Many people will vote for Donald Trump because of his positions on border control, immigration, Islamic extremism, the economy, etc.
Some people will vote for him because he isn’t Mrs. Bill Clinton. Here’s an example: $1,590,000,000,000 vs. $1.550,000,000,000. What’s the difference?
$1.59 trillion is the amount of money the government collected in fiscal year 2015 from personal income taxes…a record high. This is 46% of the total revenue generated with an additional 32% coming from payroll taxes (social security and medicare) and 13% coming from corporate taxes.
Mrs. Clinton vows to follow in Barack Obama’s footsteps. During his eight years of stewardship, Obama will double the national debt increasing it by $10 trillion dollars; more than all of the 43 presidents before him—combined!
So, assuming she does as she says, Hillary would add another $10 trillion bringing the national debt, after her eight years were over, to $30 trillion. It could go even higher if she follows through on her plan to have the taxpayers pay for college tuition (a $100 billion/year price tag).
The average interest rate in U.S. history is 5.18% (not the staggering 21.5% of Jimmy Carter or the artificial 0.7% of Barack Obama).
So, the interest on a national debt of $30 trillion at 5.18% costs $1.55 trillion per year. That leaves us with:
$1,590,000,000,000 = individual tax receipts.
$1,550,000,000,000 = interest on the debt.
What’s the bottom line? If we paid $1.55 trillion for the interest on the debt in the 2017 federal budget, we would only have enough money leftover to pay for Social Security and the military…that’s it. We’d be out of money. Nothing for Medicare, health, food, agriculture, transportation, housing, education, etc., etc.
Or, we could pay for all budgeted items and go further into debt by borrowing another$1,875,000,000,000…in one year alone. This is the burden that an Obama/Clinton debt policy places upon us.
And, this is why some people will vote for Donald Trump—Hillary Clinton’s approach is simply unaffordable.
This is also why Donald Trump pledged “disciplined budget management and elimination of waste, fraud and abuse” and underscored that point by selecting fiscal conservative Governor Mike Pence to be his running mate.
Steve Carns has lived on the Eastern Shore for the last twenty years. After a career in business, he has served on many local nonprofit organizations, including the YMCA of the Chesapeake and the Academy Art Museum.
James Nick says
Mr Carns’s Op Ed is yet another expression of typical Republican misinformation or hypocrisy, or both. Totally missing, of course, is any reference to the state the economy was in when President Obama took office in January, 2009. Mr Carns conveniently fails to mention that Bush II handed off the worst financial crisis that this country had seen since the market crash of 1929 to President Obama necessitating a massive stimulus package. He fails to mention that Bush II instantly wiped out the budget surpluses that President Clinton had handed off to him. He fails to mention that Bush II passed unpaid for tax cuts for the rich and Medicare Part D. He fails to mention that Bush II launched two misguided and poorly executed wars that were conveniently kept off the books until President Obama assumed office. And finally, Mr Carns fails to mention that presidents do not authorize spending; Congress does. So how is it that Mr Carns credits President Obama with the full responsibility for the state of the national debt or the federal deficit?
The Republicans are quite comfortable when they spend public money on their political priorities and suddenly become deficit hawks when the Democrats try to clean up their mess. Not convinced? Consider this….
“Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter,” – Vice President Dick Cheney on the Bush administration’s second round of tax cuts in 2003 https://newrepublic.com/article/133431/donald-trump-right-deficits-dont-matter
“This is the United States government. First of all, you never have to default because you print the money. I hate to tell you. So there’s never a default”. – Donald Trump https://www.vox.com/2016/5/9/11639292/donald-trump-default-print-money
The fact is the US economy is the envy of the industrialized world at the moment. While not perfect, it has taken President Obama these last eight years to rescue it from the train wreck Bush II left us. There are always improvements needed to respond to changing priorities. But a vote for Trump is to return to the voodoo economics of the Bush II era. A vote for Hillary Clinton is to continue the responsible stewardship of the economy that President Obama has demonstrated.