Deficit Balloons 42% in 2019 Q1 – GOP Response is Ho Hum
On the back of Trump’s gigantic tax cut and unbridled spending, federal deficit spending ballooned 42% in the last quarter, an increase of over $300 billion over the same period last year. It’s the same old, same old – Republicans continue to slash taxes, pushing wealth further and further to the top while lying that cutting taxes magically increases revenue. It wasn’t true in under Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II; and it’s still not true under Trump. As we continue to war make, and increase income inequality, the American infrastructure is crumbling around our ears. The number of Americans without healthcare is again growing, education is floundering, gun violence is increasing, and hate groups are on the rise.
On top of all this, the tax burden that working class Americans is increasing. As of last week, tax refunds are down almost 9%, even though revenues are flat and wages are essentially flat. Trump’s sleight of hand is now costing more for those least able to shoulder that burden while deficit spending continues unabated. The GOP invertebrates in Congress are doing nothing to check this president.
I calculated yesterday that I’m paying ~$900 less in taxes after the poorly thought out tax reform. The increase in monthly pay balanced by lower tax refund. Grateful I did not owe anything. BUT I’d gladly go back 2 my previous tax burden 4 a solvent gov’t, support for vulnerable populations and money allocated towards healthcare for all, renewable energy and support 4 veterans. I know….I’m nuts.
1What the ***king moron followers do not grasp is that those are not the “unintended consequences” of Trickle Down economic theory. Vacuuming every last ruble from our pockets upward to the exploiter class has been the long term plan since before Reagan and probably prior to the New Deal. There is nothing unintended about this. Just as dismantling social programs has been the plan from the day any social program was launched. The large pool of money in the Social Security trust has been their lifelong achievement goal. It drives them to distraction. “Privatize” is merely a polite word for rape and pillage.
For profit prisons, health care and education are the insane crescendo to their insanity. Fiscal conservatism is the lie to the truth and facts of sound fiscal policy. Fiscally sound means investing in the future in terms of education dollars spent that return multiple times in revenue generated. Fiscally conservative means starving children of food and education to groom them as fodder for the prison industrial complex. Up is not down. It’s a flat out lie.
2It’s that time of election year again!
“The GOP’s most successful scam is about to reboot itself”
https://www.rawstory.com/2019/01/gops-successful-scam-reboot/
How the GOP used a two Santa Clauses tactic to con America for nearly 40 years
3https://www.rawstory.com/2018/02/gop-used-two-santa-clauses-tactic-con-america-nearly-40-years/
Trickle down works – it just takes time. Sure, it hasn’t worked in the 40 years they have been selling it – but any day now. Any day now. When I wonder who could be stupid enough to still buy into this, I remember hearing on MSNBC about a couple who needed a new roof. There evidently is a program to provide funds for it if you qualify. It’s one of the programs that donnie wants to rob, to pay for the wall. The couple was asked about how they felt losing a roof for a border wall. They said they would sacrifice their roof in order to help fund donnie’s wall. Literally giving up the roof over their heads for a stupid wall. BTW, they live several thousands of miles from a border. They will never see an immigrant in their life. It’s hard to fathom being this bean-dip dumb.
4I picked up take out dinner at one of our local Italian restaurants Sat. night. (Eggplant and chicken parmesan; yum!)
Most of the people hard at work behind the counter looked Hispanic. I don’t know what their immigration status is, and I don’t care. Experience shows me that nothing but good things happen while they’re around. OTOH, while Dotard 45 and the flying @$$monkeys are in charge had things happen…
5@ Cheryl: If all one listens to is Fox News, it’s not surprising that gullible folks can be convinced that caravans of drug gang members are streaming north to seize their wives and daughters.
Democracy only works if the voters are paying attention, and get their information from multiple sources. If all they hear is what Fox News says and their megachurch preacher reinforces, we’ll end up with an authoritarian government. Oddly, the very folks who claim they believe in “limited government” also want the government to have complete authority to run our lives…
6El Jefe,
7My biggest question is, if Trump is still around for the 2020 election, will they drop a coliseum full of Deficit Balloons onto the precedings when the nomination is wrapped up? In a moment of truth?
