Just how dumb are you?

First things first: It’s not me asking the question— it’s Mitch McConnell, John Hoeven, Kevin Cramer and all the Republicans in Congress. They want to know if you’re dumb enough, or gullible enough, or distracted enough to forget that, after Trump’s election, they gleefully passed a $2 trillion tax cut. (Where’s that $2 trillion going? Mostly to large corporations and multimillionaires.) Oh wait— they also want you to forget all that gibberish they told you, back when they were about to pass the tax cut, about how it was going to pay for itself and then some. Maybe you even believed it?

Well, guess what: Not only is that tax cut not paying for itself - it’s added $779 billion to our national deficit - a 17 percent increase over the previous year. Considering that our economy has actually been performing well since the first year of President Obama’s first term, that’s very unusual— almost unheard of, actually. 

Remember all those stern-faced lectures from Republicans about “fiscal responsibility”? The finger-wagging talks about how such deficits “are bankrupting our grandchildren”? The political ads and speeches where a Republican Congressman vows to rip up any bill that adds one single penny to the deficit? Where were those lectures, those talks, those speeches when the Republican Congress decided to leverage our country into debt to line the pockets of the 1 percent?

Never mind that, they’re saying now. Suddenly, the Senate’s Republican Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, is stepping in front of cameras and talking about how he finds this massive deficit “very disturbing” and “disappointing” before going on to note “but it’s not a Republican problem.”

Oh no? Every single Republican Senator (except for John McCain, who was battling brain cancer) voted for the massive tax cuts for the wealthy. That includes John Hoeven. Every single Democratic Senator—including Heidi Heitkamp—voted against the bill.

Everything’s going fine, of course, as McConnell went on to say. There’s a simple solution to the whole fiscal mess— one that Republicans have been trying to foist on the American people for years. It’s easy: Just make massive cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Though, for some reason, they don’t like to call these programs by their names when they’re proposing radical cuts in their funding and support. They know that’s bound to scare people. Instead, they call them “entitlements.” The implication is this: We common citizens somehow think we’re just “entitled” to the free money and benefits we’ve been collecting from these programs, but we might have to get used to doing without them— you know, in the name of fiscal responsibility.

Here’s the thing, though, about these kinds of “entitlements.” They’re called that because we’re actually entitled to them. Why? Because we’ve been paying into them, most of us for our entire adult lives.

In the past, Republicans have just refused to talk about such cuts— particularly before elections. When they have spoken about them, politicians have usually just lied through their teeth: Why no, heaven forfend! Nobody’s going to cut your dear Social Security— we just have to take a long, hard look at what’s working and what’s not. That’s what they’ll tell you before the election. Then, after the election, they’ll claim some sort of national mandate— I mean, you voted for them, after all— and say that they’re simply executing the will of the voters when they pillage your “entitlements” to pay down the debt they accrued by passing massive tax cuts for corporations and the 1 percent. Heck, they might not even pay it down— if they can strip enough cash out of Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid, maybe they could even pass another tax-cut bill— this one for the richest 2 percent.

What does all this have to do with North Dakota? Well, everything— unless you’re planning on living forever, or are part of the 1 percent (or, perhaps, the 2 percent). Because you’ve got a big decision to make in a couple of weeks. Heidi Heitkamp’s already on the record— against the tax cut bill; against stripping you of your rightful entitlements; against Trump’s trade war, which is already proving disastrous to the state’s economy and will continue to put scores of farmers out of business. Kevin Cramer’s not really answering questions on this— or when he is, he’s playing his own would-be constituents for fools.

Let’s remember - if for no other reason than that he doesn’t want you to - that Cramer boasted that he’d vote with Trump 100 percent of the time. Heitkamp seems to think she works for someone else: Her constituents.

Corey Seymour is a proud NRHS graduate who went on to study political science, economics and literature at UND and Georgetown University. A former writer and editor on the National Affairs Desk at “Rolling Stone” and at many other magazines, he now works as a senior editor at “Vogue” in New York. Write him at [email protected]