Still Waiting For The Winning

Trump, and a GOP controlled Congress that hasn’t upheld Republican principles since the mid-nineties and seems to be herniating itself to out-Trump Trump in terms of giving goodies to populist bases, has just passed a budget bill that only Chuckles Schumer could love.

And he does.

Note to Trumpkins in the audience:  the Growth Fairy will only reduce the deficit if you stop spending money faster than you can create wealth.

33 thoughts on “Still Waiting For The Winning

  1. Ronald Reagan’s budget was declared “Dead On Arrival” by Tip O’Neill, Speaker of the House (D-Mass). Spent too much on the military, not enough on social programs.

    Reagan bought off Democrats to get the votes he needed to buy the military he needed to bring down the Soviet Union. I think it was a worthwhile trade.

    Trump isn’t Reagan, but Reagan wasn’t one of the choices on my ballot. My test remains: Is Trump acting as Hillary would have acted? No? Still not as bad as Hillary would have been? Alright then, good to go. Carry on.

  2. I know this is bad budget, but I find it disconcerting that the GOP-controlled Congress gets so little heat for producing something that is anti-traditional conservative (the Never Trumpers bailiwick) and anti-Trump (no or incomplete wall funding). But it’s always about Trump.

  3. … and another thing… on a different but related-to-my-rant note… yes, the DEA is heavy-handed in their actions regarding the opioid crisis, but the laws are written by Congress and they, again, get no heat for their sitting-on-their-ass incompetence… they do get pensions tho’.

  4. “We’ve got to get rid of the $19 trillion in debt. — Well, I would say over a period of eight years. And I’ll tell you why.” ~ Candidate You-Know-Who

  5. Pingback: In The Mailbox: 03.23.18 : The Other McCain

  6. Remove the emotional reaction to big deficits. Think like a political scientist.
    If both parties rack up trillion dollar annual deficits, it is because the constituency to do this is stronger than the constituency for not doing this, and party ID doesn’t matter, e.g., there are both large GOP and Democrat constituencies to deficit spend.
    Standing in the way of that would be like standing in the path of a train. If the GOP congress held the line on deficit spending, they would likely be tossed out in the next election and their replacements would be deficit doves.

  7. Trump touted more than $250 billion in Chinese deals on his trip to China last November. Yet many of those deals, including some involving major US-based multinationals such as Boeing, Caterpillar and GE, may now be vulnerable. You think he has connected the dots on this? I very much doubt it.

    One of the most interesting aspects of Trump’s presidency is how earnest journalists constantly look for method in the madness. I’ll concede there is some but it is only method in the basest sense. The WSJ had an article yesterday proposing that Trump was following a sophisticated philosophy of providing America with victory through chaos to destabilize his opponents. We now have way too much counter evidence to support such a view. He may like chaos but only because it makes it harder to focus on just how atrociously inappropriate this man is a leader, at any level.
    Trump just likes squabbles because it makes him feels like he is doing something. He believes conflict is good, so he constantly on the look out for more. He will eventually over play his hand.

    It will be interesting to see how the next tranche of airliner orders go. Up until now China has pretty much balanced orders between Boeing and Airbus. They don’t need to introduce formal sanctions, just stop buying from Boeing. The loser in the Trump trade war will be US companies and workers.

  8. Wonderful to see Emery arguing Trump should have vetoed the bill and shut down the government rather sign the bill and increase the debt. Wonderful.

  9. Not thrilled with the budget but he’s solidifying a GOP majority for the next 30+ years. Also he’s been far more conservative and effective than Reagan, according to Heritage Foundation Mitch. Who would you rather have in the Oval Office now?

  10. PoD, sTrumpet is still a fuckhead for singing the fucking bill created by uniparty fuckheads in the Congress. Stop putting liptstick on a fucking pig and deflect the conversation to non-sequitur ‘who would you rather have in the WH?” Call out the fucking pig for what it is – a fucking pig. Same goes for you too, JD. This is a fucked up deal by fucking uniparty congresscritters signed by a fuckhead sTrumpet. And yes, in this case sTrumpet acted EXACTLY as sHrillary would. sTrumpet just outsmarted and neutered himself. Sad, sad day.

  11. solidifying a GOP majority for the next 30+ years.

    PoD, time to stop taking those psychotropic drugs. Fuckhead congresscritters and sTrumpet just signed a death warrant for GOP. Unless by GOP you mean a uniparty libturd swamp who does not know how to spell “conservative” and breaks every conservative promise they make. I am sure this is EXACTLY what you had in mind when you pulled the lever for sTtrumpet.

  12. Wonderful to see Emery arguing Trump should have vetoed the bill and shut down the government rather sign the bill and increase the debt. Wonderful.

    TDS, JD. It is incurable.

  13. Running such enormous deficits during a period of growth and low unemployment is insane. It will be some sort of poetic justice, if like his businesses before him, he bankrupts the entire country.

  14. JPA, go vote libertarian and leave politics to the grown ups then.

  15. Trump ~ ‘I ‘m against the bill that’s why I’m going to sign it. But I’m for the bill because I signed it. I’ll never sign a bill like this again except when I do.’

