The federal budget remains a disaster, and despite the entire talk dotted with costs of costs and tariffs, Americans know it. Especially irritating is that the last fiscal remains are being supervised by an administration that promised commercial insight and conservative restriction. Republicans are delivering the opposite: a self -inflicted destruction of wealth, the increase in interest rates, the fears of rasgators and an abandonment even of their usual pretext of fiscal discipline.
Results of the National Fiscal Policies Survey of the Cato Institute confirm that Americans do not trust politicians to administer our money. Seventy -six percent says the federal government spends too much. A surprising 85% says that the last wave of expenses of the decade has not had any impact on their quality of life or worsened.
That is a condemnatory accusation of the impressive deficits of the first Trump administration, the expense of the administration of deranged Biden and the Republicans who, until very recently, at least intended to worry about fiscal sanity, even being realistic about the need to reform law programs.
Ninety -eight percent of Americans believe there are at least some waste, fraud and abuse in federal expenditure, and two thirds think there is a batch. The public now estimates Those 59 cents of each federal dollar are wasted, the highest amount recorded since Gallup began asking that question in 1979.
This is not the opinion of a crankshaft minority: eighty -nine percent of Americans, including 99% of Republicans, support a complete audit of federal expenditure.
One would think it would be a attention call, especially when the debt image is deteriorating so quickly. According to the Department of the Treasury, as of this month, only in the middle of the fiscal year, we have already published A $ 1.3 billion deficit. Interest payments alone crossed the $ 500 billion brand, displacing almost everything else. Too much for “low interest rates forever” fancy.
On these high interest rates: one of the most absurd economic notions that float by the Trump administration is that the tariffs, for the markets that did it last week, would help. Supposedly, panic investors would flee to the US Treasury bonds, reduce interest rates and allow the cheapest refinancing of debt. That was the theory, anyway, until the markets crashed so much that investors began to throw bonds and increases.
The key issue is what the financial columnist Jon Sindreu described as the administration “alter the global commercial system”. Instead of making the government debt safer, investors distrust having financial assets in the United States. The 10 -year treasure bond performance has increased since then, not depressed.
That is especially worrying since approximately one third of the debt of the mature government in less than a year. The protectionist policy has collided with budget imprudence, and the next refinancing will bring a expensive tab instead of relief. We will pay more to borrow than ever.
Let's not forget inflation. Speaking at a business journalism conference, the president of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, fixed It is likely that Trump's tariffs were “significantly higher than expected” and that their economic effects, including greater inflation and slower growth, are probably equally substantial. The fight against inflation will require increasing interest rates, which will again increase interest payments and deficit.
In addition to that, Republicans are preparing to extend Trump's tax cuts. There are reasonable ways To do soBut they seem to be prepared to add new cuts, some more politically motivated than economic sound. This comes without the necessary expenses or structural reforms to compensate for lost income. The result? A balloon deficit, a reduction income base and no long -term plan. This is not economy on the side of the offer. It is a magical thought.
Ok, but what if the tariffs increase? Billion In income, as administration officials have been boasted? That is not a victory.
No, it is just another way of saying that they have raised the greatest increase in taxes in the history of the United States in US consumers. And it is certainly not what the voters had in mind when they heard “America first.” We must not count on these income, if it ever materializes, to reduce debt in relation to GDP. Fiscal adjustments based on higher taxes generally not. However, they slow down the economy in the short and long term.
And what about Doge, the so -called government efficiency department? Well, apparently Elon Musk and his team will cut $ 150 billionNot the “At least” $ 2 billion once promised. I am grateful that they are cutting some expenses, but let's be sincere, it is a drop in the red ink cube.
Republicans cannot continue to be the sleepwalking in the same fiscal errors committed by the Democrats by exchanging long -term stability for short -term political gain, digging up the budget for convenience and waiting for voters not to realize. Because the voters are Noting.
They know that Washington wasted their money. They know that budget deficits are important. And they are desperate for someone, anyone, to act as a responsible adult. The question is whether the Republicans, who still have a change mandate, will answer the call.
Veronique de Rugy He is a senior research member at the Mercatus Center of the George Mason University. This article was produced in collaboration with the creators Syndicate.
