laugh at the things that I expect many here are concerned by.
kypro 2mo ago
> From 2018, "Sadly, Fiscal Restraint Is No Longer a Core Principle of the GOP": While I agree, surely the assumption that the Democrats will be more fiscally responsible isn't true either? This is more an issue with modern political expectations imo – compounded by challenges of aging demographics. I can only give my view as a Brit, but I think the same applies here as in the US. Here people expect far more from the government today than at any point in history. Some of these exceptions are reasonable, but many are not. But either way, despite huge government revenues theres just never enough money to fund all of the social programs voters ideally want. And under this pressure the only option to win elections is to borrow. I guess to frame it another way – what spending would people want to see the politicians cut? I suspect the only way Western governments will get spending under control is to understand that government can't solve every problem, however nice it might be if they could.
- jlokier 2mo ago
  > While I agree, surely the assumption that the Democrats will be more fiscally responsible isn't true either? See the sibling thread parallel to yours, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49329791 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49329791 Democrats have a track record that speaks to them being more fiscally responsible than GOP, in spite of the rhetorical narrative. You can't assume anything about the next crew. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. But if you're predicting fiscal responsibility, past performance favours the Democrats.
  - bluGill 2mo ago
    Past performance favors the democrats as president with republicans in congress. (there isn't much data with either party in charge of both branches)
SmirkingRevenge 2mo ago
CATO has been quite good of late at dismantling many of the worst of the Trump GOP's initiatives with real research. They're immigration research is a great resource to rebut the nativist MAGA nonsense.
indemnity 2mo ago
How long will the petrodollar remain a thing with the current diversification of energy sources proceeding apace internationally? Listening to Americans talk about energy and vehicles feels like going back in time, they’re stuck in the past and things that worked then and the world is rapidly routing around them. Quite sad to see.
- dofm 2mo ago
  Trump just threatened to bomb Oman. Oman! It’s not possible to make any predictions about the petrodollar in this context. We know what should happen. But it is like trying to predict earthquakes.
- tim333 2mo ago
  The petrodollar thing always seemed overhyped by people who don't understand economics that well. It was just a term for the dollars received by oil producing countries like Saudi Arabia. People used dollars rather than yen or pounds because it the US was the largest and a rather free and stable economy. That still mostly applies. The argument in the linked article: >Since the 1970s, global oil transactions have been priced and conducted almost exclusively in U.S. dollars. That arrangement has given America an unparalleled advantage, effectively creating an economic blackmail chip. I think is bunk. A country pricing in Euros would make no difference apart from traders needing to check the dollar euro rate.
  - xquce 2mo ago
    Abit glib to call it hyped when the US has started multiple wars to protect the petrodollar. Trying to do business any other way puts targets on whole countries, much less the speaker and their family. Many attempts were made in the middle east and Africa to make that change, and those people and governments were wiped out. While the argument can be made for it's economic effect and power today vs 20 years ago, I don't think it was overhyped then.
    - tim333 2mo ago
      I'm a Brit and we've done business other ways for centuries without issues. At least not issues due to using pounds rather than dollars. Who got wiped out?
insane_dreamer 2mo ago
the only fiscal policy today's Trump-led GOP has is blatant "grab as much as you can" corruption nothing is being done in the national interest (not saying every GOP congressman is personally like this, but they're actively aiding and abetting)
fearmerchant 2mo ago
You can't get elected being the party that pulls away the punch bowl.

throwaway1492 2mo ago

Former Republican here aka Rino. It’s easily explained; the GOP ceased to exist when they all fell in line with Trump first term. Trump threatened to to form his own party with his massive following and make the GOP the third choice on the ballot. Trumpism is not conservative in any sense; it’s jingoistic nationalism to benefit Trumps interest.

