Last month, the Congressional Budget Office announced that the federal budget deficit had hit $895 billion and would rise to $1 trillion before the year ends — earlier than predicted. They attributed the growth to the tax cuts and spending bills.
The military budget for FY2018 is only $717 billion, or,
Why Military Spending Is More Than You Think It Is
BY KIMBERLY AMADEO, The Balance (investment blog)
Updated September 04, 2018Estimated U.S. military spending is $892 billion.That’s from the spending bill signed by President Trump on August 13, 2018….
Actually, that’s only the half of it. (Or, technically, two thirds of it.)
GOPs in Congress just voted to make the tax cuts for the wealthy permanent.
This would add (projected) another half trillion dollars plus to the deficit. Think Progress continues … (OK, retro-continues, since this is from further up the article):
As the nation watched the Senate Judiciary Committee meet to consider whether to rush through the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, the House Republican majority was quietly passing the Protecting Family and Small Business Tax Cuts Act of 2018— a bill to make the Trump tax cuts for the rich permanent. According to the GOP-controlled Joint Committee on Taxation and the Congressional Budget Office, the bill would add another $545 billion to the federal budget deficit over the next decade.
[…]
The so-called “Tax Cuts 2.0” legislation was backed by 217 House Republicans and 3 Democrats.
I seem to recall this whole angry movement based on a caffeine-based beverage that claimed the whole debt load and deficit was going to kill their grandchildren.
No, seriously. They were influential. They were angry. They wore funny hats.
They pretended to be “Minutemen” and waved the first flag of the Secession, the Gadsden flag, days after Lincoln’s election in 1860.
First flag of secession, Savannah, Georgia, 8 Nov 1860
(detail – Library of Congress)
They made angry placards. They made signs that said: Your mortgage is not my business! (Which is funny, if you ask the residents of Detroit, Michigan and Flint, Michigan.) They made threatening signs that said: We came unarmed THIS TIME.
And they handed the reins of Congress over to the GOP, who only seem to be against deficit spending when it’s Democratic deficit spending. When they do it? IOKIYAR.
But I want you to stop for a minute and ask yourself: how did the GOP manage to put the ENTIRE PENTAGON BUDGET and all related items on the credit card with another $100 billion to play around with for Space Forces?
How did the GOP put all of our defense spending on the credit card this year? And why does no one notice?
After preaching its horrors and being buoyed up by an army of angry deficit hawks in three-cornered hats, the GOP has blithely tossed that entire 2010 raison d’être in the trashcan and by pressing the buttons, the selfsame voters are now retroactively aggrieved by Brett Kavanaugh’s ill treatment.
I begin to believe that the modern Republican party, as formulated, is less a structured political consensus than a vast Skinnerian Conditioning laboratory.
Or, Pavlov’s dog says “woof!”
Courage.
This has been cross-posted from his vorpal sword.
A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog, His Vorpal Sword (no spaces) dot com.