Please remember this about Donald Trump BEFORE he go his present job….
He LOVED DEBT!….
The guy was so bad at paying people back money that he had to go the Russians as a last resort lender….
Now he has you and me taxpayer money to spend?
BUT?
Lets NOT forget the REPUBLICANS saddling President Obama, the Democrat with-a spending limit called a sequester, eh?
And as soon as the Republicans had Congress and the Presidency what did they do?
Got rid of the spending limits….
Passed a YUGE budget increase….
Passed a YUGE Defense spending increase….
And just to make things even more screwed up?
They voted in a tax cut give way that cut billions of income from the federal government…
Real Geneses are these people, eh?
And Trump and Co.Campaigned on the idea that DEMOCRATS where going screw things up?????
President Trump has been demanding that his aides draft a plan to reduce the swelling budget deficit while simultaneously ruling out virtually all categories of possible deficit reduction and demanding new deficit-increasing measures of his own. The Washington Post has plenty of hilarious details from the administration’s internal fiscal deliberations, such as they are. Trump comes across as possessing every bit as much fiscal acumen as you would expect from a man who managed to bankrupt a casino, required hundreds of millions of dollars in secret cash infusions from his father to stay afloat, and can barely absorb written material of even the shortest length.
The Post’s account draws heavily from the perspective of Trump’s current and former advisers, who treat his buffoonery as the central cause of the administration’s fiscal straits. But the reality is that Trump is simply expressing a more ignorant version of standard-issue Republican budgeting.
The deficit is the gap between revenue and outlays, and Trump opposes any increase in revenue under any circumstances whatsoever. The story notes that Trump “has said no changes can be made to Medicare and Social Security,” and has boasted about his increase in spending on defense. Those categories, plus interest on the debt, account for 80 percent of federal spending, and the remaining 20 percent has been targeted by desperate budget-cutters for the better part of three decades. When you refuse to increase the revenue side of the equation (and, indeed, make it worse through tax-cutting), and rule out four-fifths of the spending side of the equation, you’ve ruled out any reduction to the deficit.
Trump’s advisers frame this as a story about Trump’s ignorance thwarting their efforts to impose sane and good Republican budget policy. Former National Economic Council director Gary Cohn is portrayed as telling his staff not to bother briefing Trump about the deficit because he doesn’t care. Current chief of staff John Kelly quizzes Trump about the salary of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the president guesses $5 million. (Actual answer: under $200,000.)
It is fair to say that no other Republican president would be quite this ignorant. But in other ways, Trump is indistinguishable from the policies any Republican advocates….
This story from today’s The Washington Post about President Trump’s complete lack of understanding about the federal budget is both fascinating and very scary.
It shows that, two years in to his presidency, Trump still doesn’t understand enough about the federal budget to make informed choices about what it will take to reduce the deficit as he said before the election he wants to do.
(For the record, what it will take to reduce the deficit is my first on the first day of the graduate course I teach at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy.)
It also demonstrates a complete failure by Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney and the rest of the Trump administration’s economic team. How is it possible that they have had so little influence with and impact on the president that, almost two years after he took the oath of office, he is so clueless?
But I have to wonder whether this thinking is based on the very false premise that Trump wants to propose real deficit reductions. He may instead be looking for gimmicks and a “drain-the-swamp”-like slogan that can be repeated at his rallies. This would allow him to look like he cares about the deficit without taking any of the political risks of proposing the things that would actually reduce it.
Remember, this is the same Trump who was very comfortable embracing dynamic scoring to justify his big tax cut when mainstream fiscal policy and tax experts were adamant that it would spike the deficit (which it has).
This is also the Trump that had no problem sending others in his administration and his House Freedom Caucus allies to try to destroy the Congressional Budget Office when he thought CBO’s analyses would hurt what he wanted to do on health care and taxes….
image….washingtonmonthly