Analysis | The Finance 202: Trump's economy means soaring deficits, too (too long to thread, but a worthy read) #TuesdayThoughts washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost…
2/"As most of America was glued to the final twists of the Brett M. Kavanaugh vote last Friday, the Congressional Budget Office dropped a whopper of a report. The United States federal government ran a deficit of $782 billion in fiscal 2018, the CBO said, the highest since 2012
3/"and substantially higher than last year’s $666 billion. This isn’t supposed to happen. The U.S. economy is humming, and a hot economy is supposed to translate into higher tax revenue and very tiny deficits. In fact, the last time unemployment was around this level — in 2000
4/"and 1969 — the U.S. government ran a surplus. President Trump vowed to eliminate the debt in eight years while he was campaigning for president. Instead, he is presiding over ballooning deficits, an unprecedented situation during strong economic times." Read on....
5/ Ok, maybe a little more. These are excerpts: "The other eye-popping number in the report was how much America spends on interest payments on its growing debt. In fiscal 2018, interest hit nearly $325 billion, the CBO said, more money than Congress gave the FBI to combat
6/"Russian hacking....Over the next decade, interest costs will total nearly $7 trillion, rising to become the third-largest ‘program’ in the federal budget...The Washington Examiner reported Monday that Trump's tariffs have raised $4.4 billion, which won’t make a dent in the
7/"annual deficit, let alone the more than $21 trillion debt...The reality is big deficits are here to stay, cementing Trump’s legacy as the “king of debt" AND after China's 2 warnings to us THIS happened last week: "In surprisingly blunt terms, Mr. Pence accused China of abusing
8/"its economic power, stealing American technology, bullying the very American companies that have helped in its economic rise, intimidating its neighbors, militarizing the South China Sea and persecuting religious believers at home . . ." Trump/Pence VERY CLEARLY do not
9/ Understand that the dangers with China FAR outweigh the economics that they appear to be highly focused on. This was an incredibly stupid thing for Pence to do & I bet he knew it..just did it to assuage Trump's ego. We're in trouble with China. Seriously.
