The Swamp is winning

Last Friday the Senate voted 71-28 and the house voted 240-186 in favor of the 2018 budget. President Trump signed it.
The problem is the budget represents the first significant break in Trump’s campaign promises. The new budget continues the Federal Governments fiscal irresponsibility by expanding the Federal debt hundreds of billions of dollars by increasing spending by 13 percent.
President Trump signed the budget bill because it provided $300 billion more for the military. Trump has made it clear he intended to increase military spending in order to insure the military had the equipment and personnel necessary to complete their mission.
During the campaign Trump released his Blue Print to drain the swamp by significantly cutting funding for massive Federal programs. Trump’s budget had proposed a 31 percent cut in funding for the EPA, a 21 percent cut to Agriculture programs, 18 percent cut in Health and Human Services and a 13 percent cut in Transportation programs. Prompting leading Republicans in Congress like John McCain to declare Trumps plan “dead on arrival.”
The latest budget prompted a statement from Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz, "I love bipartisanship, as you know, but the problem is the only time we discover bipartisanship is when we spend more money."
Restoring fiscal responsibility to the Federal Government is clearly something that is going to take more change in Washington than electing a rabble rousing President.
There is some truth that growing the economy will do more to reduce the deficit than cutting programs, but as long as our government leaders continue to spend money they don’t have our economy will never overcome the problem.
We must change the formula to only increase spending when actual revenues have increased and then by less than the rate of increase in the revenue. For example, lets say tax collections for the prior fiscal year increased by 3 percent. Then spending in the next year should only increase by 1 percent to 2 percent. That would then create a real surplus that could be used to retire the debt.
We owe this to our children and grandchildren. Continuing to spend more than we have is stealing from future generations. It is immoral.
Our children are criticizing us for destroying the planet by failing to address issues like climate change. But the looming debt crisis is far more significant to their quality of life than the phony climate change disaster. Don’t get me wrong, we must continue to address the issues of cleaning up our environment but carbon taxes and massive programs for wind and solar power will never address our energy needs.
Our first priority must be to get our spending under control. That includes planning for disasters and emergencies. Part of the problem is that politicians and bureaucrats thrive on addressing “needs.” And an emergency or disaster is a golden opportunity to jump in and be a hero to those in need. The biggest part of that problem is where was the planning for making sure we had the resources set aside to address these disasters? There will always be disasters and unexpected emergencies.
The latest budgetary over spending plan is partly justified on disaster relief. But real leadership would have long ago established an emergency fund to address these issues.
President Trump has ruffled a lot of feathers in D.C. But clearly on fiscal responsibility he must begin to address the problem of deficit spending.
Failing to do so is not just a broken campaign promise. It is a failure to consider the type of country our children will ultimately inherit.