OfTheCross
Veteran
This 2021 proposed budget is food 
Despite $4.4 Trillion in Spending Cuts, Trump's Budget Won't Balance Until 2035
On the campaign trail in 2016, President Donald Trump promised to eliminate the national debt in eight years. On Monday, he will propose a budget that won't even balance for another 15 years—a clear admission that he will leave the federal government's finances in a more precarious state than he found them.
Overall, federal spending would climb from $4.6 trillion next year to more than $6.5 trillion in 2030. The proposed domestic spending cuts in this year's budget are hardly enough to balance out the spending increases that Congress has passed and Trump has approved in recent years.
Trump's proposal would cut the federal deficit from over $1 trillion in the current fiscal year to a mere $966 billion next year—nearly 50 percent higher than the $666 billion deficit Trump inherited from President Barack Obama in 2017. Trump's budget would have the federal government operating in the red until 2035, the Journal reports.
It's important to keep in mind that all of this is likely the rosiest possible scenario for the federal budget. The budget proposal assumes 3 percent annual growth, a number that has not been achieved since the Bush administration—not even in the immediate aftermath of Trump's tax cuts, which briefly revved the economy—and one that far exceeds the Congressional Budget Office's estimated growth rate of 1.7 percent over the next decade.
The problem with all that is that a large and growing national debt reduces economic growth. The CBO projects that the average American household will lose between $2,000 and $6,000 in annual wealth by 2040 if the current trajectory continues. It also says America's GDP will shrink by 2 percent over the next two decades if current policies continue and the debt keeps growing.
But short-term thinking dominates Washington these days. And Trump, despite his outsider status, has quickly acclimated to the consensus political view that fixing the national debt will have to be the next president's problem.
Despite $4.4 Trillion in Spending Cuts, Trump's Budget Won't Balance Until 2035
On the campaign trail in 2016, President Donald Trump promised to eliminate the national debt in eight years. On Monday, he will propose a budget that won't even balance for another 15 years—a clear admission that he will leave the federal government's finances in a more precarious state than he found them.
Overall, federal spending would climb from $4.6 trillion next year to more than $6.5 trillion in 2030. The proposed domestic spending cuts in this year's budget are hardly enough to balance out the spending increases that Congress has passed and Trump has approved in recent years.
Trump's proposal would cut the federal deficit from over $1 trillion in the current fiscal year to a mere $966 billion next year—nearly 50 percent higher than the $666 billion deficit Trump inherited from President Barack Obama in 2017. Trump's budget would have the federal government operating in the red until 2035, the Journal reports.
It's important to keep in mind that all of this is likely the rosiest possible scenario for the federal budget. The budget proposal assumes 3 percent annual growth, a number that has not been achieved since the Bush administration—not even in the immediate aftermath of Trump's tax cuts, which briefly revved the economy—and one that far exceeds the Congressional Budget Office's estimated growth rate of 1.7 percent over the next decade.
The problem with all that is that a large and growing national debt reduces economic growth. The CBO projects that the average American household will lose between $2,000 and $6,000 in annual wealth by 2040 if the current trajectory continues. It also says America's GDP will shrink by 2 percent over the next two decades if current policies continue and the debt keeps growing.
But short-term thinking dominates Washington these days. And Trump, despite his outsider status, has quickly acclimated to the consensus political view that fixing the national debt will have to be the next president's problem.
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