Faulty Memories

The newly installed GOP House majority and their Senatorial cronies are already talking about holding the country hostage during the next debt ceiling interval, as well as making massive cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

Why didn't they seem to care about the debt when Trump was in office? He raised the national debt $7.8 trillion dollars. See Trump built the national debt so high it will weigh the country down for years.

The national debt has risen by almost $7.8 trillion during Trump’s time in office. That’s nearly twice as much as what Americans owe on student loans, car loans, credit cards and every other type of debt other than mortgages, combined, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. It amounts to about $23,500 in new federal debt for every person in the country.

The growth in the annual deficit under Trump ranks as the third-biggest increase, relative to the size of the economy, of any U.S. presidential administration, according to a calculation by a leading Washington budget maven, Eugene Steuerle, co-founder of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. And unlike George W. Bush and Abraham Lincoln, who oversaw the larger relative increases in deficits, Trump did not launch two foreign conflicts or have to pay for a civil war. When Trump took office in January 2017, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office was projecting that federal budget deficits would be 2% to 3% of our gross domestic product during Trump’s term. Instead, the deficit reached nearly 4% of gross domestic product in 2018 and 4.6% in 2019.

Trump's tax cuts didn't quite pan out like he thought they would, but they sure helped his rich pals. 

Trump’s tax cuts, especially the sharp reduction in the corporate tax rate to 21% from 35%, took a big bite out of federal revenue. The CBO estimated in 2018 that the tax cut would increase deficits by about $1.9 trillion over 11 years.

I could go on and on but will mercifully spare you. It just blows my mind how we get this recurring amnesia whenever a democrat is in office. Hey guys, do you remember what you just did? By the way, Biden's deficit and debt numbers pale next to Trump's. Don't believe me? Look it up. 

The budget figures released Friday by the Treasury Department reveal dueling visions about what it means to be financially responsible: Biden can rightly claim that the budget deficit for fiscal 2022 plunged $1.4 trillion from the prior year...

Buried in the numbers is a deeper battle between Democrats and Republicans about what it means to be good financial stewards. The federal budget deficit totaled $1.38 trillion this year. That’s down from $2.78 trillion in fiscal 2021.

Suddenly the Republicans care about debt and deficit. When they spend it's different. For a quick history primer, Congress voted to suspend or increase the debt ceiling three times during the Trump reign, without any extortion attempts or gamesmanshhip from the Democrats. Now of course, they play politics. Anything to throw their pal Putin a bone, Tucker Carlson's best bro in Moscow is salivating at the thought of the GOP house cutting off the Ukraine while Senator John Thune is sharpening his knives staring at your favorite entitlement program.