TRUMP’S IGNORANCE TOWARDS SPENDING & DEBT IS ASTOUNDING!

…This mans says about his spending, “Just print more money!”

The president is trying to run the country like he ran his businesses

It is amazing that our president continues to surprise me as to the level of his ignorance.

As an example, last month, the White House reported that there was a large increase in the US deficit from the previous 12 months.  This announcement unnerved most Republicans and many US and foreign investors.  It also helped fuel a big sell-off in the stock market.  But the president didn't react because he just doesn't care.

Two days after the deficit report, did the president look into the fact that it was due to his tax cuts, his military spending and other of his spending that cause the problem???  Nooooo, of course not.   Instead, Trump floated a surprise demand to his Cabinet secretaries.  He is now asking his Cabinet to identify steep cuts in their agency's budgets.

This account of Trump’s deficit stance is based on conversations with 10 current and former officials, both in the White House and in Congress.  As usual, they only spoke on the condition of anonymity for describing their internal discussions and private conversations. The White House has not responded to repeated requests for comment.

Administration officials have, for now, crafted a sparse plan that would recycle past proposals and call on Congress to trim federal spending on a variety of programs.  Again, this is from anonymous White House officials.

But it doesn’t stop there.

Even as Trump has demanded deficit reduction, he has handcuffed his advisers with limits on what measures could be taken.  And almost immediately after demanding the cuts from his Cabinet secretaries, Trump suggested that some areas, particularly the military, which has been given one of the largest budget increases, they will be largely spared. 

The president has said since his election campaign that there will be no changes made to Medicare and Social Security.  These are two of the government’s most expensive entitlements, but as he has promised, the popular programs will remain untouched.

Now, we know why Trump has been called the “King of Credit” because he is now getting the United States into the same kind of trouble that he has had in running his businesses, as he used multiple bankruptcies to run his so called “Trump Empire”.

Unfortunately, bankruptcies don’t work for running the largest economy on the globe.

When White House staffers sought to include an attack on Democrats’ Medicare-for-all proposals in Trump’s campaign speeches this fall, Trump initially scoffed at the idea, according to two administration aides. “Medicare is popular”, Trump said, and that his voters want it.  Eventually, he agreed to the attack if he could say Democrats were going to take the Medicare entitlement program away.

In other words, if he could blame the Democrats, he would agree to consider attacking their Medicare proposals.

Trump’s plan is also not expected to include any large-scale tax increases, which would be a total non-starter for both Trump and congressional Republicans.

In total, government debt has risen roughly $2 trillion since Trump took office, and the federal government now owes $21.7 trillion, according to the Treasury Department.

The president’s agenda has contributed to those major increases and he is projected to continue doing so, both through the GOP tax cut, Trump’s military spending increases and his additional proposed tax cuts.

Trump’s recent interest in the issue is totally at odds with his long-standing indifference to the deficit, this is according to current and former aides.

You may recall that the House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) made a name for himself as a deficit hawk, but he backed a tax plan and a spending bill that is now ballooning the national debt.  Three former senior administration officials said the deficit issue was rarely brought up in Trump’s presence because he has had no interest in discussing it.

When former National Economic Council director Gary Cohn’s staffers prepared a presentation for Trump about deficits, Cohn told them “to forget it”, it wouldn’t be necessary”, he said, because the president did not care about deficits.

Trump also repeatedly told Cohn to just “print more money”, according to the White House officials familiar with his comments.  Trump has no clue as to what problems “just printing money” would cause.

Trump said, “run the presses, run the presses,” this was said in describing the president’s Oval Office orders. “Sometimes it seemed like he was joking, and sometimes it didn’t.” 

Two current aides said they had not heard Trump make that comment in recent months, but today he is changing his tune on the budget in public statements. 

“We’re going to start paying down debt,” Trump said during a White House event last month. “We have a lot of debt.”

But Trump often uses “debt” as the total amount the government owes, but he also uses that to refer to the deficit, which is the annual gap between what the government takes in and what it spends.  Trump has never been versed in the particulars of the federal budget, nor has he ever showed any interest in learning about the difference in “debt” versus the “deficit”.

It is frightening that this ignoramus is our Commander-in-Chief.

Here’s another story that emphasizes Trump’s ignorance of the military, his staff and of his spending:

Chief of Staff John Kelly told others recently about while watching television with Trump, who asked how much the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff earns.  Trump had stupidly guessed that it was $5 million.  The chief of staff was amazed that the president would think that a soldier, even a general, would make that much.  As the story goes, Kelly responded that the military chairman made less than $200,000. The president suggested he get a large raise as he noted the number of stars on his uniform. (Amazing!)

Even as Trump has told aides that he’s finally interested in taking steps to reduce the debt (deficits?), he has floated several ideas that would actually expand the debt.  You will recall that before the mid-terms, Trump proposed a 10% tax cut for the middle class, he also wants a huge package of infrastructure spending in the billions, and he is threatening to shut down the government (which would cost more billions) if he doesn’t get the billions of dollars for the US-Mexico border wall.

And of course, he hasn’t a clue as to how he would pay for any of these!

Trump has repeatedly pushed to spend more on the infrastructure bill this summer, envisioning large projects for many key states. “Infrastructure Week”, which had been planned for multiple weeks, became a total joke.  That's because it happened during disastrous weeks that were waylaid by guilty pleas from Mueller’s investigation, Trump’s errant tweets, or bombshell developments in the Russia probe.  Many staffers also said that the plan was way too expensive.  But according to former and current officials, Trump says the government was not spending enough and he is looking to revive the pricey infrastructure plan anyway.

Because the government spends much more than it brings in through taxes, it must borrow the financing to cover the balance and that means issuing more debt. The US Treasury projects it will issue $1.3 trillion in new debt, just this year.  That is borrowing more than double its borrowing from one year ago.  In addition, rising interest rates are projected to make the cost of borrowing money much more expensive.

The United States will soon spend more money on interest payments than it does for the entire Medicaid program.  That’s more than $400 billion, just in interest payments.

Trump’s attitude toward spending shows just how conflicted the Republican Party has become on an issue that is against what the GOP has believed for decades.  House Speaker, Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who campaigned on reducing deficits, has rarely brought up the issue with the president in recent months.  “Republicans have talked a good game about deficit spending, but in reality, their record shows they haven’t stood up and stopped it,” said Marc Short, the president’s former director of legislative affairs. 

Over a round of golf, of course at the Trump National Golf Club in Virginia, Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) encouraged the president to push for deficit-control measures and to force Republicans to cut spending. 

Trump was totally dismissive of the request. “The people want their money,” the president said. The conversation soon moved on.

God help this country for making it through the next two years, or then there's the frightening idea of an additional four years.  Yikes!

Copyright G. Ater 2018