President Trump, Blind to Deficit?
A 2-year bilateral budget deal now agreed, has anyone noticed President Trump never talks about the federal deficit? Does Trump not know that American Government is $22.5 trillion in debt and counting? Does he not know that the more government borrows to spend, even on important things like infrastructure, the larger the debt becomes?
Moms and Dads Across America Struggling to Make Ends Meet
Let’s take a poll. Who out there thinks Trump is oblivious to the deficit? Raise your hands. Okay, now who thinks Trump knows but doesn’t care? Hmmm, looks about even. So if either possibility is true, why would even rabid, Trump-supporting Republicans be overjoyed that their President is spending America into bankruptcy? I ask that because I keep hearing appeals from Republican congressional candidates in the 7th District and beyond, running on a platform of cutting federal spending. From them I keep hearing the obligatory “dinner table” story, you know, the one where mom and pop are sitting at the table staring at a stack of bills. Comparing the dollars they owe against the dollars they have, each looks at the other wondering how they are going to make ends meet. Yes, that’s the one.
And God bless ‘em, Republican congressional candidates paint that picture over and over again, as if this time we’re really going to do something about it, but only if you elect Mr. or Ms. so and so. Then they tell us that the answer to out-of-control federal spending is really very simple, apparently never grasping that were it that easy, the entire crowd would already know the answer.
Subsequently, after invoking mom and dad at the table, each orator releases the simple remedy to uncontrolled federal spending, announcing, “If the American people have to tighten their budgets at home to make ends meet, then so should the federal government!” That’s the big applause line.
Federal Budget is Nothing Like Household Budgets
Moving toward the inevitable appeal for campaign support, each congressional hopeful resurrecting this hackneyed image explains that to solve federal spending, someone simply needs to go to Washington and “be an adult.” I guess that means that to understand principles like folks shouldn’t spend more than they have, one merely needs to be full-grown. Accordingly, the key to finally balancing the budget and paying off the national debt is for the American people to elect a new crop of grown-up adults and dispatch them to save our country from the children running it. When they do, just like moms and pops making ends meet at dinner tables all over America, those newly-elected grown-ups would sit around congressional chambers in Washington, assessing the priorities of the nation like any seasoned citizens would, cutting the budget where the funds are needed least, while funding those programs needed the most. Presto, a balanced budget. How many times have you heard that speech?
Of course, naturally implied by each candidate rendering that sermon is that President Trump cannot be considered among the adult population of Washington D.C. After all, because fiscal responsibility is really so simple and straightforward, Trump, who never even talks about the deficit, and whose signature is found on every spending bill, cannot be counted as a full-fledged member of the D.C. “over 21 crowd.”
So, let’s get real here. Do you want to know why President Trump never talks about the federal deficit, balancing the budget, or certainly not paying off the national debt? Trump doesn’t talk about it because it’s frigging impossible. It cannot be done, at least while America struggles, operating its economy under the curse of the Federal Reserve private central banking system. That is because under that system, the U.S. money supply is borrowed at interest from private banks, the entire lot of it. Think about what that means. It means that the American people, including the American government, pay interest on all dollars in circulation each moment of every day, 365 days a year. And all day long, every day, interest and principle are removed from circulation to service the bank debt. Want to know how Wall Street banks got too-big-to-fail? You have your answer.
But because the banks that lend the currency don’t issue dollars necessary to pay the interest, the only way interest can be paid is for America to borrow more dollars. There is no solution to that equation. That system cannot be balanced or paid off. The only way the system can even remain viable is for more and more dollars to be borrowed and paid into circulation. And who is the largest borrower, without which dollars in circulation would rapidly diminish? The U.S. Government. Unless the government continues to borrow and spend more and more dollars into the economy, $200 billion more each year in the new budget, the money supply and economy begin to shrink.
So cutting spending in Washington is nothing like moms and dads sitting across dinner tables tightening household budgets. And any candidate for Congress who indicates it is either has no idea what he or she is talking about, or is simply trying to fool you. And if elected, he or she will soon find out that no adults in D.C. are interested to sit down and discuss something they all know is impossible.
Fortunately, Trump knows he has to overhaul the system before 2025. Therefore, the best Republicans for Congress are those who will most fully support Trump. Still, don’t expect our President to raise deficit spending issues. That’s because most people wouldn’t understand what he was talking about anyway.