OK, OK. I'm not an accountant but it seems to me that a debt cap that is raised continually is not really a cap, nor an effective method to contain the debt.
its just a word.
7
If we want to get serious about fixing the deficit, we'll need to focus on Paul Krugman's Seven Words: "Health care, Health care, Health care, Revenue".
His point is that our budget problem is long term and that is overwhelmingly about the costs of healthcare (growing faster than GDP) and an aging country (a demographic scenario worsened if we restrict younger immigrants from entering the country). Raising taxes on the rich helps too.
Europe has figured out how to do quality healthcare for 1/3 to 1/2 the price that we do. Only government is going to be able to force down the rates that doctors get across the board, and that ultimately means Medicare for All.
Fix that and we'll never have to hear budget complaints again, except when one party wants to manufacture an issue, like the phony debt crisis during the recovery entirely fabricated by Republicans.
3
Ironic that it will be up to the Dems to get spending under control. Hope they start by reducing the military budget and raising taxes on the 1%.
5
And we are left to wonder: where exactly are the so-called, self-titled "grown ups" as these irresponsible leaders of the GOP? Apparently, out on a spending spree with a credit card. Looks like the so-called (and always falsely tagged) "Daddy Party" has yet to emerge from teen-aged excess.
Of course, their plans include "paying" for all of this by slashing earned benefit programs. It doesn't matter that you and I and everyone else who works has paid into Social Security and Medicare our entire lives, they intend to slash those programs, putting the entire senior population at risk of dying in penury. What's next to support the 1% tax cut? Poor houses? Will we restart pauper's graves to take care of the people who will have no where to go, and no access to health care? Is this what we want as a people?
Pay attention, all of you clamoring for that pittance in YOUR pocket from the tax cut. Because you, and I, and your mother, grandmother and brother will all be the ones paying for this reckless, ill-conceived, and poorly executed tax disaster. This deficit is just one part of it.
VOTE BLUE 2018!
5
Now c'mon, everybody knows the deficit only matters when Democrats are in charge.
According to the Tax Policy Center, if Republicans do spending cuts to offset the deficit increase of the tax cuts, roughly the bottom 70% of taxpayers incur a net cost starting right away.
3
It’s called “starving the beast a la Norquist”.
A toothless government is a Republican dream - no protection for the American people from unscrupulous profit seekers.
11
If I recall correctly, the last time the budget was balanced and the U.S. actually ran a surplus was during the Clinton administration in the 1990s. Bill can be legitimately criticized for being the architect of his own destruction (as Trump's decline will be judged his own fault, too).
But I have watched Republicans repeatedly spend to the skies with abandon, even more than Democrats (with the side goal of creating an artificial excuse to starve entitlements unless those entitlements are for the rich), while painting Democrats as the irresponsible party.
And they succeed, because they have mastered the art of better, louder, more hysterical PR lacking truth. Their base believes them (as long as Trump keeps up his racist, xenophobic, calculated, distracting rants) and even many who aren't duped by Republicans also believe that Democrats are the only fiscally faulty party.
The only reason to spend while increasing a deficit is if the country is in a recession with unemployment rising (as Obama did and as economists said he should). But that isn't remotely happening now. There's absolutely no excuse for this level of debt.
But when you're spending other people's money...
13
Soaring debt means cutting programs that assist the lower end of the economic ladder. Unnecessary tax cuts, unnecessary massive increases in defense spending, cabinet members flying around in government jets, weekly golf trips for Trump on the taxpayer dime, etc. All benefit the wealthiest among us and corporations.
Disaster relief is a big ticket item due to climate change, yet the vast expenditure is not effecting a rapid recovery. FEMA cut off assistance to Puerto Rico today. And climate change is no longer a concern for the federal government. Indeed, federal agencies have been directed to not even speak about it. There is no planning to deal with the increasing costs of more destructive and frequent hurricanes.
Americans are not saving; instead they are relying on greater and greater debt to maintain lifestyle. This, along with higher government debt, will inevitably drive up interest rates. Rising interest rates will increase the carrying cost of that debt and reduce discretionary funding even more. Eventually, personal debt will be used up and overwhelm people. That will trigger a downward spiral once again.
