Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen joined MSNBC Live host Ali Velshi on Monday to talk about President Trump's proposed budget, but instead of interviewing Van Hollen, Velshi decided to turn the segment into a Democratic messaging meeting.
Velshi, who supports the Bernie Sanders multi-trillion dollar healthcare plan, began by telling Sen. Van Hollen that Republican policies are worse for the debt and the annual deficit than Democratic ones, due to "wars and tax cuts."
ALI VELSHI: But this is by design, Senator. I think we probably have to remind people about this. Some of the biggest increases to the deficits and ultimately the debt over the past 20, 25 years have been wars and tax cuts. And then everybody who hasn't talked about deficits for the longest time gets very, very excited about deficits saying we have to control these and only way is cutting social spending.
Van Hollen gave this a thumbs-up: "Well, that's exactly right, Ali."
As a journalist who cares so deeply about facts, Velshi should know that entitlement programs make up roughly 60 percent of the federal budget, a percentage surely to raise if he gets his way on Berniecare.
However, since facts didn't matter for this segment, Van Hollen proceeded to say Democrats are much more fiscally responsible and had more of a "pay as you go" approach. Forget those trillion-dollar deficits under Barack Obama!
CHRIS VON HOLLEN: I remember for years, I was the senior Democrat on the House Budget Committee, and Paul Ryan and the House Republicans used to lecture us and the country about the need for more fiscal responsibility. If you look over a record of time, Democrats have been much more fiscally responsible than Republicans because we don't provide these huge tax breaks for very wealthy people. We had more of a pay as you go approach. And if you look at this Trump budget, it just bursts the seams on the debt and deficit. I mean any pretense that Republicans had for caring about deficits is thrown out the window and that's even with magical assumptions about economic growth which are hallucinationary in this budget the president has proposed.
It would be nice if Republicans would do more to address the debt and deficit, but only one side is proposing tens of trillions of dollars in new spending. To believe that the answer is tax increases, is in Van Hollen's word, "hallucinationary."
