{"id":60315,"date":"2026-09-26T22:46:56","date_gmt":"2026-09-26T22:46:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=60315"},"modified":"2026-09-26T22:46:56","modified_gmt":"2026-09-26T22:46:56","slug":"what-happened-to-the-budget-deficit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=60315","title":{"rendered":"What happened to the budget deficit?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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I want to discuss briefly on this blog an issue that once stood as the hallmark of conservative Republicans’ policy, but which has been buried under an enormous mountain of rhetoric … and money.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Republicans used to proclaim themselves to be “deficit hawks,” meaning that they detested the idea of spending more money than the Treasury had in hand for the government to operate. I’m sitting in my North Texas home at this moment thinking of the 1980 presidential campaign between President Carter and former California Gov. Ronald Reagan. Carter was saddled with a $43 billion shortfall in the budget, giving Reagan, the GOP nominee for president, ample ammunition to use against the incumbent.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

That issue, along with the Iranian hostage crisis, paved the way for Reagan to score a massive landslide victory over Carter.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The $43 billion figure today seems quaint. Why? Because the deficit being run up by the current GOP POTUS tops — oh, hell, I don’t know — something in excess of $2 trillion. And that number is growing because of demands by the Pentagon to add another $1.5 trillion to fight a war with Iran that Trump says we’ve already won!<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

What the f***?<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

This quote has been ignored in recent years, but Trump once described himself during his run for office as “king of debt.” Well, His Majesty the Debt King has demonstrated that he doesn’t give a damn about predictions from earlier Republicans about what these deficits — and the spiraling national debt — will do to our nation’s long economic future. They said during the Obama years in the White House that the debt will destroy our economy.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The GOP thought today? BFD, man.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Therefore that makes Donald Trump the RINO in chief. He’s no real Republican … but just talks a good and fraudulent game<\/em>.<\/p>\r\n\n

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I want to discuss briefly on this blog an issue that once stood as the hallmark of conservative Republicans’ policy, but which has been buried under an enormous mountain of rhetoric … and money. Republicans used to proclaim themselves to be “deficit hawks,” meaning that they detested the idea of spending more money than the … Continue reading What happened to the budget deficit?<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,7910,9],"tags":[41,775,2491,3197,4017],"class_list":["post-60315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business-news","category-economic-news","category-local-news","tag-1980-election","tag-budget-deficit","tag-jimmy-carter","tag-national-debt","tag-ronald-reagan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=60315"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60317,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60315\/revisions\/60317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}