So, leave it to Republicans to crash the economy once again just in time for Democrats to take power and have to dig the country out. "Deja vu all over again." Y. Berra
8
One only needs to look at the history of Trump's businesses and his string of bankruptcies to see that this "business man" president is an irresponsible fraud. Is it no wonder that now, coupled with a spineless, sycophantic republican majority in Congress, our government is torpedoing towards insolvency? We must not allow this President to do to our Nation what he has done to countless businesses. We need checks and balances now more than ever. There has never been a more resounding call for a responsible electorate to show up at the polls this November!
5
Where are are the Tea Party patriots and their fancy "founding fathers" costumes? I thought they hated huge deficits.
7
“The deep dark secret is Republicans like to spend money just as much as Democrats,” said Representative Jim Costa, Democrat of California and a co-chairman of the centrist Blue Dog Coalition. “They just want to spend it on something different.”
Bingo! And Mr. Costa could have added (as so many here are pointing out), that when the Dems are in power, deficit spending becomes a cudgel that the Republicans swing when ANY spending is proposed. Just think back to the Obama years (a pleasant memory for me) and the innumerable times we were told that almost everything he or his party proposed was going to "bankrupt" the nation and ruin the future of young Americans.
5
The Republican Party is a business, and nothing more.
Their goal is to enrich themselves and their friends.
Once you understand this, you will understand everything that they do.
The country is expendable.
7
Deficits only seem to matter when Democrats are in charge. I came of age during the Clinton administration and I remember all the focus on the deficit along with the daily deficit countdown. By the end of his presidency Clinton had paid down the deficit and he left Bush with an annual surplus. The first thing the GOP did when they took office was too focus on passing a tax break and they squandered the work that Clinton had done to get our spending under control.
Already the GOP is making noise about how expensive Medicare and Social Security are. This cycle of wracking up debt and then expecting Democrats to fix it gets old. The idea that the GOP are fiscally conservative while Democrats like to spend is nonsense.
Republicans want to starve government to the point where it's ineffective. Doing so allows them to exploit our country without any pesky restrictions that protect us by keeping corporate greed from becoming destructive. Democrats spend but they do so on things like education, social services, infrastructure and other things that are for the greater good.
We have to decide what kind of country we want to live in. Do we support the party that gave us the New Deal programs, LBJ's Great Society policies, put a man on the moon, and fixed the Y2K crisis or do we want to keep electing the party who cut taxes for the wealthy, gave us the never ending war on terror, and drove the world economy off a cliff.
3
The Sec. of the Treasury clearly likes to see this increase in the debt, the reason being that the increase is almost equal to the tax savings that the Republican tax law gave the super-rich to encourage the latter to continue sending contributions right back to the Republicans -- with no benefit to any other Americans except a relatively few who are getting one-time bonuses. The real economic benefit will be to help the stock market continue climbing, which has become independent of the microeconomic experiences of the average working American.
2
No worries, Republicans will simply blame the next Democrat to occupy the white house for the debt created by Trump. That was the move with Obama who inherited a massive recession and 1.3 trillion dollars a year deficit. By 2016 the deficit was reduced to 439 billion a year, which is a fact no Republican will ever utter. Now the 8 trillion in debt the US accumulated during Obama's eight years has been rounded up to 10 trillion by folks on the right. You can be sure that the next move by Republicans will be to blame Grandma's 1000 a month SS check form the current sky rocking deficits. Loss of revenue from massive corporate tax cuts? Nope, that will never be cited as a cause of these new deficits by the right.
4
I notice that since the Right can't argue that deficits are decreasing (well, mostly they can't), the go-to move has become, "well, everybody does it, and anyway Democrats are big spenders."
It's one thing to deal with the fog of war; it's quite another to work hard at deliberately creating it.
2
GOP destroys economy. Electorate throws them out of office. Democrats finally get economy stabilized and improving. Electorate gives country back to GOP who then claim that they have made things better. GOP destroys economy. Electorate throws them out of office. Democrats finally get economy stabilized and improving. Electorate gives country back to GOP who then claim that they have made things better... Rinse and repeat.
3
Remember the Tea Party movement that lifted many of these figures into Congress? It seemed to emphasize two themes. One was that Obama's deficit spending represented a grave threat. And, well the other one had to do with Obama as well. Perhaps the Birther in the White House remembers what the second theme was.
1
Republicans are deficit hawks only when they are not in power. And when the Democrats have actually gotten the economy to the point of running budget surpluses, they have promptly put the country back in debt in the name of "returning the people's money to the people". They are the party of the insane.
