August 15, 2018: Paul Manafort's Sticky Fingers - and Trump's Huge Deficits

 

8/15/18: With the jury set to deliberate in the trial of Paul Manafort, the president is in a sour mood. 

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Paul never saw a dollar he wasn’t ready to steal.

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Manafort’s defense presented zero witnesses on his behalf, in large part because he’s a total fraud. 

In cross-examination his team did its best to make the case that Rick Gates, the prosecution’s star witness, was an even bigger fraud. In other words, the jury shouldn’t believe Gates. That position was undercut by a parade of witnesses, including Manafort’s tax preparers, accountants, and even his banker friends. All agreed that Paul never saw a dollar he wasn’t ready to steal and then park, tax free, in one of his 31 foreign bank accounts. 

If Manafort can get a hung jury (his only hope), the president is sure to insist that such an outcome proves the Mueller probe is a “witch hunt.”  The obvious flaw in that argument is this: Both Manafort and Gates worked on the Trump campaign. Both have been charged with serious crimes. Gates has admitted that they were in contact with at least one individual they knew to be a former Russian intelligence agent at the same time they were working to put Trump in the White House.

 

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THE CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE releases revised predictions for the remainder of this year and for the decade to come. The U.S. economy is expected to grow by a healthy 3.1 percent in 2018. Unfortunately, once the “sugar high” of the big GOP tax cuts begins to fade, the CBO predicts growth will slow to 2.4 percent in 2019 and then flatline during the decade to follow. 

As for the federal deficit, which Trump promised to erase in eight years if elected twice, it will only grow. The CBO predicts the following deficits (see page four of the linked report) for Fiscal Years: 

2018: $ 804 billion

2019:  $ 981billion

2020:  $1.008 trillion

2021:  $1.123 trillion

2022:  $1.276 trillion

2023:  $1.273 trillion

2024:  $1.244 trillion

2025:  $1.352 trillion

2026:  $1.320 trillion

2027:  $1.316 trillion

2028:  $1.526 trillion

 

Good luck young Americans! Trump and the Tea Party Republicans, who once swore they cared about deficits, are going to stick you with the tab.

Good luck, kid, you are going to get stuck with the bills.