March 10 – The T in the headline is correct. President Joe Biden released the proposed 2024 budget and it’s at $6.8 trillion.
The president said it would allegedly cut the deficit by $3 trillion, but how long that would take is anyone’s guess.
A deep look into the proposed budget found how many times the following words were mentioned:
Equity – 63
Climate – 148
Environmental justice – 25
Transgender – 8
Intersex – 7
Michele Jansen of NewsTalk 103.7FM pointed out, “All but one of those are actually all equity. Environmental justice, that’s equity. That’s all about how we have to look at the disparate impact of climate change on the historically marginalized groups. That’s BIPOC and LGBTQ – everybody but the majority. I don’t know how climate picks and chooses who it’s affecting, but apparently it does.”
The budget also includes a 28 percent corporate income tax, which reverses a tax cut during Donald Trump’s administration.
Pat Ryan of NewsTalk 103.7FM noted, “Of course that’s all going to be handed down to you. It’s quite the budget, but it’s a fantasy.”
Attorney Clint Barkdoll said, “This has zero chance of being passed and Biden knows that.”
The federal budget’s fiscal year is from October 1 to September 30.
Barkdoll said, “I think what’s going to be interesting is what do the House Republicans now come up with and propose? We all know we’ve got a huge problem with the deficit, with the debt, with spending, but yet Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid seem to be the sacred cows. No one in either party wants to touch those.”
The breakdown of the budget shows if Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Obamacare and the national defense budget were cut out, the debt service would be about 16 percent.
Barkdoll noted, “What’s called the discretionary part of the budget is only about 10 to 15 percent. So if they’re saying we’re not going to touch or cut any of those other programs, I don’t know how they do this to achieve a balanced budget and to meaningfully reduce the debt and the deficit.”
Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, gave a lengthy interview yesterday calling on everyone in Washington to have hard conversations about reforming Social Security. She’s suggesting raising the age to receive Social Security, but begin with people in their 20s and scale it up over time so it wouldn’t affect people currently on the cusp of retirement.
Barkdoll said, “Economists point out she’s absolutely right about this, but it’s political suicide for anyone to come out and make those kind of policy announcements. This will be another fascinating process to watch over the summer here.”
Jansen said, “The founders said it. As soon as people figure out how to vote themselves money, we’re pretty much doomed. And that’s exactly what all of this is about. Why have we just been printing money? Modern monetary theory. Why have we just been printing money? Because politically that’s expedient. We just print money, give it to the people that we want to support, our donors or the individuals we want to vote for us and that way we stay in power and everybody stays happy. There’s been decades of warnings from people who actually understand economics saying you cannot keep doing this. Now all the big companies, they’ve already taken on all the largess from all the low rates and it’s all the individuals who are now going to be harmed as we raise the rates. It’s not really going to be the so-called rich. This has all kinds of effects on the economy with the way treasuries are being affected because everybody’s desperately looking for a way out and there is no way out at this point. We’re going to have to face the realities, but we continue to have politicians who just want power over doing what’s actually going to be healthy in the long run.”
Ryan added, “And the Social Security Ponzi scheme isn’t being backfilled by new babies and new people coming online to continue that scheme.”
Barkdoll said, “We’re at about $32 trillion right now is the national debt. It’s hard to even fathom that number. This goes back for decades. You look at charts on spending and the debt, it doesn’t matter which party’s in the White House, who controls Congress, they all just spend like crazy. That trend line on the debt is just a straight up line. It doesn’t matter if it’s Obama and Democrats in charge or if it was Trump and Republicans in charge. We’re going to be on the debt ceiling here this summer. There will be all these calls for cutting spending and my question is always where have you people been? You’ve been voting for all these things for years in Congress or as the president. This is a big, big problem. A lot of these economists are pointing out could this be to the point that we are past the point of no return? There’s just no way to get our arms around this debt. It’s ballooned so much.”
Jansen pointed out, “The difference I can say between the Trump administration and the Biden administration, the Biden administration is unfortunately gone back to the same goals as the Obama administration which is then we take this money that we’re printing and giving to people and we’re investing in a lot of things that produce nothing. The green energy stuff that we know isn’t up to snuff and standard. We don’t even have the infrastructure to handle the energy that’s going to be coming. It’s a disaster. We know that’s going to be a disaster for energy production, our ability to live, to stay warm, to run our cars, especially if they’re all electric, that’s all going to go away. The DEI programs, which are just dividing our society, turning us against each other, putting hundreds of thousands of dollars, the salaries for these people are over $100,000. To do what? Produce nothing, but divide us from us from each other even more and make productivity go down. So we’re investing in horrible things that aren’t even helping. The investments do nothing. Although in the Trump administration at least he was investing in things that were actually producing stuff. That’s why the lowest unemployment for the historical marginalized groups, that was a good thing.”
Ryan said, “Well then you get what you deserve. You voted for Fetterman, now you don’t see him. You voted for Biden because you didn’t want mean tweets. At what point will the sleepy side wake up and what’s the save on this one? One save I see here, how the politicians can save themselves, which they won’t do anyway, but if you did term limits, you wouldn’t be so beholden to these ridiculous spend after spend after spend. I think term limits, oddly enough, could be a save here.”
Barkdoll agreed, “I think that would address a lot. A lot of these problems might take care of themselves with term limits.”
Ryan said, “You wouldn’t have to worry about a Mitch McConnell or a Chuck Schumer who’s completely unplugged to reality. You wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore because they wouldn’t be beholden to keeping their jobs and suckling on the union teats here.”
In fact, Chuck Schumer, US Senate Majority leader, said yesterday, “This is just a great budget. It fits the needs of American families to a T and gives them the kind of hope and optimism that America is moving in the right direction and paying attention to their needs.”
Ryan asked, “How do you lie boldfaced there? You look at your gas, you look at your groceries, you look at your 401K, you look at it all and you go, this guy’s higher than a kite.”
Almost 80 percent of the federal budget are entitlement programs and defense spending.
Barkdoll said, “Nikki Haley’s position yesterday is very politically unpopular, but she’s right. The only way to get around this, it’s got to be a combination of things, but a big one has to be either reforming and/or cutting some of these programs, but no one politically wants to come out and say that. That stuff’s off the table. I think as long as these politicians feel they need to keep that position to keep getting reelected, we’ve got a problem.”
In addition, the Trump tax cuts are set to expire in 2025 when they would revert to the rates prior to the Trump administration.
Barkdoll said, “So Congress also needs to address that. It really seems like a perfect storm developing around all of these issues.”