1
Just to level set: It's called the NATIONAL DEBT, not the republican debt or the democratic debt. Our representative democracy says we all own it, or owe it more appropriately. So, while I may not agreed with all the taxing and spending decisions of the past, here is where we are.
Maybe, because we have not been able to do it so far, we should identify the generations whose future we keep saying we are mortgaging and if those generations don't include our own, we need to take a hard look in the mirror. I mean for all of the complaints about the potential deficit impact of the tax cuts under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, it is not like any of us who were against the tax cuts are going to pay our taxes based on the 2017 tax tables when the end of 2018 rolls around and tell the federal government to keep the extra. We will all gladly take anything we can get. As far as the deficit is concerned, there is plenty of hypocrisy to go around.
As Robin Williams said, "let those of you without sin live in glass houses."
1
The end game is in sight: Turning Medicare into a voucher program, privatizing Social Security, and block-granting Medicaid so that all of them can be scaled back radically and eventually drowned in the bathtub. Yes! (Many of my siblings will be fine with this, as long as Roe vs. Wade is overturned.)
1
They are cutting programs and still running up the deficit - they are coming for Social Security and Medicare.
Americans pay into these programs their entire lives - these are not entitlements.
If they are - stop taking money from my paycheck.
If they aren't - stop calling them entitlements. They are paid for and earned.
3
Republicans favor deficits only when they shovel money at the military and the wealthy. Democrats, at their best, are willing to borrow to save the economy (witness the Great Recession) and invest in the broader public. Both parties are blessed with a country whose debt is highly desirable relative to other instruments, and that facilitates borrowing. Each side disapproves of the other's priorities, but only one truly serves the public.
3
The Republicans as a policy have eschewed the very ideas of integrity, responsibility, and honesty, They do not care about any position they ever took because their voter base is willfully amnesiac and utterly manipulable. They do not care what they said. They do not care what they promised.
2
There they go again, those Republicans who attack their Demcratic opponents as tax and spend. Now that the shoe is on the other foot, the GOP shrugs off the increasing deficit.
This is the game! Now the democrats will be elected to restore order, will have to raise taxes to cover the republican borrow and spend binge and republicans will run on "the democrats raise your taxes". Bill Maher is absolutely correct!
3
My stomach churns, thinking of the tax cut. If I managed my finances this way I’d be homeless and hungry.
2
The bigger the deficit the better as far as The Con Don and his Robber Baron brethren are concerned. They want to keep WE THE PEOPLE so far in debt to them that we will never dig out.
Sorry, boys and girls. Your run is nearly over and WE THE PEOPLE will demand that all the wealth you have stolen from us - and continue to steal every single day at the most rapid pace in recent HIStory - be taxed back and throw you in prison.
This will not stand in The United States of America. Not now. Not ever again.
Anyone who is tired of hearing about the "Robber Barons" had better study up on the early 1900s because The Con Don is trying to create them. Readers can start with The Triangle Shirt Waste Factory fire that killed 145 women, children, boys and men because the Robber Baron owners locked the doors to stop "theft". PBS had an "American Experience" episode on it last night to remind us what insatiable, demented greed does to average people. Sick then. Sicker now. Only WE THE PEOPLE, working together, can and will stop this rerun, including a global financial meltdown and WW3.
NOW is the time!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fire
6
Yes the Democrats spend. But they don't increase spending and cut taxes at the same time. We no longer have a spending problem, we have a revenue problem.
13
President Obama inherited a $1.3 trillion annual deficit. By the end of his presidency he had reduced it to a manageably small fraction of what he started with.
It took a Republican only one year to undo 8 years of progress.
It is much easier to destroy than to build. And since the days of Richard Nixon the only thing Republicans have proved adept at is destroying things, and leaving the mess for responsible adult Democratic leaders to clean up.
44
“Every dime that we’re talking about for disaster relief is borrowed,” Mr. Perdue said. “We have to go to China and borrow that money to give disaster relief to farmers in Texas and people in Florida.”
How about Puerto Rico?
17
I'd suggest that the policies of "tax-and-spend liberals" are far more fiscally sound than those of the new "spend-until-you-go-broke" Republicans.
