Trump's Record Spy Budget - What Do We Really Get For $86 Billion?

**Origanalist** · 03-20-2019, 05:41 AM

The Trump Administration has requested a huge increase in the US spy budget, including a whopping $23 billion for the "black" budget. The reasons given are the increasing threats from Russia and China. Does all this spy spending really protect us...or is it just welfare for the Beltway bandits and scaremongers? Tune in to today's Liberty Report:

**AZJoe** · 04-18-2019, 06:38 AM

Trump’s $34 Trillion Deficit and Debt Bomb

Trump released his latest budget for 2019-20 fiscal year. It calls for $2.7 trillion in various social spending cuts over the decade … Not surprising, the $2.7 trillion in social program spending cuts will finance spending for the military and defense related programs like Homeland Security, Border walls, veterans, police, and programs like school vouchers. …

The $34 Trillion National Debt

Whether Trump’s budget is passed or not, his fiscal policy (taxation and spending) already represents a faster escalation of US deficits and therefore Debt.

During Trump’s first two years in office, US federal government deficits have driven the national debt up already by $3 trillion: At the end of 2016, when Trump entered office, the US national debt was $19.5 trillion. Today it is $22.5 trillion. He’s thus already added $3 trillion, a faster rate per year of debt accumulation than under even his predecessors, George Bush and Barack Obama.

The Treasury Advisory Committee … warned the US Treasury that it will have to sell $12 trillion more US Treasury bonds, bills and notes, over the next decade if the US is to fund the $1 trillion plus deficits …

That’s $12 trillion on top of the current $22.5 trillion national debt! That’s a $34 trillion national debt by 2028! …

How will the US government pay for such escalating interest—as it continues to cut taxes for business, investors and the wealthy while continuing to accelerate war and defense spending? …

The US government’s growing Deficit-Debt problem did not begin with Trump, however. He just represents the further acceleration of the Deficit-Debt crisis. …

The US actual defense budget includes the $750 billion Pentagon bill, plus the OCO direct war spending. Total defense-war spending also includes additional ‘defense’ spending for Homeland Security and for the CIA’s, NSA’s, and US State Department’s growing covert military spending for their ‘private’ armies and use of special forces. It further includes spending for Veterans benefits and military pensions, and for the costs of fuel used by the military which is indicated in the US Energy Dept. budget not the Pentagon’s. Add still more ‘defense’ spending on nuclear arms billed to the Atomic Energy Agency’s budget. And let’s not forget the $50-$75 billion a year in the US ‘black budget’ that fund’s future secret military arms and technology, which never appears in print anywhere in the official US budget document and which only a handful of Congressional leaders in both the Republican and Democrat parties are privy to know.

In short, the US ‘defense’ budget is well over $1 trillion a year and is rising by hundreds of billions a year more under Trump.

US wars in the Middle East alone since 2001 have cost the US at minimum $6 trillion, according to various estimates. …

When George Bush took office in 2001 the national debt was $5.6 trillion. When he left it was approximately $10 trillion. A doubling. When Obama left office in 2016 it had risen to $19.6 trillion. Another doubling. (Under Trump’s first two years it has risen another $3 trillion). For a US national debt of $22.5 trillion today. …

So Bush-Obama add $14 trillion to the $5.6 trillion debt in 2000. And Trump adds another $3 trillion so far. There’s the $17 trillion addition to the $5.6 trillion national debt. And now, according to the Treasury Advisory Committee, we can expect a further $12 trillion in debt …

But it gets worse than another $12 trillion. Today’s $22.5 trillion, rising to $34 trillion, is just the US national government debt. Total US debt includes state and local government debt, household debt, corporate bond and business commercial & industrial loan debt, central bank balance sheet debt, and government agencies (GSEs) debt.

Household debt is now $13.5 trillion and rising rapidly for student loans, auto loans, credit cards and other installment loans. In 2018, State and Local government debt was $3.16 trillion and rising as well. Corporate bond debt today is more than $9 trillion—two thirds of which is considered ‘junk’ and low quality BBB investment grade bonds, much of which is likely to default in the next recession. To this must be added other forms of business loan debt, commercial paper, and the like. The Federal Reserve bank’s balance sheet is also a form of debt, which is $4 trillion and, according to the Fed recently, will not be reduced further. Other government housing agencies, like Fannie Mae, add hundreds of billions more in US debt. All these account for more than an additional $30 trillion in US debt.

Add these other forms of debt to the national debt of $22.5 trillion and the total debt in the US rises easily to around $53 trillion. And add the further $12 trillion additional national debt on the horizon and further increases in other forms of debt, and the total US debt may easily exceed $70 trillion by 2028. The $900 billion a year in interest charges assumed by the CBO may thus be actually too low an estimate. …