Ron Paul Liberty Report - Weekly Update --- Trump’s Budget: More Warfare, Slightly Less Welfare
Aired: 2020-02-19
Duration: 04:40


=== Trump's Budget: More Warfare, Slight Cuts (02:42) ===

[00:00:03]  Hello everybody and thank you for tuning in to the weekly report.
[00:00:07]  Trump's budget, more warfare, slightly less welfare.
[00:00:11]  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.
[00:00:24]  The truth is the budget contains some minor spending cuts, most of which are not even real cuts.
[00:00:31]  Instead, they are reductions in the projected rate of growth.
[00:00:36]  This is equivalent of saying you are sticking to your diet because you ate five chocolate chip cookies when you wanted to eat 10.
[00:00:46]  President Trump's plan reduces the Education Department's budget by nearly 8%, leaving the department with only $66.6 billion.
[00:00:58]  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.
[00:01:10]  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.
[00:01:21]  Foreign aid does little to help impoverish people overseas.
[00:01:25]  Instead, it benefits foreign government officials willing to do the government's bidding.
[00:01:32]  The State Department, and you said, are extremely involved in U.S. intervention abroad, including efforts to overthrow governments.
[00:01:41]  President Trump's budget proposals a number of increases in spending.
[00:01:47]  For example, his budget spends around $900 million additional dollars on vocational education.
[00:01:55]  It also includes additional spending on items included infrastructure and child care.
[00:02:01]  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.
[00:02:13]  There is also little outcry from supposedly anti-war progressive Democrats over Trump's proposal to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on militarism.
[00:02:24]  This is not surprising, as many progressives are happy to support increased warfare spending as long as conservatives go along with increased welfare spending.
[00:02:34]  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 (01:55) ===

[00:02:45]  Even if Congress agrees to all of President Trump's cuts, federal deficits still will be over $1 trillion for the next several years.
[00:02:55]  However, President Trump claims the budget will balance in 15 years.
[00:03:00]  In order to show a balanced budget by 2035, the administration assumes 3% economic growth for most of the next decade.
[00:03:10]  This level of growth is unlikely to come to pass.
[00:03:14]  Instead, the current boom will likely end soon and the economy will experience another major recession.
[00:03:21]  Signs that we are on the verge of a downturn include rising homelessness and the Federal Reserve's bailout of their repurchasing market.
[00:03:30]  The current economic boom is built on debt and the debt-based economy is facilitated by the Federal Reserve's easy money policy.
[00:03:41]  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.
[00:03:53]  If rates were to increase market levels, government interest payments would be unstable.
[00:03:59]  This would cause the government debt bubble to burst, leading to a major crisis.
[00:04:04]  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.
[00:04:16]  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.
[00:04:32]  The only way to avoid economic disaster is to cut spending and audit, then end the Federal Reserve.