21
Ah there it is....Republicans wringing their hands over the ballooning deficit have moved even closer to their ultimate goal of putting Social Security on the into the hands of Wall Street. Of course, they will claim that in order to save it, it must be privatized. And once again, the working class will be the sacrificial lambs at the altar of the plutocracy whom the Republican party clearly worships.
As for Senator John Kennedy's comment about having "adult discussion at some point about how we're going to get control" of this mess they created, it seems that discussion should have been had in December before you and the rest of your morally corrupt fellow Republicans ramrodded the tax scam through without any debate. Your actions alone created this inevitable train wreck.
6
This is good news. Each party takes a turn hysterically predicting a debt crises that never comes. This has been going on for decades. Maybe people will start to understand the US Government cannot run out of its own currency.
3
Yes , something the Weimar Republic understood so well. Time to print more currency , but is it thicker & more absorbent than the competitions sanitary wipes Mr. Trump ?
I understand your point but surely much of the deficit spending is funded by countries and individuals buying US Treasury bonds. Can this go on for ever so long as America can afford to pay the yield on those bonds?
That's the point. There's no issue of America "affording" anything. The US government can pay any amount in US currency, at any time. The only potential concern is over spending to the point where money is put into the economy and not absorbed, leading to inflation, which is hard to do. But the national "debt" is really nothing other than bookkeeping.
The only saving grace to this disaster is that the next liberal president will be hamstrung in any domestic spending programs.
3
Not really, look at what is about to happen to the deficit ,military spending , & the 2018 elections. Many Americans are seething at the thought of what is happening to American finances. Republicans added $2 trillion to the American deficit . Plus another $30 billion in the extension of the debt ceiling . They are frozen like Bambi starring into headlights till January 2019. Can't wait till the Impeachment proceedings begin on March 2019. Won't cause us much money , expect a few laws to limit President Pences ability to effect anything. Maybe the new Speaker of the House will be 47th?
There was a time when the GOP were the penny counters and the "moral" conscience of the country. It appears that the two parties have decided to change their platforms and now the GOP is literally going for broke.
3
Actually that was only their rhetoric. Reagan and Bush the Younger both went on huge borrowing and spending sprees.
1
It won't be long before Republicans are demanding that the Democrats clean up their deficit mess for them. History repeats itself.
8
Whenever a Republican tells you the national debt is a problem, it's because Democrats are in power. Whenever a Republican tells you deficits don't matter, it's because Republicans are in power. We are now witnessing that phenomena on steroids: massive spending increases coupled with massive tax breaks (for the wealthy). Shame on the GOP, and for the voters that put them in office.
6
It's amusing for you to say this when that was the same thing occurring when Obama was president. Instead of seeing this debt as a National issue, people look at it as if it was a party to party situation. Acknowledge that the democrats do the exact same thing.
Here they come for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid!
7
If Trump's budget is approved, the US will spend $840.7 billion just on the war in Afghanistan in 2018; a war that many even in the military think is at a stalemate. This apparently is what "America First" looks like.
3
Why should this be a problem? The same thing happened under Obama. Thank you.
1
Um...deficits going up is not the same as deficits going down, last I checked.
Obama inherited a $1.3 Trillion/year deficit from the Bush administration and a great recession. Trump inherited a $585 Billion/year deficit and a rising economy.
You have it backwards. Do some research.
If you pay a bill with your credit card, you have not paid it, you have postponed it and added an interest charge.
If you are given a 'tax cut' using the nation's credit (card) you have not been given a tax cut, you have postponed the taxes and added an interest charge.
If you die before the bill comes due, you win? Ask your kids.
7
What's the biggest threat to US national security? Perhaps North Korea? Perhaps Russia? Certainly the debt is right up there. But Congress and the President are wearing blinders, and only looking at their own pocketbooks, not the nation's. This, sadly, is bipartisan willful ignorance.
The Republicans have always called Democrats the tax-and-spend party. But what are they? The no-tax-and-spend-spend-spend party?
4
At the end of the day, both parties love to spend. The GOP will always talk about spending restraint until they are in power. The Democrats will always be for more spending, in power, or not. When deficits soared under Obama, the Democrats did not care. When the tax cut was passed with the negative deficit implications, the Democrats found religion, and the GOP did not care. So it goes in Washington.
