That's ridiculous of course. The president works with Congress on legislation and spending... it goes to his desk to be signed. That's why Trump gets credit(or blame) for passing a tax cut and increasing defense spending. And it's why he gets blamed, along with the Congress he had for the first 2 years, and the current Congress now, for not reigning in spending.

This isn't hard stuff. It's just a fact that Trump doesn't care about deficits... he made that clear during the campaign and it's how he's governed. You can either accept that reality or not.

This post was edited by IceMage on Feb 6 2020 06:46am

https://twitter.com/mckaycoppins/status/1225136840312750085




Romney's departure is significant because the vote to convict for abuse of power was a bipartisan one. Also worth noting that multiple other Republican senators acknowledged that the president used the power of his office to pressure Ukraine for his own personal, political gain. Trump and his defenders are so shameless that they'll ignore these facts, so reporters will have to keep reminding them.

Balancing the budget isn't a thing anymore. Every attempt is met with a chorus of "republicans hate the poor", "republicans hate the old", "republicans hate the environment", "republicans hate science", "republicans hate _________".

So the next best thing to do is lower taxes. Again this isn't about Trump rather the way our government has functioned for the last 20 years or so. But i can understand how Trump is once again central to every man made problem ever caused in your universe, it's consistent with your thought process over the last 3-4 years.

Balancing the budget could be a thing if enough voters cared. I do... apparently you don't.

Lowering taxes while increasing spending is fiscally irresponsible. I know it pains you to discuss areas where Trump falls short, but he's the leader of the party. Rational people without a cultish attitude can acknowledge those shortcomings, be honest about them, and demand better. Yes, we all know both parties have created the fiscal mess, but Trump has just made it worse. In so many ways he's shown the true nature of the Republican party, especially in this particular area.

Fiscal responsibility is dead. It has no base of support in either party. Democrats have always been profligates, Republicans have given up on losing elections because of it.

We are never paying off the debt, we're going to have to inflate it away.

wait i thought waste and fraud would be plenty to balance the budget. im sure any day now Trump will trim 1.1 trillion dollars off govt spending to make up for it through getting rid of waste and fraud. i cant remember his plan, i just remember him saying "waste and fraud" over and over, but im sure there was a plan there.

As long as you acknowledge one of the following

1. Neither party is fiscally conservative
or
2. Fiscal conservatism is no longer about responsible government budgets

then there's no problem. Void is trying to keep his cake and eat it too.



Republicans haven't been in favor of balancing the budget for as long as I've been paying attention. Their goal was never responsible spending, it was stopping the Democrat from getting the economic benefits of spending and giving tax cuts to the people who astroturfed the tea party movement. It's really obvious that this is the case because the second Trump got into office they didn't cut spending and dropped taxes.

for the past 40 years or so its been a lie about stripping away social programs to be "fiscally conservative" when in reality it was diverted to defense spending under discretionary budgets so its not even controlled by the legislature for what they spend it on. so they can launder responsibility for massive R&D costs. and pumping subsidies for corn and crop loss payouts in the grain belt.

fiscal conservative spending isn't dead, it's been dead, it's bones 6 feet down in a casket that's rotted.

Defense spending as a percent of GDP has declined dramatically from well over 10% in the 1950s to a peak of 7% in the 1980s to somewhere between 3-4% (depending on how you count it) now.

It's simply not accurate to blame declining military expenditure as the root cause of overspending.

Medicare and Social Security costs have ballooned by the same metric over a similar timeframe. We do not tax nearly enough for our over generous social programs.

Perhaps the huge military budget should still be cut somewhat during times of relative peace, to finance the growing cost of social security and mediacare in an aging population without putting an unfair burden on younger generations. Would it really take a toll on America's ability to defend itself or to intervene in small-middle-ish countries if the military budget was brought down from $700b to $550b?