It wasn’t part of his platform.
Are you happy with everything else?
This isn’t a hill to do on this year. The Dems would have used every cudgel available to them and excoriate Trump til election if he held out.
He’s not running again after next year. Let’s judge him then.
I remember Dick Armey talking about how, it was 97 or 98 I think, wasn’t the year to try to do tax reform. The “hill” on which we fight for fiscal sanity is always just in the horizon but never gets any closer. And that’s a fact
I disagree with you that cleaning up the deficit was not part of Trump’s platform. I clearly remember a debate that Chris Wallace moderated.
Trump said he would balance the books. Wallace took Trump to task as to how the books would be balanced at the same time Trump was calling for a big tax decrease.
Trump never answered the question as to how he would clean up the deficit.
Having said all that and based on having the Rats in control of the House and how the GOP looses a lot of the partial government shut downs, I agree with you that Trump had no choice but to take some defence spending and call it a day.