As the budget battle in Washington has started up again in The Swamp, President Trump and Senator Rand Paul called for a cut of $15 billion from the federal budget. Their calls for fiscal restraint have been met with resistance from their own party, which claims each election season to be against leaving our children and grandchildren with massive debt yet often acts exactly the opposite.
Trump’s budget proposal included $15 billion in cuts to “unspent government funds” from some government programs, an idea House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy tried to rally support for but which was met with “greater opposition than anticipated.” Senator Lindsey Graham said the move would be “politically kind of stupid.” Other Republicans joined him, such as Representatives Tom MacArthur, Mark Amodei, Ryan Costello, and Tom MacArthur, who balked at the plan out of re-election fears.
Rand Paul’s attempt to cut $15 billion was a proposal brought to the floor of the Senate in early May called the Penny Plan Balanced Budget. Paul told WJLA that the plan would have balanced the budget in five years by cutting “one penny out of every dollar of federal spending.”
Paul told WJLA: “It’s what we say we’re for. Republicans have said we’re for balanced budget amendment… but the sad thing is when it comes up… over half the Republicans voted against balancing the budget in five years.”
President Trump has said he would never sign another budget that costs trillions of dollars. And he has threatened to let the government go into shutdown mode if Congress does not prioritize spending for the border wall, saying at a rally in Michigan: “We’ll close down the country because we need border security.”
According to The Daily Signal, Trump’s budget proposal would cause annual deficits to “drop to as low as $363 billion – 10 years from now in 2028.” These savings would allow the GDP of the United States to grow at 3 percent or better from 2018 to 2024, a kind of growth not seen since Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Still, deficit projections are between $7 and $9 trillion over the next 10 years, which is a path both parties should want to avoid by cutting as much as possible (at the very least, just a penny from every spent dollar.)
Currently, the national debt stands at $21 trillion. If Republicans do not start fulfilling their campaign promises of tackling the debt, we will face a far greater crisis than just losing Congressional seats.