stetrain 2mo ago
The GOP was not fiscally conservative before Trump either.
- peaseagee 2mo ago
  Exactly. I remember hearing "tax and spend Democrats" as a slur back in the 90s/00s, but seeing the GOP spend without taxing during those years showed what it was really all about...
- michaelt 2mo ago
  Yes, in the 1970s-1980s the GOP came up with the idea of "starve the beast" [1] which allowed them describe unfunded tax cuts and deficit spending as "fiscally conservative", like a parent taking away a child's allowance. Complete nonsense in practice, obviously - but political gold! Voters get all the same public services, lower taxes, and to think they're being responsible with money. And if you're a 65-year-old legislator, you'll be dead and buried before the consequences start to bite. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast
  - SmirkingRevenge 2mo ago
    Running up massive debt and deficits is also a way to kill appetite for D priorities that require new spending. The best way to make sense of the GOP is in it's opposition to wealth redistribution. Primarily downward wealth redistribution. That's their north star. Upward redistribution is mostly OK though, they consider it just giving rich people their own money back
- bluGill 2mo ago
  Before Trump the GOP was fiscally conservative - when the democrats were in power! That explains a large part of why democrats were able to lower the debt - the republicans in congress wouldn't go along with efforts to raise the debt.
  - stetrain 2mo ago
    And when Republicans were in power they cut taxes and spent $2T on a war in Iraq. Cutting taxes without cutting spending raises the deficit and seems to be the GOP's most common fiscal policy.
  - preg_match 2mo ago
    The GOP is basically universally bad at fiscal policy. They spend big, mostly on warmongering and industry. Not developing industry, no no, siphoning government funds to the private sector, where I assume they have many friends. They increase the deficit because they increase spending and then "cut" taxes. Often they don't effectively "cut" taxes for you and me: the tax burden for many Americans is raised, except for a select few who get tax cuts. This was happening well before Trump, into Reagan. The only reason this works at all is because they get to say "oh we cut taxes!". But tax burden is very complicated, and nobody is analyzing that for the common voter.
dataflow 2mo ago
Not to veer too far off-topic but are former-Republican and RINO mutually exclusive? How can one simultaneously be a Republican (in name or otherwise) while calling themself a former Republican? Either you've stopped voting Republican (in which case you're no longer RINO) or you still are (in which case you're a current Republican)...
- throwaway1492 2mo ago
  I’ve been voting against Trump and maga since 2016. Waiting for sanity to return; I hope it will return but at this point I’m doubtful.
  - dataflow 2mo ago
    From your reply it sounds like you're still voting Republican, just not for the candidates that you classify as "MAGA"? In which case I guess that's a (current) RINO... Assuming my assumption is correct, I hope you're just recognizing the fact that MAGA didn't get where it is today without massive help from non-MAGA Republicans (in Congress as well as outside), in numerous ways. So you're not going to see the outcome you're waiting for if that's the case.

smallmancontrov 2mo ago

Democrats Change In Deficit ----------- -------- Joe Biden -$999B Barack Obama -$747B Bill Clinton -$383B Jimmy Carter +$25.3B Republicans Change In Deficit ----------- -------- Donald Trump +$2.108T George W. Bush +$1.541T George H. W. Bush +$102B Ronald Reagan +$73.7B Gerald Ford +$47.5B Richard Nixon +$9.4B Dwight Eisenhower -$3.2B

deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
refurb 2mo ago
You need to adjust for inflation. Also the correct measure is % of GDP
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
- fluidcruft 2mo ago
  Democrats Change in Deficit --------- ----------------- Joe Biden -6.1% GDP Barack Obama -6.4% GDP Bill Clinton -5.0% GDP Jimmy Carter -0.2% GDP Republicans Change in Deficit ----------- ----------------- Donald Trump +8.6% GDP George W. Bush +11.0% GDP George H. W. Bush +1.1% GDP Ronald Reagan +0.2% GDP Gerald Ford +2.3% GDP Richard Nixon +0.7% GDP Dwight Eisenhower -1.1% GDP via ChatGPT which among other things verified the original table. I didn't bother with inflation adjustment since it's normalized by GDP.
  - smallmancontrov 2mo ago
    Good call, normalizing to GDP instead of deficit fixes the flip into/out of surplus problem. Also, now that aggro "cite your sources" guy ran, it's probably worth duplicating the cite here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/information-resources/budget/historical-tables/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/information-resources/budget/... Despite being witehouse.gov, I am pleased to see that this is one page that Trump has not yet updated to read "Republicans Rule Democrats Drool" over an editorialized fever dream replacing inconvenient data. Grab it while it lasts, and let's hope that accounting remains boring enough to repel such attention!

jmyeet 2mo ago

The idea that the GOP was ever about "fiscal restraint" is one of the most successful propaganda exercises ever because this hasn't been true since probably the Eisenhower administration. What's funny is that this era (the 1950s) is often fetishized by people who absolutely oppose the policies that made that possible, including a top marginal tax rate of 91% and a CEO to median worker ratio of 20-25x instead of the 400x+ it is now. So the Cato Institute finally realized something that hasn't been true for 50+ years. What we're witnessing is the looting of government coffers and transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich on a scale never seen before. And they don't care about the consequences because capital is mobile. They'll simply leave.

