Column: Pay attention to the deficit, even if Trump won’t
Americans could be forgiven for ignoring that President Trump recently completed one of his most essential tasks and sent out his annual report budget request in Congress, although months late and surprisingly incomplete.
After all, many other things have dominated the news lately: the war in the Middle East that Trump promised not to start. Prices are increasing he had sworn to end it. Her repeated insults of Pope Leo XIV. Her presenting himself as Jesus Christ, then layer for having done it. An incompetent attorney general for fire. And the president’s real priorities: plans for a $400 million White House ballroom And a massive “Triumphal arch” close!
It’s a lot.
Once again, as in Trump’s first term, the public and press are not paying attention to the country’s fiscal health compared to previous years. But it reflects the disengagement of the president himself in balancing spending and income — a president many Americans voted for because of his supposed prowess as a businessman. For decades during the Ronald Reagan era, the so-called deficit wars in Washington were a hot topic. Now, even Republicans in Congress complain of Trump’s absence in budget battle as they struggle to finish late This year budget work scheduled for last fall and to end a weeks-old partial government shutdown, before turning to the budget for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.
Still, it’s worth paying attention to America’s budgets, even if Trump doesn’t, for the sake of our children and grandchildren who will inherit the bills. In a document, a federal budget reflects the nation’s priorities. And these days, in the eternal debate between guns and butter, Trump has made his feelings all too clear.
“We fight wars,” he says said a group at the White House on April Fool’s Day. “We can’t take care of child care…Medicaid, Medicare, all those individual things. »
Forget that Trump vowed to end wars. Or that last year, long before going to war with Iran, he cut $1 trillion over 10 years from Medicaid and other health programs as part of his poorly named plan. “A big, beautiful bill.”
Yes, budgets can be boring, especially for a president with a notoriously short attention span. Trump and many of us Americans are constantly distracted by all the shiny objects he throws at the national consciousness through his words, actions, and social media posts at all hours.
Yet the fiscal trend is clear to anyone who cares to observe: As president, Trump is once again exacerbating the nation’s unsustainable trend of accumulating debt. According to the Congressional Budget Office, among other credible sources, the debt is now approaching the highest level in U.S. history, reached during World War II. It already exceeds the size of the economy as a whole and threatens to increase borrowing costs and reduce investment.
Despite all the achievements Trump likes to claim – end eight wars in a year! — here’s one that’s real: He’s about to break his own record for the most debt in a single presidential term, 8.4 trillion dollars in Trump 1.0, nearly double the increase under President Biden.
Need more proof of Trump’s blatant lies? Of course not, but here it is: faced with the well-documented budget record, Trump declared both This year And last year during a joint session of Congress, on national television, that he would balance the federal budget –“overnight,” he said in February.
The unfair tax cuts and sharp spending increases on military crackdowns and immigration that Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress enacted last year are significantly larger than in his first term and are driving up the debt despite deep Republican cuts to health care. Just months after Trump took office, the rating company Moody’s downgraded the country’s sterling credit rating for the first time in over a century.
And now, in his new budget request, Trump seeks to boost military spending by less than $1 trillion when he returns to office. $1.5 trillionfor the largest annual increase in military budgets since World War II.
This financial irresponsibility is happening at the worst possible time. During the last quarter of the 20th century, presidents and Congresses of both parties debated annually how to reduce deficits and repeatedly reached sizable multiyear deals, culminating in Clinton’s second term in four straight years of surpluses. (Those surpluses ended—wait for it—with Republican tax cuts and war spending during the George W. Bush administration.)
Politicians of the day were not only moved by the deficits of their day – deficits that, in terms of share of the economy, were less than half of what they are today. They were also responding to experts’ warnings of a demographic tsunami by the 2020s: As the huge baby boomer population ages, spending on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid would increase dramatically even as the workforce whose payroll taxes support those programs would shrink. Today, the number of people aged 65 or older is almost three times what it was 50 years ago, and it continues to increase.
That reckoning is upon us, although you wouldn’t know it since Trump keeps calling for cutting revenues and spending more on lawless wars, immigration raids and monuments to him. Unless bipartisan action is taken, in 2033, the Social Security pension fund and the Medicare hospital fund will no longer be able to cover all of the beneficiaries’ requests, depending on their annual report of directorsrequiring reduced benefits or transfers of money from other valid programs.
Trump put Vice President JD Vance in charge of a “war on fraud.” But this is as promising as Elon Musk’s. tax fiasco — do you remember DOGE? – it costs money instead of reducing the promised $2 trillion.
As with other issues, Trump will likely leave the tax splurges to his successor, who, if he wins two terms, would preside over as Social Security and Medicare become insolvent. I have yet to hear any of the early 2028 presidential candidates – or Trump – address or be asked about this.
Let the debate begin late.
Blue sky: @jackiecalmes
Topics: @jkcalmes
X: @jackiekcalmes
