dagblog - Comments for "Trump plan will drop GOP's traditional goal of balancing the budget within 10 years"

Intelligence official warns

artappraiser — Wed, 14 Feb 2018 06:28:45 +0000

In reply to Trump plan will drop GOP's traditional goal of balancing the budget within 10 years

Intelligence official warns Trump administration on national debt

By Josh Gerstein @ Politico.com, 02/13

Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats used a Senate hearing Tuesday to do something unusual: take a swipe at both the Trump administration and Congress for allowing federal deficits and debt to spiral upward.

Just one day after President Donald Trump submitted a budget that fails to balance spending and revenue in the next decade — and less than a week after Congress struck a spending deal that would drive up the national debt by more than $500 billion — the former Republican senator from Indiana said Washington’s lack of fiscal discipline undermines national security [.....]

Finally, someone answering

artappraiser — Wed, 14 Feb 2018 06:19:41 +0000

In reply to Trump plan will drop GOP's traditional goal of balancing the budget within 10 years

Finally, someone answering the question this enquiring mind wanted to know, my underlining:

Who Produced Trump's Budget? Not Trump

The plan sent to Congress is from the OMB director. The president will have little interest in fighting for it.

Op-ed by Jonathan Bernstein @ Bloomberg.com, Feb. 12

[....] As Ezra Klein points out, there's a pretty good-sized disconnect between a budget plan that slashes domestic spending and the congressional spending bill that the president endorsed and signed last week to increase that same category:

The Trump White House that built this budget exists in a different universe than the Trump White House that's backing the congressional spending deal. It's weird.
— Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) February 12, 2018

Perhaps one answer to this is to make a distinction: The plan the OMB sent to Congress is not, in any real way, the president's budget proposal. It's the proposal of OMB Director Mick Mulvaney and is the equivalent of a House Freedom Caucus document. It includes proposals that Trump has little interest in supporting or fighting for.

White House budgets in normal times are often treated with disdain by Congress, although less so during periods of unified party government. Still, no matter how often the budget is declared dead on arrival, the annual document is still normally regarded as a statement of the president's preferences and priorities.

Congressional leaders and appropriators won't treat this budget that way. They've learned that Trump is indifferent to most policy questions, inconsistent on others, and easily rolled on almost anything. They know he doesn't even bother reading his presidential daily brief -- so there's no reason to think "his" budget is anything different. It doesn't help that Trump, unlike normal presidents, didn't coordinate initiatives [.....]

Look at what they do, meaning

AmericanDreamer — Tue, 13 Feb 2018 14:56:56 +0000

In reply to Also, back to your first WaPo

Look at what they do, meaning in particular how they vote, not what they say. I guess you don't perceive a clear direction to GOP budget and economic policies in recent decades. I do.

And here's all I think that

artappraiser — Tue, 13 Feb 2018 06:51:51 +0000

In reply to Alice in Wonderland territory

And here's all I think that needs to be posted on the infrastructure scam:

Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.), another member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, criticized the proposal for moving money around.

“It’s not new money. It is the repurposing of existing programs,” Garamendi told The Hill. “They’ve moved the money from existing programs to their new programs and say they got $200 billion over 10 years. No they don’t. It’s the same $200 billion that would be spent on ongoing programs.”

from Trump infrastructure plan gets cold reception @ TheHil.com- 02/12/18 07:22 PM EST

Alice in Wonderland territory

PeraclesPlease — Tue, 13 Feb 2018 06:04:36 +0000

In reply to Also, back to your first WaPo

Alice in Wonderland territory - "deficit means what I want it to mean, nothing more, nothing less". Give it to the guy experienced in bankruptcy. The "businessman". Wonders never cease.

Also, back to your first WaPo

artappraiser — Tue, 13 Feb 2018 05:54:22 +0000

In reply to I don't buy it that it is a

Also, back to your first WaPo link

[....] But the main explanation for the Republican makeover is the man in the Oval Office.

