A Big Spender’s League All of His Own

 

A Big Spender’s League All of His Own

By David Stockman

April 27, 2024

 

 

 

This is an excerpt from David Stockmans book: Trump’s War on Capitalism.

As it happened, the US Congress acted like greased lightning, enacting the  $2.2 trillion CARES act  virtually sight unseen just  eleven  days  after  The  Donald’s March 16 press  conference initiated the  Covid lockdowns. The  bill  was over  eight hundred pages long and included a more ostentatious cornucopia of spend- ing authorities and  free stuff than had  ever before been  imagined in even the  most  profligate quarters of Capitol Hill. This tsunami of money amounted to roughly $6,000 for every man, woman, and child  in America, or 45 percent of all federal government expen- ditures in 2019.

The money was literally shoveled into  the US economy in mas- sive dollops with virtually no eligibility standards, qualification pro- cesses, and  enforcement/accountability procedures. This included:

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• $425 billion for the Federal Reserve to support business loans and  bailouts.
• $75 billion for direct subsidies to airlines and other industries.
• $350 billion to launch what became the notoriously corrupt SBA-operated Paycheck Protection Program (PPP for small  businesses).
• $300 billion to fund checks amounting to $3,400 per family  of four, going to approximately 90 percent of the US population.
• $250 billion mainly for the $600 per week unemployment insurance benefit on top  of normal state  program benefits averaging $355 per  week.
• $150 billion in walking-around money for state, local, and tribal governments.
• $140 billion for a sweeping, open-ended array of public health programs.
• Tens of billions more  in special interest pork of every kind, shape, and  purpose.

Not  surprisingly, The  Donald did  not  hesitate to  take  credit for this  grotesque act of fiscal malfeasance:

We are marshalling the  full power of government and  society to achieve victory over  the  virus.  Together, we will endure, we will prevail, and  we will WIN! #CARESAct

Signing Ceremony for The Most Grotesque Act of Fiscal Malfeasance in American History.

The   budgetary  outcomes  were   truly   astounding—especially when  the  second Covid Relief  bill  signed by The  Donald in Dec- ember 2020 and  its extension and  companion, Biden’s American Rescue Act enacted in March 2021, are  added to the  total. In all, Washington enacted $6.5 trillion of Covid-relief measures in barely 365 days.  This figure  was nearly 50 percent larger than the  entire federal budget—defense, social  security, education, Medicare/ Medicaid, interest and  all the rest—in  the pre-Covid year of 2019.

That’s   right. Trump ignited a  grotesque outbreak  of  fiscal recklessness far worse  than anything GOP orators had  inveighed against since  the  time  of FDR. And  much of this  spending erup- tion   was  recorded in  the  government data series  for  personal transfer payments. The latter is posted monthly and  at annualized rates, thereby capturing in real  time  the  impact of Trump’s fiscal cyclone ripping through the US economy.

The  annualized run   rate   of  government transfer payments, including the  state  and  local  supplemental portions, posted at a normal level  of $3.15 trillion in February 2020. So that’s  the  pre- Covid baseline. But after  the sight-unseen $2.2 trillion CARES act was enthusiastically signed into  law by The Donald in late March, it erupted to a $6.42 trillion annualized rate  in April.

Thereafter a  second wave  surged the  transfer payment rate to  $5.682 trillion in  January 2021 when  the  second relief  act  was signed by The Donald in December, followed by a final burst at an annualized rate to $8.098 trillion in March 2021 owing to Biden’s American Rescue Act.

But even in the case of the latter, the driving force was completion of the $2,000 per person stimmy that The Donald had  advocated in the run-up to the election, which  had  been  only partially funded in the  December legislation. And this  stimmy completion came  along with  extension of unemployment toppers and  other expenditures that had  been  originated in the two earlier Trump-signed measures.

This  was the  very  worst  kind of government spending explo- sion  imaginable. That’s  because transfer payments are inherently inflationary poison when   they  are  funded by  new  government debt which, in turn, is monetized (purchased) by the Fed,  as these clearly  were. This kind of regime of spend, borrow, and  print pow- erfully gooses demand without adding an iota  to supply.

Ironically,   therefore,   Trump-O-Nomics   was   the    epitome of  anti-supply side.  It was  a stark repudiation of  the  theory of Reaganomics, and  far, far worse  in its practical impact on federal spending and deficits  than the accidental ballooning of the public debt on the Gipper’s watch.

None of this  fiscal madness, of course, would have  been  even remotely plausible without the  utterly unnecessary lockdowns. Even  then, however, no real Republican would have  signed legis- lation authorizing such  massive  transfer payments if they  were to be funded exclusively with  borrowing and  money-printing.

