Per this article in the Washington Post, the US will borrow almost $1 trillion this year, which is 84% increase over last year. The entire article is interesting, but I’ll focus here on the pieces that are relevant to the recent tax bill. As Trump and company promised, we are already seeing impacts to the economy.
I have 2 take aways from this news and the article: the obvious one, Trump has broken another promise and is raising the debt not lowering it, and secondarily, this seems to be positioning the economy for another downturn.
What say the Dope? Just another bump that can be reversed before too much damage is done, or is this the one that sends the economy screaming back down?
I honestly don’t think it will affect the economy at all unless the solution is to drastically cut gov’t spending. I’ve very curious to see how the conservatives spin this one. My guess is by blaming poor people.
Trump is an idiot who doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about or what he’s doing? That would be my assessment. He’s but his crank in a crack again (shocking, I know), because for months now he’s been saying that the stock market gains are all on him and his policies. The trouble with that is that when things go down, he is going to be hard pressed to backtrack. Though, with his base, he will probably figure out a way…
Well, the debt thing is definitely going to be a huge issue that will be with us for a long while. However, the US economy is actually not in bad shape, and the world economy, especially the EU and China seem to have bounced back and are doing well, so we probably aren’t looking at dooms day just yet. I expect we shall see some corrections to the stockmarket, but I doubt the economy is going to nose dive, even with the increased debt. Not yet anyway.
No argument from me on that but remember it is congress that sends a budget to the president. Sure the president can offer a budget to congress but they can ignore it if they want to and make their own.
And yet countless millions of people will say “I know, I have some problems with the Republican party, but I’m a fiscal conservative so I have to vote for them” and this always goes unchecked. No one ever challenges this premise. Somehow Republicans have grabbed the “fiscally responsible” mantra, and no one, not even their political opponents, will point out that it’s the opposite of the truth.
I have no idea why no one ever challenges this because it’s trivial to prove that Republicans are the fiscally irresponsible party.
Was it widely remarked at the time, that during the 2016 election, the interest rate on U.S. Treasury ten-year debt soared by 1.0% ? Much of that increase came in a single week — guess which week? Note that the key interest rate is even higher today than it was in the immediate aftermath of the November tragedy.
Trump is just the organ-grinder’s monkey. Even on The Apprentice he just fired whomever the producers told him to. His lies are coming from and being repeated by Ryan, Pence and other Koch stooges. You make a huge misrepresentation of the on-going tragedy when you overlook this, and just focus on nonsense from the mouth of the organ-grinder’s monkey.
Trump probably considers increased Fed debt as he considered the corporate debt of a property developer i.e. a means to increase leverage on his bankers.
What gets me is the amazing long-term persistence of this myth.
This summer will mark the 40th anniversary of California’s Proposition 13. The GOP’s been pushing tax cuts over fiscal responsibility ever since. Except when they want to use fiscal responsibility as a club to kill government programs popular with Democrats, of course.
Clinton balanced the budget four years in a row at the end of his Presidency. (Those are the only times since 1969 that the Federal budget was balanced, and even 1969 was a one-off. I’m not sure how far back you’d have to go to find a time when the budget was balanced in back-to-back years.)
Bush the Dumber immediately rammed a $1 trillion tax cut through Congress in 2001, and followed it up with a $350B tax cut in 2003. Neither of these was paid for in any meaningful way. (There were some cuts to programs during the Bush Administration as a fig leaf to pretend to be paying for the tax cuts. The cuts were big on the scale of the programs cut, but tiny relative to the tax cut.)
And of course George and Dick’s Excellent Iraq Adventure, with a tab running in the trillions, didn’t need to be paid for either.
Obama’s signature program, the ACA, was 100% paid for by a combination of tax increases, fees, and cuts to other programs.
Trump’s signature program to date, the $1.5 trillion tax cut? Not paid for in the least.
It isn’t clear to me that the estimates of the $1 trillion debt include the increase in defens spending, which may be close to $90 billion this year, or the forthcoming infrastructure proposal, which is probably another $20 billion or so (if it is acted on this year).
I didn’t understand this apparently obvious contradiction either, until some years ago a conservative friend of mine went a little further in explaining his thinking. He actually said it’s okay if Republicans increase the deficit because it will eventually get to the point where there’s some sort of national debt emergency that forces us to choose between default or keeping our entitlement programs. Naturally, we will have no choice but to eliminate entitlements. But we can’t eliminate the military, law enforcement, and other essential operations. So basically, Republicans will increase spending on shit they like, even if it means jacking up the deficit in the short term, because in the long game, they can use it to eliminate all social spending and balance the budget on their own terms.
And he thinks nothing of screwing over his creditors. I’m sure he thinks America can simply offer to pay back it’s debts with just 10 cents on the dollar. Trump: 'Fuck ‘em! What are they gonna do, declare war on our sacred military with the most beautiful bigly nuclear weapons?!?’