Wednesday, March 06, 2019

Trumponomics

The Washington Post notes:

Tax revenue for October 2018 through January 2019 fell $19 billion, or 2 percent, Treasury said. It noted a major reduction in corporate tax payments over the first four months of the fiscal year, falling close to 25 percent, or $17 billion.

As part of the 2017 tax cut law, the tax rate paid by corporations was lowered from 35 percent to 21 percent.

Spending, meanwhile, increased 9 percent over the same period.

The biggest increases were for defense military programs, which saw a 12 percent increase, and Medicare, which saw a 16 percent increase.

The Congressional Budget Office has projected that the deficit this year will reach close to $900 billion, because the government spends so much more money than it brings in through revenue....

During the tax cut debate in 2017, the White House promised that slashing tax rates would end up creating more revenue because it would allow the economy to grow at a faster clip. Economic growth did pick up in 2018, but Democrats have said the growth will be short-lived. So far, the growth has not come close to the levels needed to offset the $1.5 trillion in tax reductions that were part of the legislation.

The federal government is now more than $22 trillion in debt, largely representing an accumulation of all the money it has borrowed to finance programs in past years. A deficit is the one-year gap between spending and revenue, and the debt is the total amount of money owed by the government.

1 comment:

not trampis said...

yep, Republicans love the smell of budget deficits in the morning. It is in their DNA.

It usually occurs when it is not needed such as now. Then they have the gall to criticise their successors who have to clean up the mess