It is no coincident that the readers of PolitiDose know who the big spenders really are in Washington. And like wise, not surprising when Trump's Treasury Secretary announced this week that the federal deficit at the end of Trump's very first fiscal year (9/30/18) came in at $779 billion, the highest deficit in 6 years and 17% higher than President Obama's last fiscal year deficit that ended on 9/30/17. It was all predicted in commentary by PolitiDose many times because of precedent.
Other information given out by Treasury: (1) Corporate tax collections fell 22% in fiscal 2018. A result of the Trump-GOP tax cut that reduced the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%. (2) Interest paid on the national debt was the highest ever at $523 billion. (3) The total federal debt which combines annual deficits was 78% of the nations entire gross domestic product in June, the largest since WWII. (4) The Trump administration reported next years deficit will be over $1 trillion.
It should be remembered that President Trump and the republican controlled congress promised the tax cuts would produce more revenue and pay for themselves. Reagan and Bush 43 promised the same fairy tale after their tax cuts but it never took place. William Gale, a senior fellow at Brookings Institution said, by cutting taxes in 2017 when the economy was already strong, congress and the Trump administration not only missed a golden opportunity to begin to address the fiscal problem, they actually made the problem worse. And most news media people still try to pass the republican party off as conservative and that they are the party of balanced budgets. It is also worthwhile to remember that no republican President has balance a federal budget since Dwight Eisenhower in 1960, well over 50 years ago.
But PolitiDose told the true republican story for the last 8 years in commentary. And Trump continues the lies of Reagan, Bush 43 and the GOP in congress. PolitiDose also informed its readers the republican strategy is to bankrupt the federal government so as to have an excuse to repeal and or cut severely Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. And sure enough, after the Treasury announcement concerning the deficit, Mitch McConnell, republican leader of the Senate said that after the Nov. 6 elections the republicans in congress would move to cut those programs.
In the next month or so the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Management and Budget will come out with their final numbers for fiscal 2018. We will then know if the numbers furnished by Treasury are accurate or not. The shame of the republicans tax cuts since Reagan is the big lie to their own base. And in the case of President Trump, who lies about everything, it has become policy.
PolitiDose, your daily dose of political commentary will continue to inform its readers what to expect in the future if Trump and the republicans still control both houses of congress after the November 6 elections.
This commentary written by Joe Lorio