The Donald did so, of course, and there is no mystery as to why. Trump has  no  fiscal policy  compass at all. So, it was a good way to quiet what  otherwise would have been  a fatal  political uprising against the  public health martial law that his administration had imposed during an election year.

That’s  the  real  irony of the  story. When it comes  to  the  core matter of fiscal discipline, The Donald was no disrupter at all. He was  actually the  worst  of the  lot  among the  last  half-century of Washington spenders, and  by a long  shot, too.

Annualized  Rate of Government Transfer Payments, 2017 to 2021.

For avoidance of doubt, here is a longer-term perspective, reflect- ing  the  year-over-year rate  of  change in  government transfer pay- ments going back  to 1970. That  was shortly after  the  Great Society legislation had kicked off today’s $4 trillion per year flood of transfers.

To  appreciate the  veritable fiscal  shock that issued from  The Donald’s pen,  it needs be  noted that in  the  last  quarter of 2019 the Y/Y gain in government transfer payment spending was about $150 billion, which  was consistent with  the longer-term trend.

However, by Q1 2021 that Y/Y gain had  soared to $4.9 trillion. Again,  that was the delta, not  the absolute level. That  is to say, the year-over-year gain  from  The Donald’s Covid Relief  Bacchanalia was 33x larger than the pre-Covid norm!

And, no, you can’t blame this inflationary time-bomb solely on Biden as the MAGA partisans insist, although Biden would surely have  signed the  two  early  COVID-bailout measures had  he been in The Donald’s shoes  during 2020.

But  that’s  just  the  point—The Donald is a paid-up member of the Washington uniparty when  it comes  to government spending. All of the  hideous excesses of the  Covid bailouts were  launched on  his  watch, signed into  law  with  his  pen,  and/or legitimized with  the  imprimatur of an  ostensible Republican president. The American Rescue Act  was  just  the  final  installment of  Trump’s unhinged Covid spend-a-thon.

After all, the  overwhelming share of the  $6.5 trillion of Covid spending consisted of  $2,000+  stimmy checks   to  90  percent of the  public, the  $600 per  week  unemployment toppers, the  mas- sive Payroll Protection Program (PPP) giveaways, and  the  flood of money into  the  health, education, local  government, and  non- profit sectors. Every one of these  items was blessed by The Donald twice  before Sleepy  Joe reclaimed these  measures as the  Dem  big spenders’ apostasies that they  actually were.

Needless to say, the Covid bailouts were not The Donald’s only fiscal  sin.  When you  compare the  constant dollar growth rate  of total federal spending during his  four  years  in  the  Oval  Office with  that of his recent predecessors, it is evident that The Donald was in a big spender’s league all of his own.

Trump   Shoots  the  Moon:  Y/Y   Change  in  Government  Transfer  Payments, 1970–2021.

In constant 2021 dollars, for  instance, the  federal budget grew by  $366 billion per  annum on  The  Donald’s watch, a level  qua- druple the  big  spending years  of Barack Obama, and  nearly 11x higher than during the 1993–2000  period under Bill Clinton.

Federal  Spending: Constant 2021 Dollar Increase Per Year:

• Trump, 2017–2020:  +$366 billion per annum.
• Obama, 2009–2016:  +$86 billion per  annum.
• George Bush the Younger, 2001–2008:  +$136 billion per annum.
• Bill Clinton, 1993–2000:  +$34 billion per  annum.
• George Bush  the Elder, 1989–1992:  +$97 billion per annum.
• Ronald Reagan, 1981–1988:  +$64 billion per  annum.
• Jimmy Carter, 1977–1980:  +$62 billion per  annum.

The  same  story  holds for  the  annual growth rate of  inflation-ad- justed federal spending. At 6.92 percent per annum during Trump’s sojourn in the Oval  Office it was 2x to 4x higher than under all of his recent predecessors.

At the  end  of the  day,  the  historical litmus test  of GOP eco- nomic policy  was restraint on government spending growth, and therefore curtailment of the relentless expansion of the Leviathan- on-the-Potomac. But when it comes to that standard, The Donald’s record stands first among no equals on the wall of shame.

Federal  Spending: Annual Real Growth Rate:

• Trump, 2016–2020:  6.92 percent.
• Obama, 2008–2016:  1.96 percent.
• George Bush  the Younger: 3.95 percent.
• Bill Clinton, 1992–2000:  1.19 percent.
• George Bush  the Elder: 3.90 percent.
• Ronald Reagan, 1980–1988:  3.15 percent.
• Jimmy Carter, 1976–1980:  3.72 percent.

Likewise, when  it comes  to ballooning federal deficits  and  public debt, Donald Trump earned his sobriquet as the King of Debt and then some. Relative to the  nation’s economic base,  the  average of The Donald’s four  deficits  at 9.0 percent of GDP was literally off- the-charts of modern presidential history.

