In a New Orleans Advocate article of 9/10 under Louisiana Politics, Ballard talks about a possible government shutdown when Congress returns to work this week. It is a familiar story of the GOP's threat to shut down government when the democratic party controls the White House and use government spending as their lies and misinformation to threaten the process. It is a different story when the GOP controls the White house and they not only increase spending to record levels, they also increase deficit spending to record levels and never talk about shutting down the government when in control.
Ballard notes that the Treasury Department reports that federal spending now stands at $5.3 trillion for the present fiscal year that ends September 30, 2023. But Ballard fails to note that under Trump and the GOP, federal spending for Trump's 3rd fiscal year came in at $6.5 trillion and in Trump's 4th and final fiscal year federal spending hit $6.8 trillion. Both were records. So Biden's fiscal year which ends at the end of this month will come in under $6 trillion which means his administration will once again reduce federal spending. And for the record, Biden's first fiscal year, federal spending was $6.2 trillion, down 8% from Trump's $6.8 trillion federal spending. When it comes to reducing federal spending, the democratic party can walk the talk, the GOP can not.
Shutting down the government has been a play thing for the GOP since the Newt Gingrich era. However, play things go along with fairy tales. No GOP administration has reduced year to year federal spending since President Eisenhower in 1955, but President Obama did in fiscal 2010, 2012 and fiscal 2013. And President Joe Biden did in fiscal 2022 and may likely do so again in fiscal 2023. In the past 43 years the largest reductions in federal spending took place on President's Clinton and Obama's watch and the largest increases by far took place on Reagan's, Bush 41, Bush 43 and Trump's watch.
Mark Ballard's article was a rehash of previous GOP threats to shut the government down and was non-informative in nature. Bill Cassidy and the GOP in congress who support the government shutdown were all silent the four years that Trump and his party were setting spending records. They were all ditto heads without plans or policies. Instead, they followed an extreme agenda of tax cuts for you know who when it was not necessary that reduced government revenues that were needed to finance needed services.
The media will continue it's negative reports on GOP threats to shutdown the government and fail to report the true facts, especially when it comes to increased spending. The public will hear only one side of the story every time as they are hearing now. This writer wonders if that is how they like it.
This commentary written by Joe Lorio
