The GOP’s Intermittent Deficit Hawks

Rich Lowry: “George W. Bush’s compassionate conservatism was an implicit rebuke of Newt Gingrich’s bomb-throwing majorities that tried to balance the budget at all costs. Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again populism was a rejection of Paul Ryan’s debt-obsessed majority that hoped to move the goal posts on entitlement reform.”

“The problem is that Ryan was right about the substance and Trump is right about the politics, and that dilemma is why the country’s debt-to-gross-domestic-product ratio is nearly 100% and is projected to keep climbing…”