August 14, 2019: Fiscal Pipe Dream: Conservatives Smoking Crack

 

8/14/19: R.I.P. Tea Party Republicans. Your orange hero has watched federal spending reach a record high, $3.7 trillion in Fiscal Year 2019, so far. 

 

Fiscal pipe dream: Conservatives smoking crack. 

As for the vaunted Trump Tax Cuts “paying for themselves,” that fiscal pipe dream turns out to have been conservatives smoking crack. The federal deficit for FY 2019 has already topped $867 billion. 

By the time FY 2019 ends on September 30, it is expected the federal deficit will reach $1,092,000,000,000. 

Or, as the writer Molly Jong-Fast put it: “Maybe electing the guy with all the bankruptcies and debt was a bad idea?”

 

As this graphic shows, deficits with Trump in charge are getting worse and surpass deficits under President Obama once the Great Recession had ended.

Trump's first two deficits are fatter than Obama's last two.

 

For comparison purposes, remember that the worst deficit ever was for FY 2009, at $1.4 billion, a deficit bequeathed to President Obama after George W. Bush crashed the economy in 2008. 

That deficit was nearly a trillion dollars higher than the deficit for FY 2008. The deficits for FY 2010 ($1.3 trillion), FY 2011 ($1.3 trillion) and FY 2012 ($1.1 trillion) caused apoplexy on the right. The blame for every dollar was laid at President Obama’s feet. The right did not want people to remember that the GOP had put two wars on the nation’s credit card. They hoped voters wouldn’t notice that the Bush Tax Cuts weren’t “paying for themselves,” either. New Medicare prescription drug coverage for older Americans, also added under Bush, meant fresh floods of red ink.

 

Slowly but surely, under Obama, and with the U.S. economy in rebound, deficits declined. Then Trump took charge – with both houses of Congress in GOP grip. Big tax cuts (especially for people like Trump)! Bigger military spending! On top of previous bigger military spending! 

The first deficit under his watch, FY 2018: $779 billion. Now, a second Trump budget baby waxes fat.

 

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IF YOU HAVEN’T NOTICED, when the stock market goes up, Donald Trump hogs every scrap of credit. 

When the stock market takes a dive, as it did today, falling 800 points, it is never his fault. Today he blamed Chairman Jerome Powell of the Federal Reserve Board for the big market drop. Powell, Trump said, was “clueless.” 

This is not the first time Trump decides someone he appointed is unfit for the job. It won’t be the last. 

By now, even the most obtuse fan of this president must realize that his or her hero believes anything that reflects badly on him has to be rigged.

 

He has called all of the following “rigged,” counting nothing more than citations found in his tweets: Voter focus groups, the Republican primary system, the Democratic primary system, the legal system that allowed Hillary “to get away with murder,” the whole “rigged system” in America, and the “rigged election” which would ensure Hillary won. Not only was the 2016 election rigged it was being “rigged by the media.” 

Trump has a paranoid view of the world. It shows. His approval polls, as early as January 2017, were “rigged,” the nation’s voting system is “rigged,” and millions of illegal voters showed up for Hillary at polls. 

Yet he won. 

Rigging is rampant. The F.B.I.’s interrogation of General Flynn, the investigation of Hillary’s emails and the “Russia investigation” were all rigged. We had “the rigged Russian Witch Hunt,” “the rigged Mueller Witch Hunt,” Google’s rigged search system for “Trump News,” and James Comey’s rigged testimony under oath before Congress. Of course, we also have, “THE RIGGED AND CORRUPT MEDIA…THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE,” the rigged “DEMOCRAT CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS…#RIGGED!” and the “Rigged & Fake News Media.”

 

If we throw in all the “hoaxes” that clog this poor man’s head, it’s a wonder he has any room left for thinking about all the women whose pussies he’d like to grab.