Column: Pay attention to the deficit, even if Trump won’t
Americans could be forgiven for not realizing that President Trump recently carried out one of his most important duties and sent out his annual report. budget request It was submitted to Congress, although months late and surprisingly incomplete.
After all, a lot of things have dominated the news lately: the Middle East war that Trump promised not to start. price increases He promised it would end. His repeated insults of Pope Leo XIV. His He describes himself as Then Jesus Christ to lie down that you did this. An incompetent attorney general fire. And the president’s real priorities: $400 million White House plans ball-room And colossal “Triumphal arch” soon!
Too much.
Once again, as in Trump’s first term, the public and the press are less interested in the nation’s financial health than in years past. But this reflects the president’s own disengagement from reconciling spending and revenue; This comes from a president many Americans voted for based on his supposed skill as a businessman. For decades until Ronald Reagan’s time, the deficit wars in Washington were a big story. Even Republicans in Congress are now to complain Trump’s absence in the financial struggle they are trying to end, albeit late this year Budget work that was supposed to be done last fall before moving on to the budget for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1, ending a weeks-long partial government shutdown.
But for the sake of our children and grandchildren who will inherit the bills, it’s worth paying attention to US budgets, even if Trump doesn’t. In one document, the federal budget reflects the country’s priorities. And these days, in the perpetual gun-or-butter debate, Trump has made his feelings abundantly clear.
“We fight wars” said A group at the White House on April Fool’s Day. “We can’t handle day care…Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things.”
Forget that Trump vowed to end wars. Or that last year, long before going to war against Iran, the company he misnamed had cut $1 trillion over 10 years from Medicaid and other health programs. “A Big, Beautiful Bill.”
Yes, budgets can be boring, especially for a president with a notoriously short attention span. Trump and most of us Americans are constantly distracted by the shiny objects he flings into the national consciousness on an hourly basis with his words, actions, and social media posts.
Yet the budget trend is clear to anyone who bothers to look: As president, Trump is once again exacerbating the nation’s unsustainable debt accumulation. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, among other reliable 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 entire economy and threatens higher borrowing costs and declining investment.
For all the accomplishments Trump likes to claim – ending eight wars in a year! — here’s one of the real ones: He’s on track to break the record for most borrowing in a single presidential term. $8.4 trillion In Trump 1.0, it was nearly double the increase under President Biden.
Need more evidence of Trump’s brazen lie? Of course you don’t, but here’s the thing: Faced with well-documented budget records, Trump declared both this year And last year He said he would balance the federal budget during a joint session of Congress on national television –“overnight” he said in February.
Unfair tax cuts and massive spending increases due to a crackdown on the military and immigrants that Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress enacted last year are significantly higher than in his first term and are increasing the debt despite deep Republican cuts to health care. Just months after Trump took office, rating firm Moody’s downgraded The country’s sterling credit rating for the first time in more than a century.
And now, in his new budget request, Trump aims to increase military spending below $1 trillion when he comes back to office. 1.5 trillion dollarsIt’s the largest annual increase in military budgets since World War II.
This fiscal irresponsibility is happening at the worst possible time. During the last quarter of the 20th century, presidents and Congresses of both parties debated how to reduce deficits each year, and on several occasions resulting multi-year agreements were reached; these deals resulted in surpluses for four consecutive years during Clinton’s second term. (These surpluses were ended by—wait for it—Republican tax cuts and war spending during the George W. Bush administration.)
Politicians back then weren’t just affected by the deficits of their time; The share of deficits in the economy was less than half of what it is now. They were also responding to experts’ warnings that there would be a demographic tsunami in the 2020s: With the aging of the large population of baby boomers, spending for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid will rise dramatically even as the workforce that supports those programs through payroll taxes shrinks. Today, the number of people aged 65 and over has almost tripled compared to 50 years ago and is growing.
This reckoning is upon us, but you wouldn’t know it as Trump calls for cuts to revenues and more spending on unlawful wars, immigration raids, and monuments to himself. Barring bipartisan action, by 2033 Social Security’s retirement fund and Medicare’s hospital fund will no longer be able to meet all beneficiaries’ claims. annual report of the board of trusteesnecessitates reducing or transferring funds from benefits from other valuable programs.
Trump appointed Vice President J.D. Vance to “fight fraud” duty. But this one is just as promising as Elon Musk’s financial fiasco – Remember DOGE? — that cost money instead of cutting $2 trillion as promised.
Like other issues, Trump will likely leave fiscal follies to his successor; If he wins two terms, he will be president while Social Security and Medicare are bankrupt. I have yet to hear any of the early 2028 presidential candidates (or Trump) give a speech on this topic or be asked about it.
Let the discussion begin, even if it is late.
Blue sky: @jackiecalmes
Topics: @jkcalmes
X: @jackiekcalmes
