March 17, 2020: Trump Administration Gives Us Massive Deficits

 

3/17/20: There’s not much left to close. That means the news today is brief. We started Monday with 3,774 known coronavirus cases in the U.S. to report. As of this morning, Johns Hopkins reported 4,661. 

That number rose to 5,702 when I checked at 2:26 p.m. and will continue to rise for the foreseeable future. New York State, alone, reports more than 1,300 confirmed cases. 

Schools in 38 states are closed. Individual districts in the other twelve states have turned out the lights until further notice. According to Education Week, more than 74,000 of the nation’s 98,000 schools are shut. 

 

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Already swimming in red ink. 

LAWMAKERS AND THE PRESIDENT remain divided over what should be done to help the economy avoid plunging into recession. One idea being floated to stave off a meltdown is to give every adult $1,000 to spend. If we estimate that there are 270 million Americans, age 18 and up, the cost would be $270 billion. 

The problem, of course, is that Trump and his band of fiscal fools have already ballooned the federal deficit since taking charge – and future deficits are projected to remain high through at least 2030. 

And that’s assuming GDP growth of three percent or more per year. 

That level has not been achieved in three years under Trump. Now we’re certain to miss that mark again in 2020, by a wide margin. We know that in the first five months of Fiscal Year 2020, even before the crisis hit, the federal deficit had increased by 14.8 percent, rising from $544.2 billion in FY 2019 to $624.5 billion.

 

Now our leaders are faced with trying to goose spending to avoid falling into an even deeper recession and we’re already swimming in red ink. 

Deficits under Trump have already doubled: 

FY 2016: $587 billion (last year under President Obama). 

FY 2017: $666 billion (much of this deficit was cooked into the books before Trump took charge). 

FY 2018: $779 billion.

FY 2019: $984 billion.

FY 2020: $1 trillion, estimated (and this was before the COVID-19 outbreak).

FY 2021: $1.1 trillion, estimated.

 

By comparison, we have the “pie in the sky” thinking of the first budget submitted by the Trump administration. The federal deficit was predicted to fall by 2021 to only $456 billion. Current projections from the Congressional Budgeting Office project deficits averaging $1.3 trillion annually, until 2030.

May 13, 2020: Federal Deficit Hits New Record - Trump Keeping Legal Industry at Full Employ

 

5/13/20: With the coronavirus sweeping the country, even the federal government finds itself in a world of hurt. The budget deficit in April, alone, reached $737.9 billion. That was higher than any annual deficit under President Obama during his second term. The deficit for FY 2021, which began in October, has now reached $1.48 trillion. That’s already a record for any Fiscal Year, and we’re only seven months along.

 

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The federal deficit in April was $737.9 billion.

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Still: There’s one bright spot! The Trump administration continues to keep the legal profession operating at full throttle. Currently, the president’s minions are appealing a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for Washington D.C. to the U.S. Supreme Court. The lower court has ruled that secret grand jury testimony used in the Mueller investigation should be turned over to Congress. In a 2-to-1 decision, the lower court ruled that grand jury records are court records, not Justice Department records. That means Attorney General Bill Barr can’t just plant his fanny on the documents and refuse to move, passing copious amounts of gas any time a reporter gets close. 

According to the Washington Post, the same kind of records “have historically been released to Congress in the course of impeachment investigations involving three federal judges and two presidents.” We should also note that there was at least some belief, back before the coronavirus killed the whole country, that Donald Trump Jr. might have plead the Fifth before the grand jury. 

That would be fun to find out.

 

In two other cases, also on the Supreme Court docket, Trump is fighting to keep his tax returns hidden. Having heard initial arguments in both cases, and listened as the jurists asked questions (all done via video conference), court watchers say they think the president may lose at least one critical case. 

Let’s hope he goes 0 for 3.

February 17, 2021: Donald Trump Balloons the Deficit, of Course

 

2/17/21: One of the great failures of Donald J. Trump relates to his incompetence in handling the growing federal debt. 

Last week, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the deficit for Fiscal Year 2021 would hit $2.3 trillion, without additional stimulus spending. 

So, we’re going to give the Trumpster a break. Normally, on this blog, we would put all of FY 2021 on his tab since most policies are already set when a new president comes into office. 

So, for example, we counted all deficit spending in FY 2017 to President Obama’s “account.”

 

That means we can now total up Trump’s deficits, and we won’t count any new spending that may occur as Biden policies kick into place. 

FY 2018:  $   779,000,000,000

FY 2019:  $1,004,000,000,000

FY 2020:  $3,140,000,000,000

FY 2021:  $2,300,000,000,000

 

Even worse, the federal deficit is expected to swell to more than $35 trillion in 2031, the largest debt-to-GDP ratio in U.S. history. 

And that’s essentially before Biden blows his nose.