3
Robert, you might recall unless you were born less than nine years ago that deficits went up when Obama came to office because of a financial meltdown where 800,000 people a year were losing their jobs. This meant lower incomes, less tax money coming in, people claiming unemployment and healthcare benefits. We also had two wars going on that had had no provision for paying for them by the previous administration. Sure, Obama pushed through stimulus money and ACA but deficits came down dramatically during his reign. I would be pleased if Trump and the Rs could bring it down more. I have my doubts.
Where's the kicking and screaming about saddling our kids and grand kids with all this debt? Oh, of course. The "yowls" only occur if Democrats are in power. This is a disgrace.
23
I see just one positive–something concrete that Democrats can run on that ISN'T identity politics.
4
Liars, damned liars, and deficit hawks.
8
Yup. And when all you seniors who support Trump and tax cuts, don’t be crying the blues when your Medicare benefits go right down the tanks. Because, guess what, there won’t be tax money in the coffers to pay for your rehab, or chemo, or pacemaker replacement. Try figuring that out.
24
In my state we have a budget deficit and one of the programs they are cutting is dentures for Medicaid patients. Dentures.....so they can eat. 70% of the folks on this program make less than $6K a year. So, yes, medicare and Medicaid patients will suffer the most.
4
Hey! Don't blame all seniors! I'm a senior and I voted for Hillary. So did every other senior that I know...and I know quite a few. I think some deluded and lied to seniors in Florida might have voted for Trump, but please don't blame all of us for this mess!
3
@Aimee A Maybe they think it will help with the obesity epidemic.
1
This is not deficit spending. it is deficit weaponizibg . Trump is building the deficit as a weapon to destroy so-called entitlements. Having reduced revenue by cutting meaningful taxes solely on the rich, he will claim the deficit requires cutting social security, Medicare, and Medicaid. So the people end up financing, via this artificial debt, the abolition of their own welfare. Hard to take.
27
Proposed increased military budgeting--for what? What goal? What aer the benchmarks of "success"?
More Kool-Aid for the flyover-region electorate.
12
This is absolutely correct. How will we know if we "won"? I don't see any goalpost that says victory. War eternal.
2
Basically, more defense spending= pork for red state america where most defense contractors are. Our real need is in cyber security, in special operations against terrorist groups, in rapid response forces, but a lot of this is going to go to large scale weapons systems like the F35 and others of its ilk, that in the wars we are fighting is useless. We are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan using ground troops and the big threat is IED's and snipers, not enemy fighters, not enemy navies, etc.
4
Is this surprising, though? Democrats were wrong in 1994 and they're still wrong. We need a balanced budget amendment so that when we have an argument about priorities -- slashing corporate tax rates or subsidizing health insurance for the working poor -- we win.
But now? Democrats fought a balanced budget amendment. This is what we get. Massive budget deficits. Low tax rates. High spending -- and in a healthy economy. Dumb.
You don't need a balanced budget amendment to act at least somewhat responsibly. No household I know of has one and yet most of us pay our bills.
While I think it's a missed opportunity (Democrats should take up the reins of being the fiscally responsible party), it's odd that just a few years ago the Republicans in Congress wouldn't even discuss an increase in spending without an equal cut somewhere else and now they pass "tax reform" that primarily went to corporations and the extremely wealthy-all, in your own words, during a healthy economy.
2
This from the very same people who would have declared Obama was dragging the US into the darkest recesses of hades when he proposed raising the debt ceiling. What a world, what a world.
21
As soon as Dems take back the Senate in January 2019, an again when they take the Oval Office in January 2021 (oh seems so far away!) Republicans will come back to their 'smaller government' positions and blame Democrats for spending beyond our means. Then when the tax cut deficit really starts to blossom, Republicans will go after safety net spending and will want to cut social programs. But we'll be great again and the rich will be richer.
12
There is no such thing as a Republican "deficit hawk", just as there is no such thing as a "patriotic" Republican. There is only one type of Republican, power and power alone at any price, to serve the rich and fleece the middle class and poor.
16
Here we go again. The GOP runs up the deficit, while it rants about tax cuts; then when people get disgusted and put the Democrats in power the GOP blames the Democrats for the deficit that the GOP created. The Democrats don't dare talk about a tax structure that actually pays for the cost of running the country because too many people in the population have bought the proposition that privatizing everything will be magically some kind of solution. The ultimate victory for the GOP will be the day that Medicare and Social Security are destroyed. It is amazing that many people still think that there's anyone left in the GOP that actually care what happens to all but the wealthiest in this country. It is foolish short-term thinking, because eventually the robber barons will find themselves balancing their penthouses on a tower of cards that is bound to collapse as the weight of all the wealth sucked to the very top forces the foundation to crumble beneath them.
