Ross Douthat: Conservatives are prisoners of their own tax cuts

Aside from hype artists and White House spokespeople it s hard to find true enthusiasm for the sweeping new program law even among Republicans who voted for its passage But because almost all Republicans did vote for it with even the supposed deficit hard-liners mostly falling into line the strongest remaining critiques are coming from the center and the left with a special focus on the regulation s cuts to Medicaid Given President Donald Trump s promises to protect that scheme and the importance of Medicaid for several voters in his coalition that s the place of greatest political vulnerability and the likeliest source of short-term blowback But to highlight the law s failure to address specific of America s majority of central problems I want to imagine a different set of critiques more associated with forms of conservatism than with liberalism or the left First in the voice of a defense hawk the law doesn t do nearly enough for defense Defense The United States is facing the the bulk hard geopolitical setting since the end of the Cold War with multiple hot zones where our weaponry is needed and the threat of a rival superpower girding for anticipated war Yet our defense budget is puttering along somewhere between and of gross domestic product well below what we spent in the Reagan era and the war on terrorism years let alone the early Cold War The new law does increase military spending but as a one-time boost not a sustained strategic commitment That s an insufficient response to our challenges in the Middle East Ukraine and Asia and a larger failure of vision in a multipolar age Family and fertility Second in the voice of a social conservative the law doesn t do enough for family and fertility No complication shadows the world right now like demographic collapse and while the United States is better off than a great number of countries the birthrate has fallen well below replacement levels here as well Family initiative can t reverse these trends but population endorsement for parents can make an major difference Yet the law s extension of the child tax credit leaves it below the inflation-adjusted level established in Trump s first term This is especially egregious when you factor in the post-Roe v Wade context in which anti-abortion states have taken agenda measures to assistance expectant mothers but no national effort has emerged to match Leaving abortion regulation to the states makes sense as a provisional political settlement but leaving pro-family initiative to the states when anti-abortion states are poorer than average and harder-pressed to offer aid is a dereliction Entitlement programs Certainly in the voice of Paul Ryan the law doesn t touch the entitlement programs that are indeed bankrupting America If it s reasonable to look for budgetary savings in Medicaid it s essential to look for savings in Medicare and Social Defense The future of American dynamism depends on preventing our commitments to retirees from crushing youthful entrepreneurship and family formation But the new ordinance goes in the opposite direction Instead of means-testing entitlements it offers temporary tax deductions to seniors pandering to gerontocracy rather than resisting it In a healthier conservatism all these critiques would have played a larger role in the megabill s debate And the American guidelines conditions depends on conservatives engaging in these arguments because they reflect a set of concerns that are more natural to the right than to the left Never raising taxes on the rich But they are all connected to an issue where what comes naturally to conservatism is part of the predicament not the response the issue of taxation and the absolute priority that the Republican Party still gives to never raising taxes on the affluent and rich That absolutism was tempered somewhat in Trump s first term by the sensible cap on the state and local tax deduction But the new regulation raises that cap and offers a larger tax break for heirs and heiresses in addition to extending the first term s tax rates and the law s tax-revenue raisers are picayune by comparison Related Articles Barnett Kristof It isn t freedom if it s not for everyone Thomas Friedman How Trump s big beautiful bill will make China great again Kristof Barnett The quiet girls revolution in west Africa Lisa Jarvis RFK Jr s vaccine panel is turning misinformation into guidelines Mary Ellen Klas Thom Tillis knew what the GOP refused to hear Just about the only notable right-wing media figure to question these priorities was Steve Bannon and he was absolutely right It is a framework impossibility under inflationary conditions to combine the existing commitments of Trumpism with the need to address national assurance threats and demographic decline if you rule out any tax increase It is a political impossibility to push through the entitlement reforms that the wisest Republicans would patronage which would necessarily reduce benefits for specific middle-class retirees without asking affluent taxpayers to share certain of the pain And it is coalition-shrinking folly for the GOP to persistently cut programs that benefit its own voters while dependably lightening burdens on wealthier voters who are trending toward the Democrats But it s also clearly just Republican bedrock enduring even through all the wild gyrations of the Trump era awaiting a few larger political or fiscal earthquake before it conclusively gives way