Republican Scam

With the House of Representatives now run by the Democrats, Thom Hartmann expects Republican pundits to revive the "Two Santa Clauses" strategy developed by Jude Wanniski over 40 years ago.

At its core, the strategy is simple and elegant: When Republicans are in power, run up as much debt as possible, mostly by borrowing and giving that cash to the Republican donor class through tax cuts and corporate subsidies; when Democrats have political power, Republicans suddenly become hysterical about the debt and demand that Democrats keep taxes low while cutting social spending.

And it's been a winning strategy to combat the Democratic governmental "Santa" that started with programs created during the Great Depression.

The Republicans got what they wanted from Wanniski’s work. They held power for nearly 40 years, skimmed trillions of dollars out of the economy, gutted organized labor, and packed the Supreme Court and the entire federal court system.

Best of all, though, for the Two Santa Claus GOP, the years since 1981 have left such a massive national debt that some misguided "conservative" Democrats will again be clamoring to shoot Santa with cuts to education, infrastructure, health care, and other social programs.

The Two Santa Claus theory isn’t dead, and starting any day now we’ll see the Republicans crank up their debt hysteria. It’s as predictable as the seasons.

Update (January 4):  Matthew Yglesias explains how very high marginal tax rates are good economics.

[F]or the very rich, the subjective value of an extra dollar is essentially $0. In other words, while a poor person’s life may get a lot better if he gets a little bit of extra money, someone like Mark Zuckerberg isn’t going to care at all.