{"id":270662,"date":"2026-04-16T12:15:35","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T12:15:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/270662\/"},"modified":"2026-04-16T12:15:35","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T12:15:35","slug":"column-pay-attention-to-the-deficit-even-if-trump-wont","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/270662\/","title":{"rendered":"Column: Pay attention to the deficit, even if Trump won\u2019t"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Americans could be forgiven if they\u2019re unaware that President Trump recently performed one of his most essential tasks and sent his annual budget request<\/a> to Congress, though months late and stunningly incomplete.<\/p>\n

After all, so much else has been dominating the news lately: the Mideast war that Trump promised not to start. Price rises<\/a> he\u2019d vowed to end. His repeated<\/a> insults<\/a> of Pope Leo XIV. His portraying himself as<\/a> Jesus Christ, then lying<\/a> about having done so. An incompetent attorney general to fire<\/a>. And the president\u2019s actual priorities \u2014 plans for a $400-million White House ballroom<\/a> and a massive \u201cTriumphal Arch\u201d<\/a> nearby!<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a lot.<\/p>\n

Once again, as in Trump\u2019s first term, the public and press are inattentive to the nation\u2019s fiscal health relative to past years. But that reflects the president\u2019s own disengagement with reconciling spending and revenue \u2014 this from a president many Americans voted for based on his purported prowess as a businessman. For decades back to Ronald Reagan\u2019s time, so-called deficit wars in Washington were a big story. Now, even Republicans in Congress complain<\/a> of Trump\u2019s absence from the fiscal fray as they struggle to belatedly finish this year\u2019s budget work that was due last fall, and to end a weeks-old partial government shutdown, before turning to the budget for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1.<\/p>\n

Yet it\u2019s worth paying attention to U.S. budgets even if Trump won\u2019t, for the sake of our children and grandchildren who\u2019ll inherit the bills. In one document, a federal budget reflects the nation\u2019s priorities. And these days, in the perennial guns-versus-butter debate, Trump has made his feelings all too plain.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re fighting wars,\u201d he told<\/a> a group at the White House on April Fools\u2019 Day. \u201cWe can\u2019t take care of day care \u2026 Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Forget that Trump swore to end wars. Or that last year, long before he went to war against Iran, he cut $1 trillion over 10 years from Medicaid and other healthcare programs in his misnamed \u201cOne Big Beautiful Bill.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Yes, budgets can be boring, especially to a president with a famously short attention span. Trump and many of us Americans are distracted constantly by all the shiny objects he throws at the national consciousness by his words, acts and social media postings at all hours.<\/p>\n

Yet the budgetary trend is clear to anyone bothering to look: As president, Trump is once again exacerbating the nation\u2019s unsustainable course of piling up debt. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, among other credible sources, debt is now approaching the highest level in U.S. history, which was reached during World War II. It already surpasses the size of the entire economy and threatens higher borrowing costs and reduced investments.<\/p>\n

For all the achievements Trump likes to claim \u2014 ending eight wars<\/a> in a year! \u2014 here\u2019s one that\u2019s real: He is on a path to break his own record for the most debt in a single presidential term, $8.4 trillion<\/a> in Trump 1.0, which was nearly double the increase under President Biden.<\/p>\n

Need further proof of Trump\u2019s brazen mendacity? Of course you don\u2019t, but here it is: In the face of the well-documented budget record, Trump declared both this year<\/a> and last year<\/a> to a joint session of Congress, on national television, that he would balance the federal budget \u2014\u201covernight,\u201d<\/a> he said in February.<\/p>\n

The inequitable tax cuts and big spending increases for the military and immigration crackdowns that Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress enacted last year are significantly greater than in his first term, and are driving up the debt despite Republicans\u2019 deep healthcare cuts. Just months after Trump took office, the ratings firm Moody\u2019s downgraded<\/a> the nation\u2019s sterling credit rating for the first time in more than a century.<\/p>\n

And now, in his new budget request, Trump seeks to inflate military spending from under $1 trillion when he regained office to $1.5 trillion<\/a>, for the biggest year-to-year increase in military budgets since World War II.<\/p>\n

This fiscal irresponsibility is happening at the worst possible time. For the last quarter of the 20th century, presidents and Congresses of both parties annually debated how to reduce deficits and several times reached consequential multi-year deals, culminating during the second Clinton term in four straight years of surpluses. (Those surpluses ended \u2014 wait for it \u2014 with Republicans\u2019 tax cuts and war spending during the George W. Bush administration.)<\/p>\n

Politicians back then were moved not just by the deficits of their time \u2014 deficits that, as a share of the economy, were less than half what they are now. They also were responding to experts\u2019 warnings of a demographic tsunami by the 2020s: With the aging of the huge baby-boomer population, spending for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid would greatly increase even as the workforce whose payroll taxes support those programs shrank. Today the number of people 65 or older is almost three times what it was 50 years ago, and rising.<\/p>\n

This reckoning is upon us, though you wouldn\u2019t know it as Trump keeps calling for cutting revenue and spending more for lawless wars, immigration raids and monuments to himself. Barring bipartisan action, in 2033 Social Security\u2019s retirement fund and Medicare\u2019s hospital fund will no longer be able to cover beneficiaries\u2019 full claims, according to their trustees\u2019 annual report<\/a>, necessitating reduced benefits or shifts of money from other worthy programs.<\/p>\n

Trump did put Vice President JD Vance in charge of a \u201cwar on fraud.\u201d But that holds about as much promise as Elon Musk\u2019s fiscal fiasco<\/a> \u2014 remember DOGE? \u2014 that cost money instead of cutting $2 trillion as promised.<\/p>\n

Like other problems, Trump likely will leave the fiscal follies to his successor, who, should he or she win two terms, would preside as Social Security and Medicare become insolvent. I\u2019ve yet to hear any of the early 2028 presidential aspirants \u2014 or Trump \u2014 address or be asked about that.<\/p>\n

Let the debate, belatedly, begin.<\/p>\n

Bluesky: @jackiecalmes<\/a>
Threads: @jkcalmes<\/a>
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