    We cut taxes by $1.5 trillion with a bill that nobody read. We’re spending $1.3 trillion in a bill that nobody read. That’s almost $3 trillion.

    Pretty soon, we’ll be talking real money..

  16. Trump got the tax cuts through when the chattering class said was impossible. AmI thrilled with this budget? No, but its one less bullet the dems have for the midterms now. Sometimes you have to limit your losses, which is what this bill does. It keeps the government open and its not devesdating politically. Sue me for looking at this from a pragmatic and not a dogmatic view

  17. The only thing this drama circus revealed is that Trump supporters are a bunch of cultist rubes.

  18. I’m a cultish rube? Please explain, I’m dying to hear this one.

  19. JPA, you’re angry Trump signed the spending bill. What, specifically, is wrong with it? What should have been taken out – or what added in – to make it acceptable?

  20. The status quo these days is to elect outsider candidates who will shake up the status quo. We have become so fixated with out of the box thinkers that no one is left who can figure out to make their way inside the box. Radicalism is the new complacency.
    The genius of Trump is that he has recognized that tribal sentiment matters as much as statistics.

  21. Say Emery? Speaking on behalf of the reprobate left, would you say Trump fucked you too hard, not hard enough, or just right?

    Just purr or wield a clawless paw in answer, pussy

  22. “Radicalism is the new complacency”
    Maybe the counter culture is the new establishment?
    “The genius of Trump is that he has recognized that tribal sentiment matters as much as statistics.”
    That’s not genius, that’s common sense.
    Tribal sentiment merely means that people tend to share values with people who were raised with those values. This is as true of the educated elite as it is with nationalists. The difference is that the educated elite believe that their values are an objective truth. Uh, no.

  23. JD, I’ll get back to you when i had a chance to read all 2,300ish pages. Unlike all the uber intellects in congress, i do not possess superhuman speed reading skills. But for starters, how about funding for the wall and defunding PP?

  24. PoD, do you REALLY believe signing this bill was a good idea? REALLY? And if not, why are defending it?

  25. The reason the feds can deficit spend is because deficit spending is sometimes neccessary — to fight a war or combat a depression.
    When was the last time that was necessary? The feds have tools other than deficit spending to stimulate investment and fight a recession. They have control of interest rates and encourage consumer spending w/o handing people buckets of money. If we had a necessary war, a supermajority would be available to approve deficit spending.
    But I don’t hink it can be stopped. The federal government is not a rational actor. I expect that within my lifetime the entire federal budget will be spent on entitlements, with what is left over reserved for defense.
    Weimar Germany faced the problem of insurmountable debt. The cure was to issue a new currency backed by physical assets. I suppose that is in our future at some point. The question is, who gets a haircut? I hope that it is foreigners & financiers. That is what happened when the Germans replaced paper marks with the reichsmark in 1924.

  26. Sometimes people will say that democracy will only last until the people realize that they control the purse strings of the state.
    But the alternative forms of goverment (oligarchy, monarchy, tyranny) have been just as bad or worse. The Romans were constantly adulterating their currency. So were the Medieval kings. So were the Italian city-states (run by oligarchies).
    What example of wise fiscal management should we follow?

  27. In the 18th century the British banks had a policy. Bring them a pound of gold, and they would give you a gold sovereign, an ounce of pure gold, legal currency, in the form of a coin. They charged nothing for this service. The goal was for the British Crown to capture as much of the world’s gold as possible, and especially to take it from the French (the French Crown charged a 5% or 10% fee to turn bullion into gold). It was a highly successful strategy, but it was a strategy that was intended to produce results in the short term. It turned out to have long term economic benefits for the Brits. It made the British Pound the reserve currency for over a century. The strength of the Pound made the British empire. But the zero minting fee wasn’t intended to do that, it was intended to fill the king’s purse during its 18th century military ‘adventurism”.
    Anyone who tells you that macroeconomics is a science is blowing smoke. No one knows what the Hell is going on.

  28. Should be ounce of bullion, not pound of bullion . . . easy to get confused, an ounce of gold was considered the equivalent of a pound of silver.

  29. Help wanted signs are everywhere. QE and money printing for 8 straight years under the Obama administration and now Trump says more is better than less. Let the good times roll. We will never ever see the boogie man ever again. We just print print print and enjoy. Payback for the hamburger will never be a problem because Tuesday will never come. Let the good times roll.

  30. The deficit spending irritates me, yes, but what irritates me more is that we are not having any discussion of the moral implications of the budget. How many things that we’re funding simply siphon off money from one group to another? How can we, per Walter Williams, justify this? This goes for Planned Infanticide funding, yes, but it also goes for the other ~ $200 billion of corporate welfare. For that matter, the most common health problem for the poor is being overweight. Maybe somebody needs to take a close look and figure out just how many calories we’re providing in our food programs.

    But, good luck getting that kind of thinking done in a world that eagerly buys votes.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.