Coming up to a budget showdown again

Trump’s deficit-reduction directive came last month, after the White House reported a large increase in the deficit for the previous 12 months. The announcement unnerved Republicans and investors, helping fuel a big sell-off in the stock market. Two days after the deficit report, Trump floated a surprise demand to his Cabinet secretaries, asking them to identify steep cuts in their agencies.

  WaPo

Well, they can't cut back on salaries, because they've already whittled down their personnel to skeleton crews.

Administration officials have, for now, crafted a sparse plan that would recycle past proposals and call on Congress to trim federal spending on a variety of programs, two White House officials said.

Let me guess: environmental protections and social services.

But even as he has demanded deficit reduction, Trump has handcuffed his advisers with limits on what measures could be taken. And almost immediately after demanding the cuts from his Cabinet secretaries, Trump suggested that some areas — particularly the military — would be largely spared.

The president has said no changes can be made to Medicare and Social Security, two of the government’s most expensive entitlements, as he has promised that the popular programs will remain untouched.

Apparently someone has convinced him that would be risking political support.

When staffers sought to include an attack on Democrats’ Medicare-for-all proposals in Trump’s campaign speeches this fall, he initially blanched, two administration aides said. Medicare is popular, he said, and voters want it. Eventually, he agreed to the attack if he could say Democrats were going to take the entitlement away.

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The plan is not expected to include large-scale tax increases, which would be a non-starter with congressional Republicans.

In total, government debt has risen roughly $2 trillion since Trump took office, and the federal government now owes $21.7 trillion, according to the Treasury Department. The president’s agenda has contributed to that increase and is projected to continue to do so, both through the GOP tax cut and with bipartisan spending increases.

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Three former senior administration officials said the deficit issue was rarely brought up in Trump’s presence because he had no interest in discussing it.

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Trump also repeatedly told Cohn to print more money, according to three White House officials familiar with his comments.

“He’d just say, run the presses, run the presses,” one former senior administration official said, describing the president’s Oval Office orders. “Sometimes it seemed like he was joking, and sometimes it didn’t.”

Frankly, I'm never sure why that wouldn't just be acceptable anyway. We run this country on fiat money.

Government spending is largely broken into two categories. There are programs that are automatically funded, such as Medicare and Social Security, and programs that must be funded by Congress each year, such as the military, housing, intelligence and transportation.

I wish they'd stop talking about Social Security as though it were part of the entire government budget. Social Security funds itself. Nobody seems to make that distinction.  At least since Trump I haven't heard the usual scare reporting that Social Security is going broke.

Two current aides said they had not heard Trump make that comment in recent months, and he is changing his tune on the budget in public statements.

“We’re going to start paying down debt,” Trump said during a White House event last month. “We have a lot of debt.”

Trump often uses “debt” — the total amount the government owes — to refer to the deficit, the annual gap between what the government takes in and what it spends.

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Because the government spends much more than it brings in through taxes, it must borrow money to cover the balance by issuing debt. The U.S. Treasury projects it will issue $1.3 trillion in new debt this year, more than double its borrowing from one year ago.

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During President Barack Obama’s last year in office, the deficit was $587 billion, a decrease from years when it had reached $1 trillion annually in the aftermath of the financial crisis.

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Trump also is often not versed in the particulars of the federal budget.

Chief of Staff John F. Kelly has told others about watching television with Trump and asking the president how much the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff earns. Trump guessed $5 million, according to people who were told the story by Kelly, startling the chief of staff. Kelly responded that he made less than $200,000. The president suggested he get a large raise and noted the number of stars on his uniform.

Even as Trump has told aides he’s finally interested in taking steps to reduce deficits, he has floated several ideas that would further expand them. He has proposed a 10 percent tax cut for the middle class, a huge package of infrastructure spending and billions of dollars for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. He hasn’t specified how he would pay for any of those things.

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Over a round of golf at Trump National Golf Club in Virginia last year, Sen. Bob Corker encouraged the president to push for deficit-control measures and to force Republicans to cut spending.

Trump was dismissive of the Tennessee Republican’s request. “The people want their money,” the president said, according to two people familiar with the exchange.

Don't bother him with trivialities. He's ruined more companies than you've ever even thought of. And that didn't prevent him from becoming the most powerful political figure in the world.

 ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.