Except revenue is up.
100bn more revenue
271bn more spending
168bn more deficit
Simple math.
While true, what you are ignoring is the “more” part applied across the board including deficit addition. The point being we did not have an economic reason to add to deficits if the economy was doing well.
What Trump and Republicans in the 115th Congress really did was quintuple down on a failed ideology.
During times of economic growth we should not be needing to add to deficits, but Trump and Republicans did so anyway and put us on a course where deficits are on the incline as we approach our next economic cycle peak. FY2019 will end up close to $960 billion and for FY2020 it will eclipse $1 Trillion. There is no known principle of economics that suggests adding to deficits just cause, and if our “great great economy” was so great it would not need this sort of fiscal policy.
Look at it this way, Republicans knowingly or not are further marrying economic direction on government spending dependence which is every bit anti-capitalist as you can be.
Those of us awake the day they taught economics in economics class already knows the government is an active part of the economy, and is the one entity in the GDP math that can come in and deal with aggregate demand fault.
When the economy goes south, it is up to the GS part of the GDP equation to come in with less consideration for tax revenues (i.e. deficits should increase.) When the economy is going well, it is up to the government to consider their spending in relation to what tax revenues are generating (i.e. deficits should decrease.)
Trump and Republicans in the 115th decided their buddies wanted a tax break and changed the tax revenue line at a point when the economy is going well, that was unnecessary and put us on a fiscal course where deficits are sharply up FY2018 to FY2019 to FY2020 and when the economy goes south the government will be in a worse fiscal position to do their one job when that happens. Even as a percentage of GDP conditions are not good. FY2018 the number was something like 3.8%, for FY2020 it will end up being 5.1% with no real indication that the thread will change course.
Republicans have always failed at this. The tax breaks end up never paying for themselves because the debt shows first and carries, spending predictably goes up anyway, deficits go up at the wrong time economically speaking, and ultimately Total Debt goes up anyway. Tax revenues never bring it all back, and never seem to line up to where we are in the economic cycle.
You “fiscal conservatives” realize (while supposedly always so worried about fiscal policy, the value of money, and debt) that we have broken 4 treasury auctions in a row? And that has not happened in over a decade. Literally in the Fed notes they mention that banks are clogged with money to loan.
Now come back with how Trump and Republicans in the 115th did the right thing, go ahead convince me. And that is the point of this thread, if the economy is doing so well we have no real reason to run the deficits we are.
