THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

And this time, thanks to their massive tax giveaway for the wealthy and corporation, you won't have any help pay ing for the massive debts the GOP plans to run up.

By 2022, the U.S. government is projected to spend almost as much money on interest payments for its massive debt as it will on the Pentagon, more than $600 billion every year.

The spiraling expense underscores a frightening reality in Washington: President Trump and Congress have not only massively expanded the U.S. government’s debt, they have broken free of multiple guardrails intended to keep budgets balanced, freeing future lawmakers to further expand the yawning gap between what the government takes in and what it spends.

The latest increase has come at a time when Republicans control the White House and Congress, cementing a GOP indifference to balancing the budget despite making deficit reduction their rhetorical North Star during the Obama administration.

“There’s no serious effort on either the Republican or Democratic side to address it, and the president’s not for it,” Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said. “So if the president’s not for it, it’s not going to happen.”

Now, this borrowing binge appears impossible to reverse, despite a growing global prosperity that has prompted leaders of other major economies to shrink deficits that expanded during the recession a decade ago. Global finance ministers are scheduled to meet this week in Washington, and some visiting officials are expected to try to isolate the United States’ debt-binge approach as a dangerous outlier.

In February, Congress passed a $1.3 trillion spending bill that shredded caps erected in 2010. It also waived the debt limit for the 15th time in the past 10 years.

In December, Republicans overrode unanimous Democratic opposition to pass a tax cut projected to add more than $1 trillion in deficit spending, as the GOP used a shell budget resolution and waived the federal law meant to prevent cuts like this from ever taking place.

During the debate, they torpedoed a provision that would have triggered an automatic tax increase if rosy economic growth projections did not materialize.

The author of that failed provision, Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), has grasped for any way to limit the tax law’s impact on the debt. Even when his idea was rejected, he voted for the tax law anyway.

Four months later, eyeing his retirement at the end of this year, Corker signaled he might have made a mistake. He said a complete antipathy has taken hold of Washington, particularly when it comes to changing costly programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

How nice or Corker to now think he may have made a mistake. The simple fact of the matter is the Republican Party tax policy greatly unbalaces the equation. They have reduced the government's income at the same time they are going on a huge spending spree. But one important point to remember, the reductions were for the ones capable of doing the heavy lifting and us little folk now have to shoulder the burden of tax free Billionaires and Corporations.