@ RepubAnon #6,
What floors me is how many gullible, ignorant Trumpsters either don’t understand or just plain ignore the fact that Fox News is an entertainment program, albeit all RWNJ propaganda. No facts or truth. I’m sure that their legal disclaimer that states for entertainment only is in very small print on the screen credits.
8Sorry, this is the Democrats’ downfall (e.g. Pelosi’s “PayGo”)
D’s believe National ‘Debt’ is like household debt. That’s only true if a household can create (non-counterfeit) currency.
National ‘Debt’ is much more like bank debt. Your bank account is your asset, but to the bank…it’s a liability (i.e. debt). When you write a check, you’re assigning a portion of the bank’s debt to the payee. Currency is just checks made out to “cash” in fixed amounts, and it appears on the central bank’s books as a liability, too.
Now imagine a group of depositors marching down to their bank (with pitchforks and torches) to demand the bank’s management reduce the size of its debt (i.e. the size of their accounts) by raising fees, or reducing interest paid on savings. Not very sensible, is it?
So those headlines reading “Despite ballooning ‘Debt’ the economy is prospering” should be “*BECAUSE OF* ballooning ‘Debt’….”
See https://www.huffingtonpost.com/l-randall-wray/the-federal-budget-is-not_b_457404.html
or, more recently… http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2019/02/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-22-trillion-national-debt-the-alternative-short-interview.html
Until Democrats understand this, they will continue to lose to embarrassments like Trump.
9Rick, sure, I’d go for that, provided they were lead balloon, weighing a couple of pounds each.
10Considering how profitable, for US Gov.< that the Mueeler investigation has been maybe we should let him loose on the banks and their ceo's like Jamie dimon.
11Or maybe just a wealthy task force to police the rich buying influence.
Betcha we would be able to take all of murrey coal and their owner's fortune down to the last penny.
Start up costs could be the money seized from demented donnies criminal activities and family.
When you are deluded enough to worship a conman as your god, you will believe literally anything to keep your faith. They profess that they are ready to suffer and die for that man. The problem is they are even more ready to sacrifice the rest of us. That’s why we’ve got to continue to resist- and to make jokes, preferably at their expense. There’s plenty of humor in the two faced hypocrisy of Republicans reversing every core principle, one by one, for the sake of the con man. They cared so much about fiscal responsibility! Hahahaha sure.
12Damn! This is sounding more and more like life under the tsars of old Russia. The wealthy have everything and everyone else ends up their slaves complete with beatings and starvation.
13This crap that has been released about how well the economy is doing is just that – a load of steaming caca del toro. I will see their statistics with this: the number of Americans who are 3 months in arrears on their car payments and mortgages, for instance. And yes that would include for certain all the federal workers that Trump abused lately. And all the Americans who still cannot afford health insurance, etc. etc. Thats what the economy really looks like.
I haven’t seen any reporting on the increase in the marginal tax rate on net taxable incomes of $9,256 – $18,650. In 2017, it was 10%; now, it’s 12% (for incomes over $18,650, the marginal rate has dropped, so those lucky folks do see a reduction in total tax).
If you file single and have non-taxable Social Security income, your income before taxes could easily be $46,000 – $56,000, which I think counts as “middle class,” so this isn’t a Middle Class Tax Cut for some of us.
Also, although the increase in the standard deduction is supposed to be a big deal, don’t forget that there’s no more personal exemption (about $4,000). Anecdotally, for 2017, my combined itemized deductions and exemption exceeded $13,600. For 2018, my itemized deductions were less than the standard deduction, so my net taxable income would have been higher.
14“The GOP invertebrates in Congress are doing nothing to check this president.”
I wonder what would lead anyone to think they wanted to?
15The Republicans are going to start screaming that we have to cut “entitlement spending” to get the deficit under control. It’s a win win for them, the 1 percent gets richer and the rest of us get blamed when the deficit skyrockets.
16Tax refunds are down (and taxes owed are up) for the majority of wage earners because Trump needed to lipstick those piggish tax giveaways to the upper crust by claiming falsely that there was a huge middle class cut embedded in his tax shifts. To cover that lie, he directed the IRS to issue new withholding tables that would increase take home while not warning that the piper would have to be paid on filing. Everything he touches becomes a Trump U.
17Magically increases revenue, my a$$. I don’t make squat and my taxes soared. Taxing millions of the poor must be his idea of soaring revenues.
18