The age of big-spending Republicans is here

There was a time when a Republican Congress would at least perform fiscal discipline, even if it didn't deliver it. Now nobody's bothering with the performance. Deficits climb under Democrats, deficits climb under Republicans, and the debate has quietly shifted from "how do we shrink this" to "whose spending counts as the good kind."

That's the real story here, not partisan finger-pointing. Both parties found their own reasons to stop caring about the number. Democrats never pretended otherwise. But Republicans used to run on Ross Perot charts and balanced-budget amendments, and now the party that once made Paul Ryan its budget guru is defending tax cuts, defense spending, and entitlement carve-outs with the same fluency Democrats use to defend a jobs program. Nobody in either party wants to be the one who says no to their own coalition.

We're not naive about why. Voters say they want lower deficits right up until the specific line item is something they like. Farmers want their subsidies, seniors want their benefits, hawks want their carriers, and everybody wants their tax bracket left alone. Politicians read that room accurately. The incentives all point toward spending, and spending has no natural constituency for restraint except people who lose elections talking about it.

Still, somebody has to say the obvious part out loud. A country that borrows through good times and bad, under every administration, regardless of who's in charge, is not managing its finances. It's postponing a reckoning and hoping it lands on someone else's watch. Calling that "big-spending Republicans" instead of "big-spending Washington" is almost too generous, because at least it names who's supposed to know better.