Stuart Varney was perplexed why the deficit is still rising to new heights but refused to acknowledge that the Trump tax cuts did not do what they promised.
This is bad news for the midterms, because Republicans and Trump have been screaming that if they control the government they'd be able to marshal the nation's finances. Heh.
Trump frequently criticized his Democratic predecessor Barack Obama for running up the deficit, and in 2012 recommended banning lawmakers from reelection if Congress couldn’t balance the budget.
On this morning's Varney & Co., after doing their prescribed amount of Sen. Warren bashing, turned their eyes towards the rising deficit.
Bloomberg reports, "The U.S. budget deficit grew to $779 billion in Donald Trump’s first full fiscal year as president, the highest since 2012 amid tax cuts and spending increases."
Varney said, "Some numbers on money. The treasury took in a record amount of money from an individual taxes in the last 12 months. $1.863 trillion. At the same time, our deficit went up to $779 billion. James, that is not supposed to happen with a four percent growth and a rising deficit and record tax income."
When Varney recaps events he often leaves out important information like how much tax revenues the govt collected from corporations. I think that's an important issue, don't you?
Corporate income-tax receipts fell 31 percent in fiscal 2018 while individual income taxes gained 6.1 percent, according to Treasury data.
James Freeman from the WSJ's editorial page responded by saying things changed after the financial crises but this picture looks like we are at war.
Trump sure has spent enough money on the military as if we are gearing up for war. Trump has been in charge for almost two years, and the deficit is skyrocketing.
James Freeman also said it's due to the amount of interest expense on our debt, entitlements and defense spending.
And in Varney's world, it's never a huge reduction in collected corporate tax revenues or Trump's out of control military spending, it's always entitlements.
Varney, "The third rail of American politics. isn't it? We really have to do is reform Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. You gotta reform them to save them, but trying to do that is an absolute nightmare."
Two big reasons why entitlements are not "fixed" yet is because Republicans only want to cut back benefits to seniors and or privatize Social Security which would be devastating to the elderly in this country. That's not a fix, that's a destruction.
Freeman as usual took this opportunity to attack Obamacare.
Fox News' John Layfield blamed Congress for not wanting to balance the budget.
Layfied then said at some point the U.S. will turn into Greece.
Layfield then said President Obama is doing some wonderful things with the economy and Varney immediately reminded him that Trump is in charge.
But it's never Trump's fault for anything.
