The Bill for Trumpism Is Coming Due

The Felon campaigned in 2024 promising to balance the federal budget and to eliminate the national debt by the end of his second term if re-elected. Like everything else that spews from the Felon's mouth, these were lies - surprise, surprise - and the Felon is causing the national debt to explode, in no small part to thanks to the ridiculously described "big beautiful bill" that lavished tax cuts on the very wealthy and slashed benefits to everyday Americans while throwing a few meager bread crumbs to a small percentage of the non-wealthy.  The soaring federal debt is driving up both the costs of federal borrowing to service the debt and, equally bad, driving up mortgage rates and interest rates in general.  Meanwhile, the Felon's illegal tariffs and trade wars  - and most significantly the Iran war - have caused gasoline diesel and consumer prices to soar.  Instead of "making America great again", the Felon has made the nation poorer, more economically isolated and caused former allies to plot futures less reliant on the USA.  Indeed, the damage being done must put a huge smile on Vladimir Putin's face.  A piece at The Atlantic looks at the bill coming due for the incompetence and wrong priorities of the Felon and his enablers. Here are highlights:

“BALANCED BUDGET!!! DJT” Donald Trump posted that promise on February 7, 2025, the 18th day of his current presidential term. During the 2024 campaign, he had promised even more: the elimination of the entire national debt in a single term of office.

Trump insisted that he could reach his budget goals without disagreeable spending cuts. At a rally in St. Cloud, Minnesota, in July 2024, Trump pledged to make “not one penny” in cuts to Social Security and Medicare. He repeated that “not one penny” promise countless times through 2024, including in the Republican platform. Instead, he proposed eliminating deficits and debt with magic money from growth, from crypto, and—above all—from tariffs.

Basic budget math contradicted Trump’s fantasies. The United States imported about $3.3 trillion in goods in 2024. The budget deficit for that year was about $1.8 trillion. To imagine that tariffs could eliminate the budget deficit required believing that the Trump administration would impose a 55 percent tariff on all imports—including oil, natural gas, and electricity—and that consumers would pay this tariff without altering their buying behavior at all. That was all obviously absurd.

But there was a Plan B to balance the budget! Let Elon Musk do it! . . . . This adventure not only likely violated the Constitution but also almost certainly worsened the deficit. DOGE reduced the IRS auditing staff by nearly one-third. The Yale Budget Lab estimates that the ensuing collapse in federal enforcement efforts will cost the Treasury more than $860 billion in revenue over the next decade.

Fast-forward to the present. The budget deficit for the fiscal year that ended on September 30 is Next year’s deficit is likely to be even bigger. about $2 trillion, or about $160 billion more than in Joe Biden’s last complete year as president.  . . . . On the current trajectory, total debt could reach $45 trillion by 2028. . . . an extra $10 trillion in debt is the cost of just four years of Trump’s fiscal recklessness.

Some highlights of how this record was achieved: In 2025, Trump and the Republican-led Congress passed a tax bill that made the 2017 tax cuts permanent—and added more tax reductions on top of them. The tax legislation will directly reduce government revenues by $4.5 trillion over the coming decade.

Trump’s biggest budget idea was to substitute tariffs for other government revenue sources. This plan proved not only economically unrealistic but also illegal. Tariffs are taxes, and taxes must be voted for by Congress, according to the Constitution. . . . The Supreme Court confirmed this basic rule in February 2026. . . . The situation will continue to get worse.

Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act reduced income taxes on Social Security benefits, and Trump’s inflation has driven increases in Social Security’s cost-of-living adjustment. The Social Security trust fund is now projected to be exhausted in 2032, forcing either big tax increases or big benefit cuts.

An early warning that Trump’s monetary promises should not be trusted came at that same 2024 St. Cloud rally where Trump promised no cuts to Social Security, when Trump stiffed the town with $209,000 in event fees. As the midterm elections near, Trump has accused the Democrats of threatening the country’s economy with socialism and communism. Yet his administration has managed to wreck the country’s finances worse than any government in U.S. history, without the excuse of an economic crisis or a successful major war. October 1 marked the start of America’s fiscal new year. A new Congress will face a new fiscal reality.