Earlier this week, the Congressional Budget Office announced that the federal deficit for this past fiscal year was $984 billion, the highest that it’s been in seven years.
In years past, that announcement would have been met with outrage by Republicans — and even some Democrats. We are mortgaging our children’s future! We are on an unsustainable path! We need to start tightening our belts!
Today? Barely a peep.
That change is indicative of how radically President Donald Trump has reshaped the Republican Party in his own image since he seized it in a hostile takeover in 2016. Trump has never evinced any real interest in shrinking the deficit — and the underlying national debt it feeds — beyond some platitudes offered to fiscal conservatives during the campaign.