The GOP is supposed to be the party of fiscal rectitude, but Donald Trump has “succeeded” in making a mockery of that characterization, just like he’s made a mockery of everything else he’s ever touched.
When President Trump was still candidate Trump, some Republicans were more than willing to call a spade a spade. But since the election, the GOP has morphed into a personality cult that habitually prostrates itself at the feet of a reality TV show host under threat of ridicule from the President’s base, which he uses as a weapon to stifle dissent within the party.
Lindsey Graham has become the poster child for GOP complicity. When you see Graham making the rounds on the talk shows and crowing to Fox News about Trump and his accomplishments, don’t forget that this is the same Lindsey who in 2015 said the following on CNN’s “New Day”:
You know how you make America great again? Tell Donald Trump to go to hell.
Nowhere is the GOP’s shameless dereliction of duty more readily apparent than in U.S. fiscal policy which, thanks to Trump’s lunatic plunge into late-cycle stimulus, has America on the fast track to becoming Italy by 2023.
Trump’s tax cuts and spending are set to balloon the deficit to $1 trillion in 2020, two years ahead of previous estimates, and in the eleven months through August, the red ink came in at $898 billion, compared to $673.7 billion during the same period in FY2017.
Well, on Friday, the CBO was out with their estimate for the full 2018 fiscal year and it’s not pretty.
“The federal budget deficit was $782 billion in fiscal year 2018, $116 billion more than the shortfall recorded in fiscal year 2017”, the CBO said Friday, ahead of a Treasury report due this week that should show the U.S. running a surplus of $116 billion in September.
(CBO)
For context, the $782 billion deficit in FY2018 would be the widest since 2012, and it might have been worse. Were it not for calendar shifts, the figure would have been $826 billion.
Meanwhile, Treasury reported on Thursday that the U.S. spent a record $523 billion on interest in fiscal year 2018, up 14% from 2017.
(Treasury Dept.)
On the bright side, some of that interest is being paid directly to the Fed, so you know, “at least we’ve got the ponzi scheme!”
As far as the deficit goes, never forget that back on June 29, Larry Kudlow told Fox News the following:
Don’t worry everybody, supply-side economics will start working aaaany day now.
More debt is, apparently, how you get the Fed behind the interest rate curve.
Also likely that the millions of Russian blood money that found it’s way to Graham’s coffers recently would affect his opinion of the Russian asset in the White House.
Republicans have been dick-lickers since after Barry Goldwater got crushed fer christ’s sake. They worship mammon and their self image, only. Along the way, they have developed a love for punching hippies – that being – anyone that challenges their love of guns, money and truth.