President Trump’s greatest economy ever is an illusion.
It is based on the stimulus effects of increased national indebtedness caused by federal revenue losses from the Trump tax cuts.
Accordingly, Trump’s 2017 tax cuts are being paid for by increased borrowing to be repaid by future generations.
This has long been Republican policy.
The scheme is to cut taxes and increase spending thereby increasing the nation’s debt.
The rising national debt they caused is then used as an excuse to cut health care, Social Security, infrastructure and other domestic spending as unaffordable.
They are entirely affordable.
U.S. tax revenues as a percent of GDP are among the lowest in the industrialized world.
Social Security is a particularly fraudulent target for deficit reduction.
It has never added a dime to the nation’s debt, nor will it.
On the contrary, Social Security loaned the federal government almost $3 trillion to help finance federal deficits throughout the past 35 years.
Any future federal expenditure for Social Security will be to repay those loans.
In fact a preponderance of the U.S. national debt increase since 2000 was caused by tax cuts, wars and the 2007 recession.
Under Trump, these issues are resurfacing with a vengeance, especially as we are again at risk of a more dangerous war with Iran and its allies.
U.S. leadership did not have the courage to resist the pressure of Israel and Saudi Arabia to violate the Iran nuclear agreement.
U.S. leadership is running the nation off a cliff, again.
Malcolm McPhee,
Sequim