Average  Surplus/Deficit  as  Percent   of  GDP   Under  Post-War

Presidents (fiscal years):

• Truman (1947–1953): +0.73 percent.
• Eisenhower (1954–1961): -0.37 percent.
• Kennedy-Johnson  (1962–1969): -0.88 percent.
• Nixon-Ford (1970–1977): -.2.38 percent.
• Carter (1978–1981): -2.33 percent.
• Reagan-Bush (1982–1993): -4.13 percent.
• Clinton (1994–2001): -0.13 percent.
• George W. Bush  (2002–2009): -3.31 percent.
• Obama (2010–2017): -4.98 percent.
• Trump  (2018–2021): -9.00 percent.

Similarly,  in  inflation-adjusted terms  (constant  2021  dollars), The Donald’s $2.04  trillion per  annum add-on to the  public debt amounted to double the fiscal profligacy of the Obama years,  and orders of magnitude more  than the debt additions of earlier occu- pants of the Oval  Office.

Constant 2021 Dollar Additions to the Public  Debt per Annum:

• Donald Trump: $2.043 trillion.
• Barack Obama: $1.061 trillion.
• George W. Bush: $0.694 trillion.
• Bill Clinton: $0.168 trillion.
• George H.  W. Bush: $0.609 trillion.
• Ronald Reagan: $0.384 trillion.
• Jimmy Carter: $0.096 trillion.

Indeed, in the  long  sweep  of things, the  real damage was done in the  Covid/Lockdowns/Stimmies year  of 2020.  Federal spending erupted by  nearly $2 trillion during that year  alone and  soared from  22.3 percent of GDP in 2019 to nearly 32 percent of GDP in 2020. And when state and  local  outlays are included, The Donald managed to bring government spending in the US to a European social  democracy–style 40 percent of GDP.

It might be  well  and  truly   asked: With   charts like  the  one below, who  needs Republicans of the  ilk represented by Donald Trump?

Federal Spending Share of GDP, 2000 to 2021.

There is no secret  as to how spending and  debt soared like never before during Trump’s time  in the  Oval  Office.  Trump wanted to wield the biggest defense stick on the planet on the primitive theory that he could bluster his way to foreign policy  success  just  like he claims  to  have  done with  the  trade unions and  subcontractors in New York City.

But  to  get  his  big  defense stick,  he  had  to  accommodate the Congressional  porkers  on   nondefense  discretionary  spending and  leave  entitlements untouched. And  that he was happy to do because Trump just  didn’t care about federal spending.

Thus,  when  big-spending Barack Obama left the White House the national security budget properly measured totaled a stagger- ing  $822 billion. That  included $600 billion for the  Pentagon,  $46 billion for  security assistance and  international operations and

$177 billion for veterans’ compensation and  services, which  reflect the deferred cost of prior wars.

So  much for  the  “peace candidate” of 2008 and  the  anti-war democratic party of the Vietnam era and  its aftermath. To the con- trary, Obama’s $822  billion national security budget embodied the cost of global hegemony and the Forever Wars to which  it gave rise—notwithstanding that the  only  real threat to homeland secu- rity  in  the  post-war period, the  former Soviet  Union, had  been consigned to the dustbin of history twenty-five years earlier.

Donald Trump came  bounding into  the  Oval  Office  talking what  sounded like a different game—America First. But as his last Attorney General, Bill Barr,  recently noted, even if you believe in his  policies don’t expect him  to  execute them. His four  years  in the  White House proved he can’t organize or lead  his way out  of a wet paper bag,  and  his budgetary fiasco in the national security space  provides striking confirmation of Barr’s  observation.

To  be  sure,  Trump did  manage to  see through the  uniparty’s demonization of Putin, and the feckless neocon claim that he seeks to  recreate the  former Soviet  Empire. After  all,  in  Washington’s theater of the absurd Vlad Putin was simply The Donald’s doppel- ganger when  it came  to demonization and  putting on the beltway hate. So, Trump got that part of the equation right.

But  Trump actually had  no  idea  what  he  meant by “America First”  except that the line elicited boisterous cheers from the patri- otic  throngs at  his  campaign rallies. The  fact  is, he  was  histori- cally ignorant beyond measure; lazy as they come when  it involves studying your  brief; and  a total sucker for military pomp and  cir- cumstance and  the medal-bedecked uniforms of the generals.

So while  Trump talked about bringing the  Empire home, he actually fueled its  budget like  never  before. The  vastly  bloated national security budget left  behind by Obama took on  $215 bil- lion  more   girth on  The  Donald’s watch. His outgoing  broadly measured national security budget (FY  2021)  actually broke the trillion-dollar barrier, weighing in at $1.035 trillion, or 26 percent more  than what  Obama and  the  Congressional uniparty had  frit- tered away in FY 2017.

