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Congress has reached a consensus on spending — spend! — and the Trump administration is broadly inclined to agree: On the heels of a $1.5 trillion tax cut, congressional Republicans joined up with Democrats to drop the Boehner-era statutory spending constraints and jack up spending by some $300 billion over the next ten years. The Trump administration now proposes $200 billion in federal spending as part of what the president hopes will be a $1.5 trillion package.The president has suggested that this $200 billion in spending will be offset by spending cuts elsewhere in the government, currently unspecified. Trump has suggested that foreign-aid cuts will be part of the picture, and like-minded critics of foreign aid such as Senator Rand Paul have echoed the sentiment, but those outlays are nowhere near sufficient to offset that $200 billion. If U.S. foreign assistance were halved — which is unlikely and not obviously desirable — that would cover about 10 percent of the proposed infrastructure spending.Perhaps Trump is a shrewder budgeter than he is being given credit for, in which case we have an alternative proposal: Identify those $200 billion in spending cuts, cut that spending, and then do . . . nothing. Pocket the savings.They are going to be necessary . . .. . . Our infrastructure isn’t crumbling, but our national fiscal position could use some shoring up. The economy is not currently in need of stimulus, but the Republicans’ instinct for fiscal conservatism is.
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Topic: Fiscal Do’s and Don’ts (Read 181 times)