6
What a surprise, deficit spending stimulates the economy. The Republicans spent eight years during the recession and initial recovery shrinking deficits and decrying slow growth. Now they claim great success when the economy grows slightly faster as they are radically increasing the deficit during a strong economy. If the Democrats had any courage they would start screaming about each monthly deficit. We should be paying down our debt when the economy is strong so there is room to stimulate and spend when times are tough.
4
Fiscal irresponsibility is back in vogue.
7
This group is the most despicable gang in our Country's history. Saddling future generations with debt. I didn't need this last giveaway,and neither did the greedy corporations. All hell will break loose, when our credit card maxes and the bubble busts again. Bankruptcy is in his blood.
5
Several years ago when the Senate passed bi-partisan immigration reform by a wide margin, the CBO calculated the benefit at $1.5T over the first 10 years. Our aging population is in dire need of more people to sustain ourselves, otherwise we are going into long-term decline like other countries with the same demographics. This should be one of the strongest justifications for more immigration, not less.
4
The Republicans don't really care about deficits unless the $$$ aren't going to them, their donors, billionaires, military contractors. If tax money is going to feed the hungry or keep our air clean....the deficit must be tamed!
6
How much longer before Paul Ryan, the Republican Speaker of the House, and Mich McConnell, the Senate Republican Majority, leader will be attacking citizen entitlements as being excessive? You may not have to hold your breath.
On the other hand, you may have your breath taken away from you shortly when these two government leaders in the House and Senate are joined by President Trump in requesting massive increases in the Defense Department budget.
3
Remember when republicans cared?
Yes. But I'm old enough to remember the last Republican who cared...Ike.
2
The new kleptocracy picks up speed.
4
Inflation coming soon.
1
Echoing other commenters here: MINDBLOWING hypocrites. The very same people who champion fiscal responsibility want to spend spend spend.
4
President Trump's business model always depended on borrowing large sums of money and then hoping for the best. If the best didn't happen, he simply stiffed his lenders. In the State of the Union address he covered much trivia, but failed to mention the debt or the deficit. Thanks for reminding us. Recall that when the Great Depression began, the U.S. had little national debt. If we hit another rough patch, people may no longer consider U.S. government debt to be a safe investment.
14
As the dollar weakens, inflation picks up and a trillion dollars is no longer such a big part of GDP. Just observe how much the dollar has fallen and you can see what's going to happen. Rates are rising and will keep doing so for quite a while.
This is the solution that weak economies like Italy and Greece used in the days before the Euro exposed them. Keep your assets in things that have some inflation hedge - companies with large non-US revenues will benefit from the weaker dollar AND the new tax code.
3
It is clear and already stated by Paul Ryan and other heads of the Republican Clan, that in order to offset the tax cuts and other spending, next on the agenda will come the so-called re-evaluation of the spending on medicare, medicaid and social security. However, since over 30 incumbent Republicans have chosen not to run again in 2018 and the Congress could be on the line, since it could be political suicide, do not expect these programs to be touched until after the election occurs.
Voters have a very important decision to make in 2018. If Republicans still hold the Congress, what is left of the social safety net and healthcare in America would probably be dismantled and all the euphoria about tax cuts and the few extra dollars in some pockets will have disappeared.
6
The current yield of 30 year T bills is 2.96%. At a $20 trillion national debt, our interest expense is $600 billion, almost as much as is spent on Medicare. Draw your on conclusions.
6
The United States has not won a major military conflict since WWII. We have outspent every other country on earth for decades on military conflicts. Our annual military budget is higher than the military budgets of the next 13 or more countries COMBINED. This number does not include the massive costs in the lives of individuals and families in the military.
But we are totally brainwashed to believe that this is absolutely necessary. We must spend endlessly to defeat an enemy who is never really defeated. The entire world conspires against us.
Our healthcare, infrastructure, educational systems, economic security and our hopes and dreams for the future are all sacrificed to the god of war.
34
This is very true and I am not sure anyone on the left has figured out a way to effectively stand up to out of control military spending. When someone mentions reigning in these costs, it is somehow "unpatriotic" and even more money is thrown in and horribly mismanaged. THIS should be a major fight for real progressives. Somehow, though, they remain stagnant.
