Fiscal conservatism, WHERE ARE YOU?
We’ve come to grips with it being in its death throes in Raleigh. Let’s see how it’s doing in DC in the Trump era:
The federal government spent $1,822,712,000,000 in the first five months of fiscal 2019, the most it has spent in the first five months of any fiscal year since 2009, which was the fiscal year that outgoing President George W. Bush signed a $700-billion law to bailout the banking industry and incoming President Barack Obama signed a $787-billion law to stimulate an economy then in recession.
At the same time that federal spending was hitting this ten-year high, federal tax revenues in the first five months of the fiscal year were hitting a four-year low of $1,278,482,000,000. […]
The last time the Treasury spent more than that in the first five months of a fiscal year—in inflation-adjusted constant February 2019 dollars—was fiscal 2009. That year, the Treasury spent $1,936,268,470,000.[…]
So, we’re spending MORE now than we did during Obama’s stimulus and Bush’s bank bailout. And federal tax revenues are falling significantly. Spending goes up. Revenue goes down. Anyone want to hedge a bet about what comes NEXT?
Please don’t blame this on Pelosi and her team. They’ve only been in charge since January. We’re talking about EIGHT of those ten years (2011-2018) with GOP control of the House and FIVE of those years (2015-2019) with GOP control of the Senate. And we’re in our third year of a GOP presidency.
The problem is awful GOP leadership – McConnell and Boehner / Ryan / McCarthy, and that badly needs to be changed. We have the same type of leadership problem here in North Carolina. We need to move to leaders like Gingrich who really try to carry out conservative policy, or at least ones like Hastert who do not stand in the way of it..
We have two opportunities to elect the type of congressmen who will shake up the status quo in Washington in the special elections in the 3rd and 9th. We do NOT need to send up establishment tax and spend types who play follow the leader. We have both breeds of cat in the primaries – those who will be leadership lap dogs and those who will fight hard for principle. We need to nominate and elect the latter.