February 14, 2020: Team Trump Promises Budget Will Balance in 2036

 

2/14/20: Happy Valentine’s Day, America. I think we can all agree, General John Kelly is not getting a card from the president today.

 

Speaking of “love,” remember the good old days when Republicans loved balancing the budget?

 

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“When you’re in a hole, you stop digging. When you’re broke, you stop spending.” 

Senator Mike Enzi

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If you’ve been hiding out in your basement to avoid contracting the coronavirus, you may have missed the rollout of the Trump budget for Fiscal Year 2021. If you did, it’s looking like another year marked by a river of red ink. The federal government is expected to spend $4.8 trillion. And that’s assuming a number of cuts, which Congress is unlikely to approve. The Department of Education, for example, would face a cut of 8%. Popular student loan forgiveness programs would be curtailed, even though 80% of Americans favor making it easier for students to pay what they owe. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting would see funding cut to zero. Other reductions: Housing and Urban Development, 15%; and the Interior Department, 13%. 

Bad news for national parks, in other words. 

But, hey, the budget is going to balance…in 2036.

 

The White House insists it can trim deficit spending by $4.4 trillion over a decade if all the cuts it wants are agreed to in Congress. And by 2036, when President Trump will be in his sixth term as President of Trumpistan, the budget will finally balance. Meanwhile, there will be $2 billion for the border wall and E.P.A. will get a 26% cut in FY 2021. Bad news for the environment. 

Revenue is expected to total $3.6 trillion. Expenditures will include $479 billion to pay the interest on the debt, with that cost expected to double in years ahead. It won’t be long until interest costs more than defense. Social Security is projected to be the biggest driver of debt, costing a trillion dollars in FY 2021. Medicare will require $679 billion, Medicaid $418 billion. And the deficits could be worse. The Trump administration is projecting annual GDP growth of almost 3%. 

Growth in the last three years: 2.2% in 2017, 2.9% in 2018 (partly fueled by massive tax cuts), and 2.3% in 2019.

 

Senate Budget Chairman Mike Enzi said that he would not be bothering to hold a hearing on Trump’s $4.8 trillion budget, telling reporters it would only turn into a “diatribe against the president.” 

It’s fun to go back and see what people like Sen. Enzi used to say when Obama was in charge and – remember – trying to dig us out of the deepest economic downturn since the Great Crash of 1929. 

In February 2012, the senator had not the slightest doubt about what Mr. Obama needed to do: 

Despite his promises of fiscal discipline and cutting the deficit in half by the end of his first term, President Obama today presented the American people with another budget that spends too much, borrows too much and taxes too much. Four years of trillion dollar deficits is not just poor policy, it’s a failure of leadership that ignores our debt crisis and punts the tough decisions [emphasis added] until after the next election.

No amount of blaming or budget gimmickry can hide the fact that this budget and the President’s past budgets have grown the deficit and put our economy on ever more shaky ground….When you’re in a hole, you stop digging. When you’re broke, you stop spending.

 

Mr. Obama, with Republican help, did shrink the deficits in his second term. The red ink for Fiscal Years 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016, was, in order: $679 billion, $485 billion, $438 billion, and $585 billion. 

FY 2017 saw a deficit of $665 billion, most of that cooked into the books before Trump took over. 

Then the deficit fell in FY 2018, under Trump’s guiding orange hand to $779 billion. Wait. 

It went up??? 

Then it fell “again” in FY 2019 to $1.092 trillion. 

It is expected to “fall” even farther to only $1.101 trillion by the end of FY 2020. 

And now… more “fiscal conservatism” ahead for FY 2021.

Sen. Enzi tries to add up the numbers and make the deficit less terrible.

 

In other news, the president decides to heed AG Barr’s plea not to tweet about Department of Justice cases – until he gets up Friday morning. At 8:33 a.m., in his first tweet of the day, he taps out a quote from Bill Barr: “‘The President has never asked me to do anything in a criminal case.’” 

Then he decides to add, “This doesn’t mean that I do not have, as President, the legal right to do so, I do, but I have so far chosen not to!” 

Great! So far, Trump hasn’t trampled all over the rule of law. But he has “the legal right to do so,” whenever he wants.

 

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IN CHINA, the government takes care of the “Enemies of the People” in a way Trump only dreams he could. Two video bloggers, who were posting stories about the spread of the coronavirus, disappear. 

Let’s not forget. 

Trump really likes Xi Jinping. China arrested more journalists last year than any other country on earth. 

If you are a Trump fan, and you are so clueless as not to realize why any assault on the free press, by any leader, in any county, now, or in the future, as in the past, is a dire threat to freedom – not only for those of us who don’t like Trump – but those of you who do – then you need to have your MAGA hat slapped (figuratively, only) off your empty head.