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Trump Words on National Debt Meaningless

The last question at John Thune’s Aberdeen town hall Monday came from an older gentleman who, like Donald Trump, said our national debt is a huge threat to our economy. Donald Trump promised a year ago to eliminate the national debt in eight years by holding a federal fire sale. Most rational observers immediately recognized that claim to be “nonsensical.” Within a couple weeks, Trump backpedaled, speaking of paying down a “percentage” of the debt.

In an interview Tuesday with CNBC, Trump’s budget chief Mick Mulvaney repeated that Donald Trump’s claim that he could trade our way out of debt was just hyperbole—a literary term for the stuff that comes out of bovine ani and Donald Trump’s mouth:

HARWOOD: And what about the goal of eliminating the debt, which President Trump at one point said he would do at the end of his second term?

MULVANEY: It’s fairly safe to assume that was hyperbole. I’m not going to be able to pay off $20 trillion worth of debt in four years. I’d be being dishonest with you if I said that I could. The reason the president doesn’t want to change some of the mandatory spending is because the public’s not ready for it yet. They’re ready for economic growth.

Remember, this is a top White House advisor telling us that we cannot trust the words that come out of the American President’s mouth.

By the way, Trump’s budget proposal would increase the national debt. So, to my debt-hawk neighbor at the Thune meeting Monday and to the rest of my fellow Americans, I can only say that if you want to see real reductions of the national debt, not to mention honest government, you’d better elect a lot of honest, smart Congresspeople in 2018… Congresspeople who promise to override Trump and do the people’s business.

21 Comments

  1. jerry 2017-04-13 09:25

    What is not meaningless is old Mick and his plan to eliminate Social Security and the privatization of Medicare. I know that the Thune/trump voter still support the gutting of damned near all social programs, but what about these two? Will they just moan a little and move on? Time will tell

  2. Rorschach 2017-04-13 10:07

    What? Trump wants to increase Booker’s share of the national debt! I sure hope Kristi doesn’t vote for that with all the fuss she made about it in her first campaign. Poor Booker. Saddled with debt caused by Kristi’s votes. How could she live with herself?

  3. Loren 2017-04-13 10:46

    “Hyperbole” is a word Republicans use for “blowing it out your butt”! Trump has reversed positions on 4 major issues in the last 24 hours. How many “promises” do you really think he will keep? Keep voting Republican, SD. Sooner or later we will fig’r it out!

  4. mike from iowa 2017-04-13 11:33

    Someone has confused hyperbole with hypocrisy.

  5. Roger Cornelius 2017-04-13 13:16

    It just occurred to me that trump is saving the U.S. millions of dollars by not traveling overseas, he has not left the country since he was sworn in.
    President Obama traveled to Canada within a month of being sworn in.
    Is there any place in the world where dear leader is welcomed?

  6. Cory Allen Heidelberger Post author | 2017-04-13 14:29

    Roger, is he burning up that foreign travel budget on Mara-Lago?

  7. Cory Allen Heidelberger Post author | 2017-04-13 14:32

    Thanks for that translation, Loren! Another translation: Kristi say anything she wants about Booker or anything else and not have to mean it. We can nefer hold her accountable for the words coming out of her mouth, because they are just words.

  8. Buckobear 2017-04-13 18:16

    Funny, only president made any dent in the “deficit” was a guy named Clinton. Elect a republican?? Screw the debt, cut taxes. The hypocracy runs right down to the bone.

  9. mike from iowa 2017-04-13 18:57

    In fiscal year 2009, which started almost four months before Obama’s presidency began and ended eight months into it, the deficit was 9.8 percent of GDP. The 2014 shortfall is 2.8 percent of GDP — a decrease of 71 percent. So that’s where the claim comes from.

    The situation largely tracks if you use real dollars. Using the same comparison with Congressional Budget Office figures, the deficit fell from $1.4 trillion in the 2009 fiscal year to $486 billion in the 2014 fiscal year — a drop of about 66 percent

  10. mike from iowa 2017-04-14 08:15

    1-MOAB= $314 million X 1 very large explosion (11000 pounds high explosives) = 36 ISIS fatalities?

    The cost of oe MOAB could fixFlint water problems 3 times but that would be overkill, wouldn’t it?

  11. Wayne 2017-04-14 11:29

    Mike,

    Could you please stop blowing hot air?