In short, The Donald was so ill-informed and  confused that he ended up  with  a national security budget which  amounted to the Military-Industrial Complex first, not  one  designed strictly for the defense of the  homeland—better termed Fortress America, which was advocated in the early post-war era by Mr. Republican, Senator Robert Taft  of Ohio. The  latter’s views were  the  very  opposite of today’s global  hegemony  views  of  the   neocons who   dominate the  GOP ranks on  the  military and  foreign affairs  committees on Capitol Hill.

Indeed, the  truth of the  matter is that the  present-day GOP was hijacked a few decades ago by a loathsome tribe of born-again Trotskyite statist, who  discovered that a perpetual condition of global war  was the  true  passageway to  state  power and  political self-aggrandizement in the Imperial City.

That  is more  than evident when  you  compare Trump’s result- ing  trillion-dollar national security budget  with  the  maximum

$500 billion spending level  that would be  needed to  fully  fund Fortress America. The staggering $500 billion per  year  difference makes it  starkly evident that even  on  the  Pentagon side  of  the Potomac, The Donald was a thorough-going patsy  for the Swamp creatures.

In the  first  place, a Fortress America–based implementation of The  Donald’s vague notions about bringing the  forces  home rests on the truth that in the present world order there are no tech- nologically-advanced industrial powers who have either the capa- bility  or  intention to  attack the  American homeland. To  do  that you need a massive  land armada, huge air and  sealift  capacities, a Navy  and  Air Force many  times  the  size of current US  forces  and humongous supply lines  and  logistics capacities that have  never been  even dreamed of by any other nation on the planet.

You  also  need an  initial GDP of  say  $50 trillion per  year  to sustain what  would be  the  most  violent conflagration of  weap- onry  and  material in human history. And  that’s  to say nothing of needing to be ruled by suicidal leaders willing to risk the  nuclear destruction of their own countries, allies, and economic commerce in order to accomplish, what? Occupy Denver?

So  the  entire idea  that there is a  post–Cold War  existential threat to America’s  security is just plain bogus because, obviously, no alleged foe has the requisite GDP or military heft. Russia’s GDP is a scant $1.8 trillion, not  the $50 trillion that would be needed for it to  put an  invasionary force  on  the  New  Jersey  shores.  And  its pre-Ukraine defense budget was just $75 billion, which  amounts to about four  weeks of waste  in Washington’s trillion-dollar monster.

As for  China, let  us  not  forget that even  its  communist rul- ers  sill believe it is the  “Middle Kingdom” and  therefore that it already occupies the most  important territory on the entire planet. So why would Beijing’s rulers want  to occupy Cleveland OH or Birmingham AL to either extract high-cost production or root out dissenters from  Chairman Xi’s thought?

More importantly, China doesn’t have  the  GDP heft  to  even think about landing on the California shores, notwithstanding Wall Street’s endless kowtowing to the China Boom. The fact is, China has accumulated in excess of $50 trillion of debt in barely two decades!

Therefore, it didn’t grow  organically in the  historic capitalist mode; it  printed, borrowed, spent, and  built like  there was  no tomorrow. But the resulting façade of prosperity would not last six months if China’s $3.6 trillion global export market—the source of the hard cash that keeps  its Ponzi upright—were to crash, which is exactly what  would happen if it tried to invade America.

To  be  sure,  its  totalitarian leaders are  immensely misguided and  downright evil from  the  perspective of their oppressed pop- ulation. But  they  are  not  stupid. They  stay  in power by keeping the people relatively fat and  happy and  would never  risk bringing down what  amounts to an economic house of cards.

And  the  nuclear blackmail card  can’t be  played by  either of these  foes, either. According to a recent CBO analysis, the annual cost  of maintaining and  investing America’s  triad nuclear deter- rent—submarine-launched ICBMs, land-based ICBMs, and  the strategic nuclear bomber fleet—is just  $52 billion per  year,  or less than 6 percent of the pentagon’s current budget and  barely 4 per- cent  of overall national security spending.

That   triad  deterrent  is  what   dissuades both  Moscow and Beijing from  attempting nuclear blackmail and  therefore invasion by  nuclear checkmate. That  is to  say,  the  lynchpin of America’s security lies in the  arrangement known as MAD  (mutual assured destruction), a mechanism that has worked for seventy years.  And it worked even at the peak  of the Cold War when  the Soviet  Union had  forty  thousand nuclear warheads and  leaders far more  unsta- ble than either Cool-Hand Vlad or Xi Jinping.