_heimdall 2mo ago
If you go back that far, you have to keep in mind major shifts in party alignment. The two parties changed drastically coming out of the civil rights era and by the 80s had effectively flipped. I can't speak to the Republican politicians if the era, but all the Republican voters I know where legitimately focused on fiscal issues and balancing a budget until Trump showed up. Most of the older Republicans in my family have since left the party and registered independent, the younger Republicans I know are just about Trump though and, similar to Trump, don't really seem to hold any principles that underlie their views on any one topic.
- FrustratedMonky 2mo ago
  " younger Republicans I know are just about Trump though and, similar to Trump, don't really seem to hold any principles that underlie their views on any one topic" This a big worry. I thought Trump was for old angry people shaking their fist at sky. The ones with dementia. Why are young into him?
  - _heimdall 2mo ago
    I'm sure it varies in different parts of the country. I'm in the southeast, a very Republican region for the last 60ish years. I also have family in Arizona, not as red as here but still popular. In both areas, the young people I know that are Republicans, and pay any attention to politics, seem to mostly be attracted to his energy and wild promises/claims. They also tend to laugh at the things that I expect many here are concerned by.

kypro 2mo ago

> From 2018, "Sadly, Fiscal Restraint Is No Longer a Core Principle of the GOP": While I agree, surely the assumption that the Democrats will be more fiscally responsible isn't true either? This is more an issue with modern political expectations imo – compounded by challenges of aging demographics. I can only give my view as a Brit, but I think the same applies here as in the US. Here people expect far more from the government today than at any point in history. Some of these exceptions are reasonable, but many are not. But either way, despite huge government revenues theres just never enough money to fund all of the social programs voters ideally want. And under this pressure the only option to win elections is to borrow. I guess to frame it another way – what spending would people want to see the politicians cut? I suspect the only way Western governments will get spending under control is to understand that government can't solve every problem, however nice it might be if they could.

jlokier 2mo ago
> While I agree, surely the assumption that the Democrats will be more fiscally responsible isn't true either? See the sibling thread parallel to yours, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49329791 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49329791 Democrats have a track record that speaks to them being more fiscally responsible than GOP, in spite of the rhetorical narrative. You can't assume anything about the next crew. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. But if you're predicting fiscal responsibility, past performance favours the Democrats.
- bluGill 2mo ago
  Past performance favors the democrats as president with republicans in congress. (there isn't much data with either party in charge of both branches)

SmirkingRevenge 2mo ago

CATO has been quite good of late at dismantling many of the worst of the Trump GOP's initiatives with real research. They're immigration research is a great resource to rebut the nativist MAGA nonsense.

indemnity 2mo ago

How long will the petrodollar remain a thing with the current diversification of energy sources proceeding apace internationally? Listening to Americans talk about energy and vehicles feels like going back in time, they’re stuck in the past and things that worked then and the world is rapidly routing around them. Quite sad to see.

dofm 2mo ago
Trump just threatened to bomb Oman. Oman! It’s not possible to make any predictions about the petrodollar in this context. We know what should happen. But it is like trying to predict earthquakes.
tim333 2mo ago
The petrodollar thing always seemed overhyped by people who don't understand economics that well. It was just a term for the dollars received by oil producing countries like Saudi Arabia. People used dollars rather than yen or pounds because it the US was the largest and a rather free and stable economy. That still mostly applies. The argument in the linked article: >Since the 1970s, global oil transactions have been priced and conducted almost exclusively in U.S. dollars. That arrangement has given America an unparalleled advantage, effectively creating an economic blackmail chip. I think is bunk. A country pricing in Euros would make no difference apart from traders needing to check the dollar euro rate.
- xquce 2mo ago
  Abit glib to call it hyped when the US has started multiple wars to protect the petrodollar. Trying to do business any other way puts targets on whole countries, much less the speaker and their family. Many attempts were made in the middle east and Africa to make that change, and those people and governments were wiped out. While the argument can be made for it's economic effect and power today vs 20 years ago, I don't think it was overhyped then.
  - tim333 2mo ago
    I'm a Brit and we've done business other ways for centuries without issues. At least not issues due to using pounds rather than dollars. Who got wiped out?

insane_dreamer 2mo ago

the only fiscal policy today's Trump-led GOP has is blatant "grab as much as you can" corruption nothing is being done in the national interest (not saying every GOP congressman is personally like this, but they're actively aiding and abetting)

fearmerchant 2mo ago

You can't get elected being the party that pulls away the punch bowl.