    The $314 million cost was for 20 MOABs. The individual cost is closer to $15.7 million. Since they’re already in our arsenal, it’s not like we can just divert funds from the defense budget to Flint; we’d have to sell a few of the MOABs to allies (at least, it’d better be allies) to shake out the coin to fix those pipes.

    http://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-does-moab-bomb-cost-mother-of-all-bombs-2017-4

  12. mike from iowa 2017-04-14 12:00

    MOAB cost $314 million to develop and is the 2nd one ever used (one was tested in Florida trying to scare Saddam Hussein).

    This is where I got the $314 million from-

    Jack Slater ✔ @Jack_Slater
    The bomb Trump just dropped on Afghanistan cost $314 million.

    Enough money to fix the water crisis in Flint almost three times over. #MOAB
    1:39 PM – 13 Apr 2017

    Got a problem. go talk to this guy.

  13. jerry 2017-04-14 12:16

    Roughly 10 million per kill then in Afghanistan, if we are to believe the numbers of causalities. What a return on an investment. No wonder we don’t have nice things. As long as they were able to count the bodies or “estimate” them, then they should do a detailed analysis of what was accomplished with this big old bomb thingy. How many tunnels destroyed? How deep did it penetrate? What was ISIS watching on cable? How many days in advance were the notifications given to Russian and Iranian advisers on the ground? You know, details.

  14. Cory Allen Heidelberger Post author | 2017-04-14 20:50

    Wayne’s statement about cost per bomb is correct. But even spending $16M to kill 36 bad guys ($450K per kill) seems less than cost-effective. Low return on investment through use of extreme military means won’t help the national debt any.

    Besides, according to this Newsweek article, the real danger to stability in Afghanistan may be the Taliban, not ISIS. They could goad Trump like Kirk goaded Khan, “a poor marksman who keeps missing the target.”

  15. grudznick 2017-04-14 21:18

    Every MOAB they drop from here on out lowers the costs and saves money.
    Drop more.

  16. Wayne 2017-04-14 21:44

    If Vietnam should’ve taught us anything, it’s that using actuarial costs and death tolls are not metrics for military success.

    But if we have to think about costs, then think of offset costs as well, rather than just dollars per dead bad guy. How many US & Afghan soldiers would die trying to clear those tunnels? How much are each of those lives worth? How much time would it take to clear? How much does it cost per day to lay siege to a tunnel network?

    As I understand it, those tunnels & bunkers cannot be used again – they’re collapsed.

    Zero collateral damage. 36 dead enemy combatants. Zero allied casualties, and military units are free to conduct more missions without getting bogged down or getting ambushed.

    The real problem with our military spending is we’re building ships and tanks nobody is asking for, and they’re going straight into storage.

  17. grudznick 2017-04-14 21:48

    Mr. Wayne has some good points.

  18. Cory Allen Heidelberger Post author | 2017-04-14 22:33

    Grudz almost makes a point. I disagree that dropping bombs lowers costs; the costs are sunk! Poof! Plus, it costs us something to deliver them. At best, we don’t go further into debt, but only as long as we don’t build replacements.

    Speaking of sunk cost, Wikileaks says the U.S. paid for the building of those tunnels. So heck, back up Wayne’s point: as long as we don’t go financing the next set of Afghan rebels against an unfavorable regime, we won’t see terrorists playing gopher again.

    But wow, for not being the world’s policeman, Trump is certainly firing rounds at a lot of bad guys around the world. Bomb Syria, bomb Afghanistan, steam toward North Korea….

    Curious, Wayne: how imperative was it that we clear the tunnels?

    I would like to hear an accounting of just what we need the ships and tanks for. Do we use ships and tanks at all against ISIS?

  19. mike from iowa 2017-04-15 08:07

    We aren’t fighting an army. We are engaged trying to snuff out an ideology-radical Islam- and we are never going to do that. We have no business anywhere near Afghanistan’s tunnels.

    You have no proof any of the tunnels are collapsed. There is no proof all the tunnels are collapsed. You can kill these fighters til the cows come home and there will always be more.

    And you can be certain the Drumpf’s and McConnells and Ryans of the world won’t be putting any of their family members in harm’s way.

    Just another distraction from wingnut-Russian collusion to elect Drumpf investigations.

  20. mike from iowa 2017-04-15 15:44

    94 @ last count-there were 2 smaller raids carried out Thursday- that might be cumulative total. Four ISIS leaders allegedly killed. No civilian casualities-or so Americans claimed. They are making up for that in Syria raids.

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