As the Republican Party looks to pass a major tax reform bill, conservatives are divided over the need to lower the national debt, or if all focus should be on tax cuts, Politico reports.
"I'm now nervous about where this goes. I hope that in the end if it's a big deficit creator, then our caucus will not support it," Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., said in a recent interview.
"Our [Office of Management and Budget] guy, I say this with humor, what happened to him?" he said of White House budget chief Mick Mulvaney. "Do you understand what I'm saying? He used to be the fiscal hawk."
Despite his strong focus on the deficit before leaving the House to join President Donald Trump's administration, Mulvaney has more recently claimed that although tax cuts would increase the deficit, the positive effects would boost an economy enough to cover the costs.
"Macroeconomic changes will always lead to change in the larger economy, okay?" Mulvaney said in an interview last week. "You raise a tax, it has impact. You lower tax, it has impact. It just does."
He added that Corker is "ignoring reality."
Mulvaney isn't the only deficit hawk to support tax cuts. House Budget Committee member Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., used the same defense as the White House budget chief in his remarks to Politico.
"In order to make good on our campaign tax promise, there probably are going to be some sacrifices made from an ideological perspective," he said.
"I believe that the biggest remedy for our fiscal situation is growth in the economy," Womack added. "I am not averse to some deficit spending in order to create long-term sustained growth."
Some, like Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., and Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., think Corker will come around to their way of thinking.
"I believe Corker is going to get to the place where I am: If you do the models and look at this right, it pays for itself," Perdue said.
"I think Sen. Corker will do great in the private sector as he learns a little bit more about economics," Perry added.
Corker actually did do well in the private sector, having gained substantial wealth as a real estate developer prior to his career in politics.
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