President Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress passing the omnibus appropriations bill shows that they have abandoned fiscal responsibility, Judd Gregg, a former governor and three-time senator from New Hampshire wrote in a column The Hill.
The $2 trillion that the omnibus bill will add to the national debt will keep growing "for as long as can be reasonably predicted," said Gregg, who served as chairman and ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, and as ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Foreign Operations subcommittee.
Trump and the Republican Congress are "running up the debt to pay for the baubles of today at the expense of our children's future."
While they call it "deal making," Gregg continued, "it should be called by its actual name: inexcusable, irresponsible liberal spending."
Interest on the debt will also rise to "$1 trillion a year or more," he said, and "interest costs are the most wasteful of the wasteful."
"Trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see" would not work, and "it is unsustainable, to put it kindly," he added.
If Republicans lose the majority in Congress in the 2018 midterm elections, the abandonment of fiscal discipline could be a key reason, Gregg said.
"There is no discernible difference on the issue of fiscal policy and discipline between President Trump and the Republican Congress on one side, and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and the left on the other," Gregg said, and Republicans are now catering to Trump and could face defeat in the 2018 midterms because of that.
"The Republican Congress now represents a party with very few significant defining principles other than the promotion of the president's impulses at that moment," he added.
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