The Problem with orthodox Democrats:
https://prospect.org/article/republican ... ont-matter
Republicans Proved Deficits Don’t Matter
David Dayen
July 24, 2019
[. . .]
Of course, GOP officials are all too happy to performatively restrict spending on the very poor—applying work requirements to Medicaid, for example, or limiting states from maximizing access to food stamps. But these should rightly be seen as social and not fiscal policies, meant to reverse allegedly unfair handouts to people who don’t vote for them. The spending itself is a means to an end, and the aggregate level rises and falls depending on which party might benefit in elections.
Democrats should not be expected to play a similar game of demanding austerity depending on the White House’s occupant. Unlike Republicans they wouldn’t harm the economy for political gain. No, they do something far worse: Acting as responsible stewards, they seek to handcuff themselves in office by forwarding deficit reduction packages, sabotaging their own economies in the process. Both the Clinton and Obama administrations paid close attention to deficits, egged on by Republican legislatures but to some degree in on the game themselves.
[. . .]
What McConnell does engage in, like his Republican colleagues, is runaway spending as long as a Republican is president. The hypocrisy of the cries of deficit hysteria from the GOP under Obama is certainly galling. But we should heed the lessons available here. Fiscal policy works. The warnings against it have yet to come true. Democrats should not apply brakes to themselves on spending if they get the chance. And if Republicans try the same special pleading for austerity under the next Democratic president, well, that’s what nuking the filibuster is for.
"No politician ever lost office for spending more money.” — Mitch McConnell