Donald Trump Has Finally Done Something: He’s Increased the Deficit By a Trillion Dollars

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This is pretty amazing. Donald Trump hasn’t actually done much of anything in the past five months except flap his jaws. But it’s been some pretty expensive flapping. CBO’s last projection of the federal deficit was released in January. Literally nothing has happened since then except for Trump shooting off his piehole every day and congressional Republicans demonstrating that they can’t control their own lunatics. But that’s been enough. CBO’s projection of the federal deficit over the next decade has already increased nearly a trillion dollars:

The deficit in 2017 alone is projected to be $134 billion higher than CBO estimated when Obama left office. Why? “One reason for the sharp rise in the deficit in 2017 is the slow growth in revenue collections through May and the slow growth expected for the rest of the year.” And why is revenue collection so slow? CBO doesn’t say, but here’s a good guess:

The one thing that Republicans have made clear is that they’re really, really committed to cutting taxes on the rich. And they’ll probably make the tax cuts retroactive too. So why not lowball your quarterly tax payments in hopes they come through? It’s probably a pretty good bet.

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DEFEND THE TRUTH. DEFEND JOURNALISM.

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things it doesn’t like—which is most things that are true.

We’ll say it loud and clear: At Mother Jones, no one gets to tell us what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please do your part and help us reach our $150,000 membership goal by May 31.

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