At the  end  of  the  day,  it  is the  great ocean moats, the  triad nuclear deterrent, and  the  relative economic diminutiveness  of Russia and  China that keep  the  American homeland secure and safe  from  hostile foreign encroachment. Most of the  rest  of the massive  pentagon budget is based on  false predicates, fabricated threats, and  the  budget-grabbing  prowess of its  own  marketing (i.e.,  think tanks) and  lobbying (i.e.,  defense contractors) arms.

In this  context, Trump did  ask  the  right question, even  if he never  came  up  with  an  actionable answer. Namely, why  in  the world do  we still  have  costly,  obsolete arrangements like  NATO thirty-two years after  the Soviet  Union perished?

The  only  real  answer is that it is a mechanism to  sell arms  to its thirty-one-member states. Indeed, Europe had  long  ago proved it  did  not  really  fear  that Putin would be  marching his  armies through the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. That’s why Germany pre- viously  spent only  1.3 percent of GDP on  defense and  was more than happy to buy cheap energy via Russian delivered pipeline gas.

Germany’s current quasi-warlike posture vis-a-vis  Russia doesn’t gainsay that history, either. The truth is, the German Green Party—which is what  keeps  the  Scholz social  democrat govern- ment in power—has gone full-on warmongering for  the  hideous reason that the  Greens live to end  the  era of fossil  fuel.  So, what better way to do it than cut off the cheap oil and  gas supplies from Russia on  which  Germany’s fossil-fueled economy is based and then blame it on a demonized Putin?

Moreover, even  a  passing familiarity with  European history reminds you  that Russians and  Poles  hate  each  other and  have done so over  centuries of wars  and  bloody altercations. So Vlad Putin may not  be a Russian Gandhi, but  he is sure as hell way too smart to  attempt to  occupy Poland. Ditto France, Germany, the Low Countries, Italy, Iberia, and  the rest.

In short, Washington doesn’t  need NATO to  protect our allies  in  Europe  because they   are  not   facing any  threat that can’t  be  handled by  their own  ways  and  means, preferably of the  diplomatic variety. In fact,  the  whole   disaster in  Ukraine today is rooted in the  War  Party’s mindless expansion of NATO in  violation of  all  of  Washington’s  promises to  Gorbachev to not  expand an  inch  to  the  east  in  return for  the  unification of Germany. Yet the double-cross has been  so extensive that NATO now  includes every  one  of the  old  Warsaw Pact  nations and  has even  attempted to  extend its reach to  two  of the  former Soviet Republics (i.e.,  Georgia and  Ukraine).

The same holds for Washington’s so-called “allies”  in East  Asia and  the  massive  US  military resources committed to  the  region. The truth is, functioning as the gendarme of the planet is the only possible justification for the extra $500 billion per year cost of the current national security budget.

For example, why does the US still deploy 100,000 US forces and their dependents in Japan and Okinawa and 29,000 in South Korea?

These  two  counties have  a combined GDP of  nearly $7 tril- lion—or  235x  more  than North Korea, and  they  are  light-years ahead of  the  latter in  technology and  military capability.  Also, they   don’t  go  around the   world engaging  in  regime change, thereby spooking fear on the north side of the DMZ.

Accordingly, Japan and  South Korea could more  than provide for their own national security in a manner they see fit without any help  whatsoever from  Imperial Washington. That’s  especially the case because absent the  massive  US  military threat in the  region, North Korea would surely  seek  a rapprochement and  economic help  from  its neighbors, including China.

Indeed, sixty-five  years  after  the  unnecessary war  in  Korea ended, there is  only  one  reason why  the  Kim   family   is  still in  power in  Pyongyang and  why  periodically they  have  nois- ily  brandished  their incipient nuclear weapons and   missiles. Mainly, it’s because Washington still occupies the  Korean peninsula and  surrounds its waters with  more  lethal firepower than was brought to  bear  against the  industrial might of Nazi Germany during the  whole  of WWII.

Of  course, these  massive  and  costly  forces  are  also  justified on  the  grounds of supporting Washington’s commitments to the defense of Taiwan. But  that commitment has  always  been  obso- lete and  unnecessary to America’s  homeland security.

As it  happened, Chiang Kia-Shek lost  the  Chinese civil  war fair  and  square in  1949,  and  there was  no  reason to  perpetuate his  rag-tag regime when  it  retreated to  the  last  square miles  of Chinese territory—the island province of Taiwan. The  latter had been  under control of the Chinese Qing Dynasty for two hundred years  thru 1895, and  after  Imperial Japan was expelled from  the island in 1945, Taiwan was once  again “Chinese.”

So  today it  is  separated from   the  mainland   only  because Washington arbitrarily made it  a  protectorate and   “ally”  when the  loser  of the  Chinese civil war set up  shop in a small  remnant of  China’s modern geography, thereby establishing an  artificial nation that had  no  bearing whatsoever on  America’s  homeland security, and  in subsequent decades accomplished nothing except bolster the  case for a big  Navy and  for US  policing of the  Pacific region for no good reason of homeland defense.

