Romney Trashes GOP Colleagues For Blatant Financial Hypocrisy

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With debate over the new, bigger COVID-19 relief package still ramping up between senators and representatives, Democrats are prepared to pass it using budget resolution, the same process Donald Trump and the GOP used to pass a massive tax cut bill that benefitted billionaires more than anyone else. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) is the only member of the GOP to recognize the hypocrisy in complaining about Democrats doing so.

The tax cut bill, the one that Trump bragged made his wealthy friends and donors “very rich,” added around two trillion dollars to the national debt, and relief for struggling Americans during the pandemic will cost about the same. Since Republicans celebrated Trump’s tax bill, their complaints about COVID relief ring false and partisan at a time when partisanship is more harmful than ever.

On the Utah Politics podcast, Romney said:

‘When we had a Republican president and House and Senate, we kept on spending massively and adding almost a trillion dollars a year to the national debt. Now we say this is outrageous adding so much to the debt? They say we did the same thing when we were in charge. It does show that you have to be consistent in your arguments.’

Although Biden has said that he wants to make bipartisanship his goal, he does not seem prepared to make any cuts to his relief package, and his press secretary has often said that the issues it addresses are GOP concerns, as well, including a downturn in the economy, threatening homelessness numbers skyrocketing, and the rapid closing of small businesses across the country.

‘Democrats in the House and Senate are signaling they’re prepared to use budget reconciliation to bypass a likely Republican filibuster in the Senate, meaning they would only need 50 votes instead of 60 to win approval. That’s the same process Republicans used to pass the Trump tax cuts in 2017.’

For the four years of Trump’s presidency, Republicans were more than willing to go along with his policy proposals, no matter the cost. Now, the help is badly needed among the poor and lower middle class, and ignoring them is a bad look for the GOP. Romney pointed out the unprecedented four years of Trump and said that the GOP had opened themselves up to allow Democrats to do the same that the GOP did in those four years.

‘There’s no question that if you begin doing things which break precedent or break tradition, the other side is going to do that when they’re in charge. When we’ve put a tax program on that basis that did not require any Democrat votes through reconciliation, we have a difficult time explaining why we’re not happy with what they would be doing at this stage.’