5
Who will bail out the country once the Republicans bankrupt us? When Bill Clinton left office there was almost a billion dollar surplus. The Bushes ended that by their wars in the Middle East that continue to this day. And let's not forget that the banks, that illegally were doing business, had to be bailed out by the government when Obama came into office.
4
W Bushes term. Remember when McCain left the campaign trail to go back to DC and vote for the bailout.
So much for the GOP that once stood for fiscal integrity. They're just Trump's rubber stamp.
2
For 8 years Obama tried to get some infrastructure and other spending to pass with the goal of helping the economy. The Republicans were collectively foaming at the mouth.
Now, the deficit doesn't matter since the Tax Cut's blow it up but the main beneficiaries are the rich and businesses who don't need it in this booming economy.
Not to worry though, as history shows, when the Democrats take over again they will be blamed (and fix) the huge Republican hole blown into the national wallet.
3
Welcome to the Republican world of hypocrisy, cognitive dissonance, fiscal suicide, fake patriotism and 0.1% Welfare Queens.
These Russian-Republicans are doing everything in their hijacked power to destabilize America through tax-cut nihilism, voter suppression, gerrymandering and letting the Kremlin assist in American elections.
There's nothing patriotic about raiding the United States Treasury so Sheldon Adelson, the Koch Brothers, the Walton Family and the Mercers can have new toys while bankrupting the country.
The Republican Party: We Destroy Everything For Our 0.1% Masters
The Party of Sedition strikes again.
The Art of Moral, Intellectual, Economic and National Bankruptcy: GOP 2018
76
Please desist with the voodoo economics. You can hate Republican hypocrisy and "spending priorities", but still refrain from deficit hysteria, which never made a country prosperous and never won an election.
Countries with sovereign currencies don't work the way household budgets do; and bringing that household psychology to national economic policy won't do the economy or the Democratic party any favors. Google "modern monetary theory" some time, for another view.
1
Deficits can be worthwhile if you are doing something useful.
Borrowing money to give rich people who have too much money more money is not going to be helpful to the country, and will be destructive.
Deficits for the sake of "starving the beast" are horrible and seditious.
Th purpose of these deficits are meant to weaken the country to make it more vulnerable to financial predators.
It is a plan that is only meant to help the 1% at the expense of our country.
2
Deficits aren't as important if you are getting something for them, but in this case, we aren't.
We are borrowing nearly 2T dollars to give to people who already have more money than they can spend.
This will not make our country prosperous.
This is nothing more than the looting of our treasury.
This has nothing to do with "modern monetary theory".
It is as old as the world, and it is called theft.
Whether or not you like the way Trump and the Republicans chose to spend this money, it would wonderful, just once, to hear a consideration of deficits from someone other than a son or employee of billionaire and long-time "entitlement" cut crusader, Pete Peterson. You know, the same billionaire who predicted all the disasters which never happened since the 1980s, but somehow missed the ones that did (remember the financial crisis, for example? His were trillion dollar errors, and yet we're still listening.).
Strange to say, there is a responsible school of economics which doesn't regard borrowing as necessary to finance the federal government, doesn't get hysterical over deficits and doesn't look at federal spending the way we look at household budgets, no matter how loudly Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama and and the sometime "deficit hawks" insist on it.
Yes folks, you actually can "print" money, as long as the economy is well below capacity and create wealth and relieve misery by doing so.
But this view of economics, which is hardly fringe but isn't taught in journalism school, is one you'll never learn about it in the politics or business pages here.
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Congress has a very serious spending problem and they know it. Our government simply does not have the political will to rein in spending necessary to get the deficit under control. This will not end well because the dollar is a fiat currency which means it’s not backed by gold or anything of value. Historically, every fiat currency ever developed has collapsed and failed. Why would the dollar be any different? The time will eventually come when the government can simply no longer pay its debts and that is when the dollar will collapse.
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The spookiest part of this is that the Treasury is issuing short-term bonds instead of capturing (today's low) interest rates for thirty years and more, as it has historically done. When interest rates inevitably go up, so will debt service, making today's $1.5 trillion feel like two, three, four times as much.
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In their business worlds, people like Trump play high stakes games and gamble with other people’s money. They declare bankruptcy, they fend off myriad lawsuits, and their investors and creditors get the shaft. But they themselves escape relatively unscathed, continue to live in gaudy golden towers, and welcome new investors from far-away lands (albeit unsavory investors who may have questionable motives).
