For 30 years, one of the dominating themes of the Republican Party has been an almost fetish-like aversion to taxes. The single individual responsible for this reckless, irresponsible meme has been trust-fund baby and otherwise useless tool Grover Norquist.
The overall purpose of Norquist's anti-tax movement has been to "starve the beast;" i.e., force a radical reduction in social spending that Republicans do not like by intentionally unbalancing the budget, and then pointing to social programs as the cause. This is because the GOP found out early on that broadcasting their intent to kill Social Security and Medicare almost invariably led to electoral disaster.
So, being dishonest scum like they are, the GOP decided to create a phony crisis and use it as an excuse to kill the programs they can't openly talk the American public out of.
It's a long game and it was always doomed to fail. Now, it is going to destroy the GOP utterly.
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