During the GOP presidential primaries in 2016, Donald Trump boldly claimed he would not only rein in government spending, he promised in an interview with the Washington Post to eliminate the national debt — a mere $19 trillion at the time — “over a period of eight years.”
Also, in 2016, the GOP made a commitment — again — to address the national debt and included it in the party platform.
“The huge increase in the national debt demanded by and incurred during the current Administration has placed a significant burden on future generations. We must impose firm caps on future debt, accelerate the repayment of the trillions we now owe in order to reaffirm our principles of responsible and limited government, and remove the burdens we are placing on future generations.”
Not only were these merely lies told to gullible supporters of the GOP to get elected, Trump and the Republican swamp-dwellers aren’t even pretending to keep their word.
After three years — the first two with the trifecta of power — Trump and the GOP have put America $2.6 trillion deeper in debt.
Additionally, using Trumps own budget estimates, US debt will increase approximately $9.1 trillion by the end of his second term … assuming he has one.
And for the “Whataboutism” crowd who dismiss Trump’s budget failures because Obama’s were worse, you should know that in just the first eight months of the current fiscal year, Trump and the GOP are spending 18.2% more than Obama did in his final year in office.
This is happening, by the way, in an economy Trump has called “the greatest economy in the history of America.”
This level of big government spending has been standard operating procedure for far-left Democrats for decades, but in the Age of Trump, Republicans are proving to be just as far-left as their counterparts on the other side of the unibrow aisle.
Trump, Mitch McConnell, and Kevin McCarthy are hoping to fool voters using the recycled promises of past elections, and they are attempting to scare voters into voting Republican to stop the advance of socialism.
Using the politics of distraction as their guide, Trump and the GOP are making socialism one of the primary issues in 2020. That’s why Trump mentioned it in his State of the Union earlier this year, and it’s why Mitch McConnell is pretending to be a “firewall” against socialism.
Voters shouldn’t be fooled. Republicans are directly responsible for the rise of socialist ideology, and their failure to address government’s spending addiction is another piece of evidence proving that point.
Republicans are trying to make this election about socialism. The problem is that the budget is the single biggest leverage point of discernible policy outcomes. On that front, they are every bit as socialistic as Democrats. I'm sick of the cheap rhetoric.
— Daniel Horowitz (@RMConservative) July 18, 2019
If we continue to buy the binary lie every election — vote Republican because #NotDemocrat and #NotSocialist — we’ll end up on the receiving end of more socialism and more big government spending, thus ensuring the demise of our once great republic.
David Leach is the owner of The Strident Conservative.
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