How Republicans learnt to love bigger government

The era of “the era of big government is over” may itself now be over. Realignment in American politics has already transformed debates over free trade and free markets, labour unions and family policy, but its impact on fiscal matters is only beginning to emerge.

Many of the professional-class Republicans who identify as “socially liberal, but fiscally conservative” have decamped for the Democratic party. Meanwhile, a racially diverse set of traditionally Democrat working-class voters, who often have more positive views of the government and have benefited from its programmes, now side with the GOP. The budget cutting championed by former Speaker of the House of Representatives Paul Ryan no longer has an obvious constituency.

That’s no great loss. When Ryan retired at the start of 2019, after two years of unified Republican control of Congress and the White House, at the peak of the longest economic expansion on record, he left behind a deficit for the fiscal year in progress that would approach $1tn.

But as in many areas where decades-long conservative orthodoxy has finally crumbled, the question of what comes next remains an open one. Some conservative leaders have now adopted the position that Medicare and social security must not be cut at all.