Death of the debt hawks

Will the GOP ever care about the debt again?

The 2012 Republican National Convention.
(Image credit: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

For years, Republicans have warned that America faces an existential threat: the ever-rising national debt, which now sits well north of $20.6 trillion. That's more than $63,000 for every single American citizen. Throughout the Obama presidency, GOPers warned that big fiscal deficits were leading the U.S. toward economic crisis. The 2012 Republican National Convention even featured two huge digital debt clocks in the arena.

But the Trumpublicans have pulled the plug on their national debt clock. It's just not their thing anymore. Just a month or so after signing a red-ink-bleeding tax cut, President Trump had nothing to say about the debt during his State of the Union address Tuesday, or about reforming the Medicare and Social Security entitlements, key drivers of past and future debt and deficits. House Speaker Paul Ryan, rumored to be retiring after the midterm elections, may be the only major Republican who thinks entitlement reform should again be at the heart of the GOP agenda.

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James Pethokoukis

James Pethokoukis is the DeWitt Wallace Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute where he runs the AEIdeas blog. He has also written for The New York Times, National Review, Commentary, The Weekly Standard, and other places.