TRUMP, BY THE NUMBERS, DOESN’T LOOK SO GOOD

…Donald Trump as originally depicted by the New York Post

 

Donald Trump’s abacus must be missing a few calculating beads.

 

OK, now it’s been made clear that Trump is a serious presidential candidate, let’s take a serious look at Mr. Trump’s ideas about the nation’s budget and his domestic policies.  As Trump says, “We’ve got to start balancing budgets.”

 

Trump has said that when he gives Medicare the ability to negotiate prescription drug prices, it would save $300 billion a year.  That might be a bit difficult since in 2014, only $78 billion was spent on prescription drugs via Medicare.  In fact, the total national spending on prescription drugs was about $300 billion in 2014 according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

 

A favorite bogus Trump slogan is “Stick with Trump, He’ll get the drug companies to pay for the Meds.”  Sounds a bit like his: “Mexico will pay for the Wall!” doesn’t it?

 

Trump is the only Republican candidate that says that he won’t touch entitlements such as Social Security, even though entitlements gobble up 2/3rds of the national budget.  He instead wants to raise Social Security payments.  Trump has rejected raising the retirement age (a move he once endorsed), or the increasing of payroll taxes, or reducing cost-of-living adjustments and trimming the benefits.

 

To make his Social Security payment increases, he says the problem is that the politicians are dishonest and there is rampant waste and fraud.   In the recent CBS News debate, he incorrectly cited that: “Thousands and thousands of people claim they are over 106 years old” and are collecting Social Security.”

 

In the 2013 Social Security Audit, they found there was about 1000 Americans over 100 years old, and in the “waste” category, there were only 1,546 ”dead” Americans still receiving Social Security benefits. The total cost of those dead Americans was a mere $31 million. That’s a very small percentage of the total cost of Social Security which in 2013 was $823 billion.  That’s billion with a “b”.

 

“I’m going to cut spending big league,” Trump stated at the MSNBC town hall. However, his only example he's mentioned of his cutting taxes was in the Department of Education.

 

But as usual there are no details.

 

Was it the $28 billion for Pell Grants for low-income high-education students, or the $16 billion for those school districts with low-income elementary and secondary students? Or the $13 billion for special education?  How about the entire $78 billion federal education budget?  Now that sounds like a real conservative approach for helping educate American children.

 

As with all conservative Republicans, Trump wants to eliminate an organization that was started by another GOP president, Richard Nixon.  That being the $8.1 billion for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

 

So, the Trump idea is to cut out having clean air and water and supporting our children’s education, not to mention the unemployment increase from the firing of all those school teachers, but his cuts would still only total about 15% of the Congressional Budget Office projected 2016 deficit of $544 billion.

 

Trump’s projected tax cuts of double-digit trillions of dollars over the next decade (not yet specified) as defined by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, the 10-year cost would be  $9.5 trillion, or $11.2 trillion with interest. The US Tax Foundation says the Trump plan for generating economic negative growth would be at a cost of $10 trillion, excluding interest.

 

The Trump tax plan would reduce revenues by $1.1 trillion in 2025 alone. Federal spending for that year is estimated to be $5.3 trillion, excluding interest payments. Thus, Congress would have to cut spending across the board by 21% merely to pay for the tax cut, non the  less to bring the budget into the balance that Trump is asking for.

 

Trump insists that his cuts “are fully paid for” by cutting deductions, eliminating corporate special interests, plus generating extra cash from corporate profits held overseas.

 

However, the Tax Policy Center numbers already account for all that new revenue and for the limits on deductions that Trump has already specified.

 

By eliminating all deductions, that would raise $700 billion annually per Donald Trump’s program.  But what would it mean those for average American’s deductions such as charitable contributions, mortgage interest, retirement savings or health insurance?  As usual, no comment from Trump, and those deductions are counted on by millions of Americans.

 

Trump says his plan would spur economic growth to offset the cost. “My policies are going to reduce taxes, okay?” he told MSNBC. “And the taxes is going to bring jobs back and we’re going to bring jobs back into the country big league, and we’re going to have a dynamic economy again.”

 

The old concept of cutting taxes to bring back jobs has been proven to be a hoax time, after time, after time.  For the latest evidence of failure, just ask the Governor of Kansas, Sam Brownback.  He has almost bankrupt his state trying that old GOP fallacy .

 

Let’s put things into perspective.

 

For Trump’s ideas to work, the nation’s economy would need to grow by 7%+ annually.  The average national growth in the US economy since 1946 has been 3.3%.  The Federal Reserve is currently predicting the next 4 years growth in the ~2% range.

 

If Trump is elected, God help us all.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2016