The Democratic chair of the Senate Budget Committee rebuked his Republican colleagues on Thursday for demanding action to reduce the U.S. debt after adding roughly $10 trillion to it with tax cuts for the rich and large corporations.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) was responding to a letter he received earlier this week from Republican members of the budget committee, who criticized the chair for dedicating “significant time and attention to climate issues” while purportedly neglecting “the impending budgetary and fiscal crisis facing our nation.”

In a written reply, Whitehouse noted that “if not for the Bush tax cuts, their extensions, and then the Trump tax cuts, the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio would be declining indefinitely.”

The Bush administration’s decision to launch the so-called “war on terror”—which received bipartisan support in Congress—also cost the U.S. upwards of $8 trillion, Brown […]