The Truth about our debt, DeSantis, Trump and the Republican Party
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Okay, all anybody can talk about is the debt ceiling. What is gonna happen next? Well, we’re gonna have a little fun. We’re gonna make a smoothie. That’s right, we’re going to do a Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis debt ceiling Republican smoothie. How does that sound? Mm, yummy. No. All right, let’s first, let’s start off with, yeah, we’ll start off with this part of the smoothie. We’ll start off with the Republicans.
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that, how shall I put it, are full of crap. You got the Freedom Caucus out there and they’re yelling and screaming and pounding their fists and talking about how this deal is ridiculous and it’s trillions of dollars and more spending. Again, reality check, okay? You lost. You’ve lost multiple
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elections you don’t have, don’t have, again maybe I could maybe do a little refresher when it comes to the United States Constitution. You don’t have the executive branch of government, you don’t have the legislative branch of government, and you got well you got half of that you’re splitting the legislative branch of government. So if you know take the judicial and we’ll put that aside you’ve got one out of three.
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Got one out of three, okay? What you need to do, again, you can hold the line, do all sorts of things, but you’re gonna need to compromise. And that’s exactly what this is. Now, I do think, I do believe that a lot of what you’re seeing by these members of the Freedom Caucus is a show. It’s a show, it makes for great YouTube videos and campaigning and all sorts of good stuff. Now, put that aside.
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Do I happen to agree with the points that they’re making? I do. I don’t like this deal either. But it’s the best damn deal you’re going to get for crying out loud. What else do you expect when you have one out of the three? What are you expecting to achieve? Again, people, let’s talk about Republicans.
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bit more, shall we? Next we had Ron DeSantis, he came out saying that he was against this deal. Again, like I said, you can be against the deal.
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Now what? That’s great. That’s great. I can be against the freezing cold weather in New York in the winter time, but I live, I’ve nothing I can do about it. It is what it is, okay? There’s a certain reality out there. You gotta understand the terrain, guys. Oh, you think it’s gonna be a good idea to keep pushing this forward. You think that’s gonna be a winner.
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Yeah, it’s going to be a winner come the next election cycle. No, the public is going to view you as again, as a bunch of wackos. And that’s the problem. It’s a problem is the Republicans keep running wackos and races that they could win, but no, no, no, no, no, no, no, let’s not do that. Let’s not try to win. Anyway, anyway, um, the last time.
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The last time Republicans had the trifecta. Republicans had the trifecta. When was the last time Donald Trump wins in 2016? Donald Trump wins in 2016.
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Okay. What do we do? What, what, what did Republicans do? Well, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll take a little walk down memory lane. Okay. First and foremost, first and foremost, the, the deficit under Trump grew at a rate, I think Biden is rivaling it at this period of time, but I think it was the third most in our nation’s history.
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George W. Bush was the worst because he loves his war on terror. Abraham Lincoln had a civil war to fight, but Trump, it was not good. It was not good. And this is, again, I understand COVID. I don’t know what COVID is. Okay. Okay. The spending during COVID. But we’ll do pre-COVID, shall we? Again, economy doing well, low unemployment.
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that we had here in the country. But Trump himself talked about our national debt being a crisis and a grave threat. He campaigned on this. Washington Post did some articles on this and it was there. They said that the combination of Trump’s 2017 tax cut and the lack of any serious spending restraint helped both the deficit and the debt soar. Now.
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First and foremost, I disagree wholeheartedly. The tax cuts, Trump’s tax cuts, they didn’t have anything to do with it. Revenues increased. Revenues increased. The reality is the spending continued to go through the roof. What Trump said he was gonna do, okay? Yeah, he did a March 2016 interview with Bob Woodward and Robert Costa.
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Trump said he could pay down the national debt, which at the time was about $19 trillion over a period of eight years, by renegotiating trade deals and spurring economic growth. He predicted that economic growth created by his tax cut combined with the proceeds from the tariffs. Remember, he was tariff man.
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It would help eliminate the budget deficit and the US could pay down its debt. He told Sean Hannity of Fox News, “‘We have $21 trillion in debt. When the 2017 tax cut really kicks in, we’ll start paying off that debt like it’s water.'” Nine days later, he tweeted, “‘Because of tariffs, we will be able to start paying down large amounts of the $21 trillion in debt.'”
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that had been accumulated much by the Obama administration. That didn’t happen. The CBO was projecting that federal budget deficits would be two to 3% of our gross domestic product during Trump’s term. They reached nearly 4% in 2018, 4.6% in 2019. Again, I’m doing all pre-COVID stuff here. Did the tariffs bring in additional revenue? Yeah, they did.
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Yeah, they did. You know what the additional was? 36 billion.
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$36 billion, which at the time was the equivalent of about three weeks of interest on our debt. Republicans had the power. They didn’t do a damn thing. They didn’t do a damn thing. Time and time again, we hear the same song and dance about controlling spending.
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We had, you took back the house this past November. You could have punted on the spending bill until the Republicans took over the house. Did you do it? No, no, no, no, we’re not gonna do that. We’re not gonna do that. We’ve got all sorts of pork we wanna hand out to some of our favorite senators that have been around for a while that are on their way out the door. Listen people.
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Most of these people are not serious. They’re not. I do miss the late Dr. Tom Coburn. They used to call him Dr. No when it came to spending. And again, he was a guy that he wasn’t content people. You can get along with the guy. He could have conversations with the guy and he would lay out his positions. I’ve always been a massive Rand Paul fan. We need to have a balanced budget amendment.
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We’re not going to be serious until we say, hey, you know what? We have to balance the budget. I know people are like, well, what are we doing? It’s emergency and there’s a war. I tell you what, you declare war. Okay. And then you could do some deficit spending. Not, not police actions, not, you know, continuing resolution crap from, you know, the post nine 11, none of that nonsense. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
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No, no, balance, budget, amendment. That’s what we need to have. And again, Rand Paul actually introduced a bill that would raise the debt ceiling by just $500 billion. And that would actually, saying force, he wants Congress to address the debt problem with a lasting solution. And here he said, this is quote.
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Sixty percent of Americans say Congress should only raise the nation’s debt ceiling if it cuts spending at the same time. I would guess the Americans answering that poll meant real cuts in spending, not an annual increase of one percent above already bloated levels of COVID-19 spending. Bold actions must be taken to defeat our mounting national debt, and my conservative alternative to the Biden-McCarthy deal gives us a real opportunity to get our fiscal house in.
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Order. Again, I agree wholeheartedly. And you know what? Go out there and take a look for yourself and see the Republicans that signed off on the omnibus spending bill. This was this past winter. When did they put that in? Was it in December, if I’m not mistaken? Oh, yeah. Yeah, Lindsey Graham, all these, Lisa Murkowski, Mitt Romney, all these types. Listen, people.
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At some point in time, we have to do a better job of picking our leaders. And again, I don’t know if it’s the sale of this to the American people. I mean, I look at it this way. If I’m out there trying to explain, we have balanced budget. Do you understand? We pay down our debt. We act in a prudent manner. We stopped paying all this money on this interest. Do you know what we could do? Do you know what would be possible? The investments?
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that we can make, the things that we can do. Again, we are shooting ourselves in the foot again and again and again. And again, do I believe that this is the best you’re gonna get at this point in time? I do, I do, but I don’t see any way forward with this current crop of characters, I really don’t. Anyway, Watchdog on wallstreet.com.