Trump, who proclaimed “I love debt” in a 2016 interview, showed little concern about relying on heavy borrowing in his business career. Between 1991 and 2009, six of his businesses filed for bankruptcy, and by the late 1990s, major New York banks no longer would lend him money. A political chameleon who has shifted between the two parties numerous times, Trump has never embraced the sort of austerity favored by budget cutters such as Ryan.

“The president has enormous influence, and he’s not an orthodox Republican,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, an economist who advised the 2008 presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). “It does limit what’s feasible to get done. The president has the pen. That’s the reality.”[....]

in addition, it's very interesting that there's less passion among voters about balancing the budget

The deficit also has faded as an issue of public concern. In a January poll by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation, 17 percent of voters said the budget deficit was “the most important issue.” That included only 14 percent of self-identified Republicans, less than the 17 percent of Democrats who said the deficit was the top priority.

In comparison, a combined 29 percent of voters in March 2011 told Bloomberg that the deficit was their top issue.

I don't buy it that it is a

artappraiser — Tue, 13 Feb 2018 05:20:26 +0000

In reply to ...and part 2 of the GOP

I don't buy it that it is a thought out unified plan long in the making ? These are conflicting party messages right in your article:

Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), the leader of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, said the bargain was unacceptable. “The swamp won,” he said. “And the American taxpayer lost.”

“This is Trump’s party right now,” Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), a frequent critic of the president, said in a phone interview.

To some degree, the president and his congressional allies are harking back to the policies of a free-spending, tax-cutting predecessor Trump has long maligned — George W. Bush.

There's these two pieces at Politico I read;

The only certainty in Trump's budget: Oceans of red ink

Even if the president were to get the spending cuts and economic growth he wants, deficits would explode to $7.1 trillion over the next decade.

By David Rogers, Feb. 12

[....] Trump is ordering Republicans back to the trenches to fight nondefense appropriations. But he himself shows little appetite still for taking the lead in a major way on more difficult entitlement issues.

The bottom line is that Congress and the president, like Wall Street already, will soon be keeping a closer eye on Treasury bond rates [....]

and

'Never been a more discouraging time' for Washington's deficit hawks

02/12/2018 07:36 PM EST

then there's this, also @ Politico

Lawmakers promise bipartisan ‘no’ to Trump plan for cutting diplomacy and aid money

By Nahal Toosi

at The Hill

His get tough with the drug companies blather has proved to be just blather

Trump fires first salvo on drug prices

By Peter Sullivan - 02/12/18 08:32 PM EST

and this utter nonsense that's not going to happen this way, factoring in Obamacare repeal:

Overnight Health Care: Trump budget seeks savings through ObamaCare repeal | Trump would cut health department funds by 21 percent | Proposed changes to anti-drug office spark pushback

BY RACHEL ROUBEIN AND JESSIE HELLMANN - 02/12/18 07:45 PM EST

Yes, Trump has presented a budget that is trying to slash all kinds of domestic social programs. But everyone in Congress knows that those are a drop in the bucket and it is just typical GOP modus operandi for propaganda effect, including sop things like stopping giving NPR any money because it aggravates conservative constituents.

Looks like chaos to me. They are split several ways and then there's Trump: what it looks like he is trying to do: BLAME THEM for the deficit by producing a phony budget that purports to have all the needed savings in it.

...and part 2 of the GOP

AmericanDreamer — Mon, 12 Feb 2018 17:02:30 +0000

In reply to Trump plan will drop GOP's traditional goal of balancing the budget within 10 years

...and part 2 of the GOP aspiration..."White House budget proposes increase to defense spending, and cuts to safety net, but federal deficit would remain", Damian Paletta, today's WaPo: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-agony-of-the-moderate-left/2...

Federal deficit must remain to provide the rationale for further proposed safety net cuts to come. This has been a long time in the making.