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Do the deficits in the Trump budget concern you? Why or not? If they do, how much do they concern you? Are there particular spending increases that you would question?

How much Trump concerns you concerns me.

Since we have a debt based fiat money system, it seems we are doomed to have budget deficits forever - at least if we want a “growing economy”. We seem to have lost any will to ever put a permanent stop to this.

I've been concerned about deficits ever since I started voting, it's one of the things I talked about on MD quite a bit when Obama was president. This is something that really does concern me about Trump - to me, fiscal responsibility is one of the core values of traditional Republicans, and something I want to see in government.

And it's something Donald Trump talked about too when he was campaigning:

DT: We’re not a rich country. We’re a debtor nation. We’ve got to get rid of — I talked about bubble. We’ve got to get rid of the $19 trillion in debt.

BW: How long would that take?

DT: I think I could do it fairly quickly, because of the fact the numbers . . . .

BW: What’s fairly quickly?

DT: Well, I would say over a period of eight years. And I’ll tell you why.

Was he right? Is it important to get rid of the debt? Does his budget steer us in that direction? I don't expect the debt to disappear in eight years, but shouldn't we be paying the debt down, spending less than we get in taxes?

Bootstrap wrote:Do the deficits in the Trump budget concern you? Why or not? If they do, how much do they concern you? Are there particular spending increases that you would question?

My question is: Where does the money come from? Who do they borrow it from, and where do they get it from? Is this a case of debits and credits on a computer, with banks building up paper assets?

I've read already that China owns a lot of the US debt. Is that true? Who actually owns the US?

No one really seems to care about the situation.

The budget is not “his” budget either. He had to come up with one Congress would pass, or else have a government shutdown.

I think the upside to the country having some debt is greater than being debt free.

But it seems to me that the debt growth is in a free fall with no political will at all for slowing it down. And I can't imagine this being a good thing for the country indefinitely. I fully trust the government to increase spending until they cannot borrow anymore, which I think will be a long time from now.

I will always be against government debt. There is absolutely no upside to any government running a deficit. Our grandchildren will curse our generation sometime in the future. I hope to be remembered as one that spoke out against it loud and clear.

appleman2006 wrote:I will always be against government debt. There is absolutely no upside to any government running a deficit. Our grandchildren will curse our generation sometime in the future. I hope to be remembered as one that spoke out against it loud and clear.

The other choices are high taxes or a lot less government spending, and there isn’t much will or desire for the latter.

Constant deficits seem really bad to me.

appleman2006 wrote:I will always be against government debt. There is absolutely no upside to any government running a deficit. Our grandchildren will curse our generation sometime in the future. I hope to be remembered as one that spoke out against it loud and clear.

What is the difference in this and borrowing for business purposes?