That is to say, without Washington’s support for the nationalist regime in Taipei, the  island would have  been  long  ago  absorbed back  into  the Chinese polity where  it had  been  for centuries. Even now,  the Taiwanese would surely  prefer peaceful prosperity  as the  24th province of China rather than a catastrophic war against Beijing that they  would have  no hope of surviving.

By the same token, the alternative—US military intervention— would mean WWIII. The  only  sensible policy, therefore, is for Washington to  recant seventy years  of  folly  brought on  by  the China Lobby and arms manufacturers and green-light a Taiwanese reconciliation with the mainland. Even a few years thereafter, Wall Street bankers peddling M&A deals  in Taipei wouldn’t know  the difference from  Shanghai.

In short, there is no  need whatsoever for  America’s  massive conventional armada and  what  is now  (FY  2024)  its $1.3 trillion annual national security expense. That’s  the  true  implication of America First, but The Donald didn’t have a clue about its bearing on the actual national security budget.

To   the   contrary,  his  support  for   the   massive   increases in Pentagon spending was  based on  the  primitive theory that the route to a successful foreign policy  was, well, himself!

That  is to  say,  national security would come  from  a big  mili- tary  stick in his stubby small  hands and  a lot of eyeball-to-eyeball sit-downs between The Donald and  the other ostensible bad  guys of the world. But that was sheer  nonsense, of course. Implied mil- itary  threats and  dickering at  a one-on-one summit of  the  type Trump had  with  Vlad  Putin, Kim  Jong Un, and  Xi Jinping were mainly just  theater—a global version of The Apprentice. What ulti- mately keeps  America safe,  however, is its  nuclear deterrent.  As long  as that is intact and  effective,  there is no  conceivable form of nuclear blackmail that could be used  to jeopardize the security and  liberty of the homeland.

Yet according to  the  aforementioned CBO study the  current annual cost of the strategic deterrent of just $52 billion includes $13 billion for the  ballistic missile  submarine force,  $7 billion for the land-based ICBMs, and  $6 billion for the  strategic bomber force. On  top  of that there is also  $13 billion to  maintain the  nuclear weapons stockpiles, infrastructure, and  supporting services  and

$11 billion for strategic nuclear command and  control, communi- cations, and  early warnings systems.

In all,  and  after  allowing for  normal inflation and  weapons development  costs,   CBO’s   ten-year  estimate  for   the   strategic nuclear deterrent is just  $756 billion. That  happens to be only  7.0 percent of  the $10 trillion baseline for  the  total cost  of  defense proper over  the  next  decade and  only  5.0 percent of the  $15 tril- lion  national  security baseline when   you  include international operations and  veterans.

The  adoption of a Fortress America national security budget of $500 billion per year over the next  decade would save in excess of $5 trillion. And  that would surely  be  more  than doable from the  $14 trillion CBO baseline for total national security spending excluding the strategic forces.

Under a Fortress America defense strategy, there would be no need for  eleven  carrier battle groups including their air-wings, escort and  support ships, and  supporting  infrastructure.  Those forces  are  sitting ducks in this  day  and  age  anyway but  are  only necessary for  force  projection abroad and  wars  of  invasion and occupation. The American coastline and  interior, by contrast, can be protected by land-based air.

According to another CBO study, the ten-year baseline cost for the  Navy’s  unnecessary eleven  carrier battle groups will approach $1 trillion alone. Likewise, the land forces of the US Army will cost $2 trillion, and that’s  again mainly for the purpose of force projec- tion  abroad.

As Senator Taft  and  his  original Fortress America supporters long  ago recognized, overwhelming air superiority over the North American continent is what  is actually necessary for  homeland security. But  even that would require only  a small  part of the cur- rent  $1.5 trillion ten-year cost  of US  Air Force  operations, which are heavily  driven by global force  projection capacities.

At the  end  of the  day,  if The Donald had  really  been  commit- ted  to  an  America First  foreign policy, he  would have  done his homework, taken on the  national security Swamp Creatures, and put in place  a Fortress America budget that could save $5 trillion over  the  next  decade. And  from  there could have  begun the  pro- cess of putting Washington a sustainable fiscal path.

Then  again, when  has  The  Donald ever  done his  homework, got in real bruising political battles over substantive policy  matters rather than tweetstorms, and  cared a whit  about the nation’s fiscal solvency?

How The Donald Threw In the Towel on Domestic

Spending

Finally, there is one  more  element gravitating toward fiscal catastrophe that got  a  real  boost under Trump-O-Nomics. The truth is, the GOP has been  thoroughly Trumpified and  distracted from  its  main  fiscal  mission by  The  Donald’s utterly misguided war  on  the  US  borders and  demagogic anti-immigrant howling and  by his parallel eagerness to embrace big tax cuts without pay- ing for them (see Chapter 6).

