Listening to the howls from Democrats and the applause from Republicans, one would think President Trump’s proposed fiscal year 2021 budget is a radical assault on the welfare state. The truth is the budget contains some minor spending cuts, most of which are not even real cuts. Instead they are reductions in the “projected rate of growth.”
| Time | Text |
|---|---|
|
Trump's Budget: More Warfare, Slight Cuts
00:02:42
|
|
| Hello everybody and thank you for tuning in to the weekly report. | |
| Trump's budget, more warfare, slightly less welfare. | |
| Listening to the howls from the Democrats and the applause from the Republicans, one would think President Trump's proposed fiscal year 2021 budget is a radical assault on the welfare state. | |
| The truth is the budget contains some minor spending cuts, most of which are not even real cuts. | |
| Instead, they are reductions in the projected rate of growth. | |
| This is equivalent of saying you are sticking to your diet because you ate five chocolate chip cookies when you wanted to eat 10. | |
| President Trump's plan reduces the Education Department's budget by nearly 8%, leaving the department with only $66.6 billion. | |
| Cuts to other departments are similarly small, while reductions in entitlement spending consist mostly of reforms that will not affect most of those dependent on these programs. | |
| President Trump deserves credit for proposing an $11.6 billion cut in funding for the Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development. | |
| Foreign aid does little to help impoverish people overseas. | |
| Instead, it benefits foreign government officials willing to do the government's bidding. | |
| The State Department, and you said, are extremely involved in U.S. intervention abroad, including efforts to overthrow governments. | |
| President Trump's budget proposals a number of increases in spending. | |
| For example, his budget spends around $900 million additional dollars on vocational education. | |
| It also includes additional spending on items included infrastructure and child care. | |
| Few in D.C. have expressed concern over the fact that President Trump's $4.8 trillion budget proposal is the largest budget in American history. | |
| There is also little outcry from supposedly anti-war progressive Democrats over Trump's proposal to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on militarism. | |
| This is not surprising, as many progressives are happy to support increased warfare spending as long as conservatives go along with increased welfare spending. | |
| So, Congress is unlikely to approve any of President Trump's spending cuts, but Congress will gleefully agree to all of his spending increases. | |
|
Federal Debt Crisis
00:01:55
|
|
| Even if Congress agrees to all of President Trump's cuts, federal deficits still will be over $1 trillion for the next several years. | |
| However, President Trump claims the budget will balance in 15 years. | |
| In order to show a balanced budget by 2035, the administration assumes 3% economic growth for most of the next decade. | |
| This level of growth is unlikely to come to pass. | |
| Instead, the current boom will likely end soon and the economy will experience another major recession. | |
| Signs that we are on the verge of a downturn include rising homelessness and the Federal Reserve's bailout of their repurchasing market. | |
| The current economic boom is built on debt and the debt-based economy is facilitated by the Federal Reserve's easy money policy. | |
| The massive amount of debt held by consumers, businesses, and especially government is the main reason the Fed feels compelled to maintain historically low interest rates. | |
| If rates were to increase market levels, government interest payments would be unstable. | |
| This would cause the government debt bubble to burst, leading to a major crisis. | |
| However, continuing on the current path of low interest rates will inevitably lead to a dollar crisis and a collapse of the welfare warfare Keynesian system. | |
| Continuing to waste billions on wars abroad and failed programs at home while pretending that we can avoid a crisis via phony cuts and Federal Reserve fuel growth will only make the inevitable collapse more painful. | |
| The only way to avoid economic disaster is to cut spending and audit, then end the Federal Reserve. | |