Conservatives are prisoners of own tax cuts

Aside from hype artists and White House spokespeople, it’s hard to find true enthusiasm for the sweeping new policy law, even among Republicans who voted for its passage.

- Ross Douthat

But because almost all Republicans did vote for it, the strongest remaining critiques are coming from the centre and the left, with a special focus on the legislation’s cuts to Medicaid.

Given President Donald Trump's promises to protect that programme and the importance of Medicaid for many voters in his coalition, that’s the place of greatest political vulnerability and the likeliest source of short-term blowback.

But to highlight the law’s failure to address some of America’s most important problems, I want to imagine a different set of critiques, more associated with forms of conservatism than with liberalism or the left.

First (in the voice of a defence hawk), the law doesn’t do nearly enough for defence. The United States is facing the most difficult geopolitical environment since the end of the Cold War, with multiple hot zones where our weaponry is needed and the threat of a rival superpower girding for potential war. Yet our defence budget is puttering along somewhere between 3% and 4% of gross domestic product, well below what we spent in the Reagan era and the war on terrorism years, let alone the early Cold War.

The new law does increase military spending, but as a onetime boost, not a sustained strategic commitment. That's an insufficient response to our challenges in the Middle East, Ukraine and Asia, and a larger failure of vision in a multipolar age.