Moreover, with  The  Donald’s loud insistence, the  contem- porary GOP has even  taken a powder completely on Medicare, Social   Security,  and   the   lesser   entitlements.  That’s   $50  tril- lion  of current law spending over  the  next  decade, and  yet the GOP recently agreed with  Joe Biden and  the  Dems  to cut  nary a penny from  these  monster programs in  the  last  debt ceiling settlement.

But no sooner did they brush themselves off from  their shame- ful surrender on  the  debt ceiling deal  than they  were  at it again. This  time  proposing huge tax  cuts  with  no  off-setting spending reductions, and  again with  The Donald’s fulsome support.

In total, the  recently tabled House GOP tax  package encom- passed $240  billion of  tax  cuts  such  as  increasing the  standard deduction on  income taxes,  expanding opportunity zones, roll- ing back  some requirements for reporting transactions to the IRS, and  restoring expired Trump-era business expense write-offs.

Thus, under the new GOP tax plan, the standard deduction for singles would increase by $2,000 to $15,850, and  for married cou- ples  the  standard deduction would increase by $4,000 to $30,700. Accordingly, the  chief  GOP sponsor proclaimed that the  day  of the proverbial free lunch has truly  arrived:

“With this  provision in  place, an  American family  of  four  will not pay a cent in federal  taxes on their first $68,000  of income,” said House Ways and  Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith, Missouri Republican.

And  if dogs could whistle, the  world would be a chorus! That  is to say, has  Rep. Smith done the  math? Roughly 75 percent of all US workers earn  less than $68,000 and  yet Republicans are going to exempt them from  paying any federal income taxes  at all, even as the  Washington behemoth is allowed to keep  on spending and borrowing like there is no tomorrow?

Of course, there will be a tomorrow, albeit a fiscally disastrous one  for which  the  Trumpified GOP can  share fully  in the  blame. It is supposed to be the party that keeps  Washington on the fiscal straight and  narrow, but  under The Donald’s feckless  MAGA  slo- gans  it has  degenerated into  the  party of gluttonous war  spend- ing,  unpaid-for tax cuts,  and  entitlements cowardice.

Once upon a time  there was a majority of Republicans led by Senator Robert Taft  who  believed in  fiscal  rectitude and  small government—and on both sides of the Potomac River. As we have indicated, Taft advocated Fortress America, not  global hegemony, as the  route to homeland security. His view was right then, and  it is still correct now.  So the truth is, Donald Trump is the anti-Taft. He’s no Mr.  Republican at all—just  a dangerous poseur.

For  avoidance of  doubt, just  consider what  he  embraced in order to  get  his  extra national security spending. It might have been  supposed, of course, that with  control of the  veto  pen  and strong GOP positions in both the House and  Senate during these four  years  that the  near  quarter-trillion dollars per  year  of extra largesse for the  national security state  would have  been  off-set by some  hefty  curtailments on the domestic side.  The party in power being the fiscally conservative GOP and  all.

But  not  a chance. The nondefense budget of $3.38 trillion left by Obama (FY 2017) weighed in at $6.07 trillion when The Donald finally  shuffled out  of the Oval  Office in FY 2021.

That  $2.69 trillion nondefense spending increase amounted to a 79 percent gain  over the four-year period, averaging nearly $675 billion per  year.  Big  spender Obama, by  contrast, had  increased the  non-defense budget by an average of just  $112 billion per  year and  Bill Clinton’s per  annum nondefense increase figure  was but

$85 billion.

Nor  can you blame The Donald’s domestic spending bonanza entirely on entitlements and  interest payments, even though legis- lative curtailment of these mandatory spending accounts is exactly the  job  of the  GOP in our  two-party democracy. As it happened, however, The  Donald also  presided over  a veritable eruption of spending  for  the   third  component of  nondefense  spending— appropriated domestic programs.

That’s  right. We are talking about the  very corner of the  bud- get  where  the  presidential veto  pen  is potentially mightier than the  beltway’s assembled army  of PACs  and  lobbies or  the  over- flowing pork barrels of hometown goodies. But  in round terms, nondefense discretionary spending rose from $600 billion per year to $900 billion during The Donald’s four  budgets. That’s a 50 per- cent  gain,  yet there was nary  a veto  to be hurtled at the  appropri- ations bills  and  eleventh-hour omnibus spending extravaganzas that came  across  The Donald’s desk. The Great Money Bubble... Stockman, David A. Best Price: $3.50 Buy New $7.18 (as of 07:44 UTC - Details)

But  here’s  the  thing. Donald Trump has never  made any bones about his  complete disinterest in curtailing government spending and  borrowing. Still,  he did  not  accomplish these  monster spend- ing  increases by unilaterally defying the  will of the  GOP congres- sional delegations, either. These  hideous spending and  borrowing eruptions represented, instead, the  overwhelming consensus of the bipartisan uniparty.

