the Pentagon, which has spent years complaining about spending restraints that were introduced in 2011, will get an eighty-billion-dollar increase in its budget for this year, and an extra eighty-five billion dollars for next year.
.. All told, the deal authorizes about three hundred billion dollars in new spending over the next two years.
.. Gross domestic product .. is currently about twenty trillion dollars
.. the G.O.P. tax bill will reduce tax payments by about a hundred and thirty-five billion dollars in the 2018 fiscal year, and by two hundred and eighty billion dollars in the 2019 fiscal year.
.. If you add it to the additional spending in the budget deal, you’ve got a pretty big “Trump stimulus.”
.. the over-all effect of the tax bill and the spending deal would be about 1.25 per cent of G.D.P. for this calendar year, and two per cent for the next.
.. the Obama stimulus of 2009 through 2011 .. totalled about two per cent of G.D.P. each year
.. Many economics textbooks say this is the sort of environment in which the government should be balancing its books, and perhaps even paying down deb
.. in 2011 prompted members of the Party to refuse to raise the debt ceiling, is purely cynical.
.. The Reagan Administration and the George W. Bush Administration both raided the public purse to finance big tax cuts, and left the deficit much higher than they found it. The Trump Administration is merely following suit.
.. “As long as there is still slack in corners of the labor market, then this kind of fiscal stimulus of the economy near full employment is a kind of test I support.”
Fraudulence of the Fiscal Hawks
In 2011, House Republicans, led by Paul Ryan, issued a report full of dire warnings about the dangers of budget deficits.
.. Citing the horrors of big deficits, Republicans refused to raise the federal debt ceiling
.. How big were these horrifying deficits? In the 2012 fiscal year the federal deficit was $1.09 trillion. Much of this deficit, however, was a direct result of a depressed economy
.. If anything, we should be using this time of relatively full employment to pay down debt, or at least reduce it relative to G.D.P.
.. They are providing more stimulus to an economy with 4 percent unemployment than they were willing to allow an economy with 8 percent unemployment.
.. Republicans weren’t just vehemently opposed to fiscal stimulus; they were also vehemently opposed to monetary stimulus. Basically, they were against anything that might help the economy on President Obama’s watch... imposing austerity in a depressed economy, then running up the deficit when we’re already near full employment
Why Donald Trump’s tweets are only going to get worse
Like others who feel frustrated by their day jobs, the president vents on social media.
Trump is tweeting like a crazy old man for three reasons. First, he has little choice but to spend the next six months or so — at a minimum — on thorny issues that have little upside for him:
- North Korea,
- a longer-term lift of the debt ceiling, funding the federal government,
- dealing with the “dreamers.”
All of these issues will require him to make compromises that are necessary but are of little benefit to him. In these circumstances, Twitter can function as a venue for him to blow off steam.
Second, in dealing with all of these issues, Trump will have to do things that will alienate the parts of his base that believed in him. In the past week, we have seen the likes of Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham and Mickey Kaus go ballistic about the possibility of a deal on the dreamers. The easiest way for Trump to counteract any criticism he gets from Trump-friendly pundits is to feed his base some form of red meat. Tweets about Hillary Clinton could do the trick.
.. Third, Trump possesses such an oppositional personality that he needs to find ways to rebel against the constraints that John F. Kelly has placed on his White House staff. As his sycophants depart, Twitter is the one place where he can quickly get a similar hit of flattery.
.. Yes, most of his tweets are outrageous, but they are also toothless. Some might argue that simply shrugging off deranged tweets is normalizing the Trump administration. The thing is, we are only nine months into the lamest administration in modern history. Outrage needs to be conserved as a resource for the important stuff... It is a little more surprising to see him squander the one tool he mastered during the presidential campaign. Back in January, his bravado on Twitter seemed genuinely menacing. In the run-up to Inauguration Day, he could tweet at a company and its stock price buckled... What has changed in the past nine months is that Trump has been proven to be a weak and feckless president... At this point, when Trump promises or threatens on Twitter, no one believes him. As he acts more and more hysterical online, he will further erode his ability to use social media to set the agenda.
McConnell Says Democrats’ Glee on Debt Limit Deal Was Premature
Mr. McConnell said that he insisted the newly passed legislation preserve Treasury’s ability to apply “extraordinary measures” and shift money within government accounts to pay off debt and extend federal borrowing power.
That will delay the need for another increase in the debt limit well beyond the December deadline that Democrats have been trumpeting as their big moment of leverage.
.. In fact, Mr. McConnell said, the debt limit will not have to be increased until well into 2018, taking that volatile subject off the table for the December spending talks, and eliminating the Democrats’ most dangerous bargaining chip in the first round of negotiations.
.. “One of the advantages of being the majority leader is you control the paper,” Mr. McConnell said, referring to legislation. “I wrote it in such a way that it does not prevent what is frequently done, which is the use of extraordinary measures. The minority leader and his team were trying to get us not to write it that way, but I did write it that way and that is the way it passed.”
.. Under the scenario Mr. McConnell sketched out, the December talks will now focus on hurricane relief and other budgetary matters and the administration can tell Democrats “see you next year on the debt ceiling.”
.. “I think I can safely say the debt ceiling and the spending issue in December will be decoupled because the debt ceiling will not come up until sometime in 2018,” he said.