But Trump and his gang of billionaires are now playing the same high-stakes game with the American people’s money, and their futures. Their high-wire act of tax cuts and proposed increases in spending, unfettered by the advice of competent experts in macroeconomics, should scare the bejeezus
out of everyone, regardless of political affiliation or proclivity.
Where are the Republican deficit hawks? Are they so blinded by the hope of overturning Roe v Wade and “whitening” America, that they readily neglect their tradition of fiscal conservatism? Are we really counting on the Democratic leadership to rein in spending, which has not traditionally been their forté?
Unbelievable.
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Here we have the "starve the beast" strategy in a nutshell: run up the deficit in order to destroy social security and medicare. It is plain and simple theft, reverse Robin Hooding 8% of all workers' accumulated efforts and handing those dollars to corporations and the mega wealthy through the tax bill bought and paid for by them.
STOP repeating their Orwellian term for Social Security and Medicare. These are not "entitlements", which sound like give aways to "those people". These are EARNED benefit programs that have been paid into by all workers over their entire working lives.
Where are all the deficit scolds from 2009 and 2010 when times were bad, now that the economy is supposedly booming? Guess Cheney's "deficits don't matter" statement was missing the second part.... "when a republican sits in the White House".
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Reagan did tax cuts and the National Debt nearly tripled. Pres. Bush Jr. did tax cuts and the National Debt doubled.
Now Trump has done tax cuts....Another possible doubling of the national Debt from 20 Trillion to 40 trillion dollars,and no one cares.
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Reagan bought prosperity at the expense of his constituents’ kids too, and his addition of $2 trillion to the national debt would be quaint by today’s standards of larceny - even adjusted for inflation.
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Republicans only worry about adding debt when Democrats are spending money.Then they weep about the burden on future generations and the irresponsibility of government. When they want to "juice" the economy and cater to their big donors the spending can be rationalized.Building a useless 25 billion dollar wall is great but Medicare and Medicaid need to be cut.Congress needs to stop playing with Monopoly money and take budgeting seriously.
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Standard right-wing stuff: deficits only matter when Democrats are in charge. When Republicans are in charge it's smash-and-grab time and leave the wreckage for the next person.
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The projections for the cost of the tax cut ($1.5T over 10 years) were made by republicans, so you can bet they are a best case scenario. Not mentioned are the creative efforts in some blue states to allow residents to keep writing off their SALT taxes, which republicans were counting on as revenue.
In the end, the deficits will be higher than anticipated but that won't become important to republicans until Democrats regain the White House in 2020.
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". . . the need to deal with the federal debt seems to have taken a back seat to other priorities, including the $1.5 trillion tax cut, increased defense and domestic spending, and an expected infrastructure request from President Trump."
Thank you NYT for writing this story, but I fear the national debt, now reaching $20 TRILLION dollars, has either fallen on deaf ears or worse, no one on Capital Hill seems to care.
With all of the new spending initiatives Trump introduced last night, I kept asking myself - how in the world will these be paid? How could that $1.5 trillion tax cut ever be approved? Why is this country operating with an open-ended check book which never balances? If I lived my life that way, I would have been homeless and living on the streets 40 years ago. This administration has clearly redefined the term "fiscally irresponsible".
I can only hope the NYT will keep the heat on and continue to write and alert its readers and this country of this looming and dark financial cloud that will not go away. This country is in serious financial peril and the only ones who seems to care are the NYT reporters. This is the kind of news that I would expect to see coming from Washington.
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But...but I thought the Republicans were the deficit hawks?! I thought all Democrats did was spend spend spend....
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Mnuchin calls to raise the debt limit?
But as the esteemed Mitch Mcconnell has shown our nation, such things aren’t just simply done, they are used to negotiate. Or hold the country hostage if you will.
I look forward to a sputtering Mitch Mcconnell in my future.
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You can't cut taxes and increase spending without driving up the deficit. I think it was my 9th grade life skills class that covered the hot topic of balancing your checkbook. And Trump still hasn't gotten the increase in military spending he wants, nor have Republicans tackled infrastructure at all.
The real question is how Republicans will spin it as being the Democrats' fault when the national debt continues to climb.
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WHERE are all those Republican deficit hawks when you need them.
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