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Sen. Bob Corker says voting for GOP tax cuts 'could well be one of the worst votes I’ve made'

Hunter
Daily Kos Staff
Wednesday April 11, 2018 · 12:42 PM CDT

Watching retiring Republican politicians as they tentatively dip their toes into a puddle of Actual Reality after spending their careers vowing that the pipes were holding up just fine, thank you very much, can be an interesting sight.
Here is retiring Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, who, he would have us believe, has only just now discovered that the Republican tax law he and his fellow senators just passed will balloon the deficit by a staggering $1.9 trillion dollars, according to CBO estimates.
http://thehill.com/policy/finance/382663-corker-tax-cuts-could-be-one-of-worst-votes-ive-made

Retiring Tennessee Senator Bob Corker (R) said that his vote on the GOP tax law could be one of the worst of his career if estimates that it will add $1.9 trillion to deficits over a decade prove correct.

“If it ends up costing what has been laid out here, it could well be one of the worst votes I’ve made,” he said at a Senate Budget Committee hearing on the Congressional Budget Office estimate that produced the figure.

But Corker had a pretty good idea the bill would be a budget-buster from the outset;
that's the precise reason he withheld his support, up until the very moment when he courageously caved and voted for it anyway. He knew it. The whole party knew it. This is not the heady days of Reaganomics. We now have decades of data showing, conclusively, that tax cuts for the wealthy do little for the economy and balloon the deficit every time they are tried. Nobody was credibly expecting anything different this time around, and the party barely pretended to care.

Nonetheless, Corker quickly followed up his admission with the "hope" that perhaps the CBO was not sufficiently taking into account the promised rainbows and ponies.

“I hope that is not the case, I hope there’s other data to assist, whether it’s jobs or growth or whatever,” Corker added.

It is exceedingly unlikely that the Congressional Budget Office overlooked $1.9 trillion dollars of "whatever."

“None of us have covered ourselves in glory. This Congress and this administration likely will go down as one of the most fiscally irresponsible administrations and congresses that we’ve had,” Corker said.

Well there you go, sport. You've found the door handle at least, and just in time to bolt through before a new generation of lawmakers has to grapple with what you and your colleagues have done to the place. What courage, and so forth.

http://thehill.com/policy/finance/382663-corker-tax-cuts-could-be-one-of-worst-votes-ive-made