The majority of both parties devoutly desire to feed the Warfare State monster ever greater rations, even as they give a perennial hall pass  to entitlement spending and  jump at every  possible chance, such  as the  trillions of Covid Lockdown relief  spending and  the green energy tax credit scams,  to open the fiscal spigot wider.

Alas,  that gets  us  to  the  dirty secret  of the  nation’s now  $33 trillion public debt. Mainly that the once  and  former conservative anti-spending party has  been  taken over  by the  MAGA  hat  “cul- ture  warriors” and  the  neocon warmongers, but  most  especially by  a permanent class  of Washington Republican legislators and staff who live for the power and  pelf that manning-up the Empire bestows upon them.

Serving on  the  broad array   of  national  security committees, grazing at the  foreign affairs  think tanks and  NGOs, junketing far and  wide  across  the  planet as latter-day pro-consuls, visiting the dozens of occupied countries, and  inspecting America’s  eight hun- dred military bases—all  are  far  more   thrilling than returning to Green Bay to run  a car dealership.

So  they   feed   the   Empire,  and   the   Empire nourishes their sojourns on the great stage  of world affairs.  That’s the heart of the real  Washington Swamp. And  the  clueless Donald Trump fed  it like never before.

The Poison of Relentless Public  Borrowing

Ultimately, excessive, relentless public borrowing is the  poison that will  kill  capitalist prosperity and  displace limited constitu- tional government with  unchained statist encroachment on  the liberties of the people. For that reason alone, The Donald needs be locked-out of the nomination and  banished from  the Oval  Office.

Of  course, the  great enabler of  The  Donald’s  reckless fiscal escapades was  the  Federal Reserve, which  increased its  balance sheet   by  nearly $3  trillion or  66  percent during The  Donald’s four-year term. That  amounted to  balance sheet  expansion (i.e., money-printing)  equal  to   $750  billion  per   annum—compared to  gains  of $300 billion and  $150 billion per  annum during the Barack Obama and  George W. Bush  tenures, respectively.

Still,  Trump wasn’t  satisfied with  this  insane level  of  mone- tary  expansion. He never  did  stop  hectoring the  Fed  for  being too  stingy with  the  printing press  and  for  keeping interest rates higher than the  King of  Debt in  his  wisdom deemed to  be  the correct level.

Balance Sheet of the Federal Reserve, 1960 to 2020.

In short, given  the  economic circumstances during his tenure and  the  unprecedented stimulus emanating from  the  Keynesian Fed,  Donald Trump’s constant demands for  still  easier  money made even  Richard Nixon look  like a paragon of financial sobri- ety.  The  truth is, no  US  president has  ever  been  as  reckless on monetary matters as  Donald Trump. That’s  why  it’s  especially rich  that the  die-hard MAGA  fans  are now  gumming loudly for a revival  of the  great Trump economy. Yet it is the  egregious fiscal, monetary, and Lockdown excesses during his tenure that gave rise to the current economic mess.

Then  again, the  MAGA  faithful have  been  thoroughly Trumpified. After years of The Donald insisting that even more  fiat money should be pumped into  the economy, the GOP politicians gave  the  Fed  a free  pass  during the  2022 campaign—and did  so during an inflation-besotted election season that was tailor-made for a hammer-and-tongs attack on the inflationary money-printers domiciled in the Eccles  Building.

Once upon a  time,  GOP politicians knew  better. Certainly, Ronald Reagan did  amidst the  double-digit inflation of the  early 1980s.

The  Gipper did   not   hesitate to  say  that Big  Government, deficit-spending and  monetary profligacy were  the  cause  of  the nation’s economic ills. He was right, and  he won  the  election in a landslide. Indeed, he was even  persuaded to include a gold stan- dard plank in the 1980 GOP platform.

By contrast, consult the videos or transcripts of a score  or two or three of MAGA  rallies. Did  anything remotely resembling the Reagenesque take  on inflation ever flow from  The Donald’s bom- bastic vocal = cords?

Of course not. So to repeat: Donald Trump is not  an economic conservative in any way, shape, or form. He’s simply a self- promoting demagogue who,  during four  years in the Oval  Office, only  managed to compound the  nation’s ills stemming from  bad policy  ideas  deeply embedded inside the Washington beltway.

Lead  among these  is runaway federal spending, borrowing, and  printing—a terrible policy  malfeasance that Donald Trump pushed into  a League All of His Own.

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