All posts tagged "National Debt"

President Donald Trump is apparently stumped by math and how refund checks work after announcing he wants to give Americans $2,000 checks paid for by his tariffs — then expressing bewilderment about where the money would come from.

The 79-year-old president promised to send rebates to "low and middle income" U.S. citizens funded by his tariffs, The Daily Beast reported.

“All money left over from the $2000 payments made to low and middle income USA Citizens, from the massive Tariff Income pouring into our Country from foreign countries, which will be substantial, will be used to SUBSTANTIALLY PAY DOWN NATIONAL DEBT,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform Monday. ...

Former Republican strategist Rick Wilson is warning that a desperate Donald Trump has turned to the "Roy Cohn Distraction Playbook" — named for Trump's ethically-challenged mentor — to cover for the serious schism roiling within the MAGA movement.

Wilson claimed that Trump's chief-of-staff Susie Wiles fired "the Fort Sumter shot of the MAGA civil war" by pushing DOGE head Elon Musk out of the White House last week. Musk reportedly wanted to stay on past his 130 days as a "special government employee," but Wiles had had enough.

Shortly thereafter, Musk publicly raged at Trump's spending bill that passed the House, calling it a "disgusting abomination" that will put the United States into "slavery" for adding $2.4 trillion to the national debt....

Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) confounded CNN host John Berman over his justification for passing President Donald Trump's spending bill after claiming he was against adding to the national debt.

"You just talked about your opposition to deficit spending," Berman said. "The CBO — Congressional Budget Office — just put out figures that this will add $2.4 trillion to the national debt."

Sessions said that the struggle over the "one big beautiful bill" isn't "a perfect battle" for Republicans, but it has to be passed. ...

The Washington Post's George Will claims that the "theatrics" of Elon Musk's DOGE cuts that have caused fury over database access and mass firings is a brilliant distraction from the country's biggest problem: the massive debt that continues to spiral out of control.

In a Wednesday opinion piece, Will wrote that the administration has had little "substantial achievement" so far toward DOGE's mandate to eliminate government "waste, fraud, and abuse." This dearth of accomplishments, "will exacerbate the fiscal incontinence that is the nation’s foremost domestic crisis," he wrote.

"In this fiscal year’s first five months, beginning Oct. 1, the government borrowed $1.1 trillion — almost $8 billion a day," Will wrote. "In February, the first full month of the Musk’s government-pruning “revolution,” borrowing was $308 billion because spending was $40 billion more — a 7 percent increase — over February 2024."...

[rebelmouse-image 24747905 original_size="179x239" expand=1]Perhaps the reason that we're in such a debt crunch these days isn't because we're all weak-minded simpletons who look at the national debt and say, "I want me some of that!", but instead a system which is designed at virtually every corner to maximize the burden on debtor to the benefit of the lender?