Posted on 04/03/2016 11:22:01 AM PDT by Steelfish
Fact Checker Trump’s Nonsensical Claim He Can Eliminate $19 Trillion In Debt In Eight Years
Donald Trump, in an interview with Bob Woodward and Robert Costa In a revealing interview, Trump predicts a ‘massive recession’ but intends to eliminate the national debt in 8 years
By Glenn Kessler April 2
The Washington Post's Bob Woodward and Robert Costa sat down with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Here's how the interview went. Donald Trump: “We’ve got to get rid of the $19 trillion in debt.”
Bob Woodward: “How long would that take?”
Trump: “I think I could do it fairly quickly, because of the fact the numbers…”
Woodward: “What’s fairly quickly?”
Trump: “Well, I would say over a period of eight years. And I’ll tell you why.”
Woodward: “Would you ever be open to tax increases as part of that, to solve the problem?”
Trump: “I don’t think I’ll need to. The power is trade. Our deals are so bad.”
Woodward: “That would be $2 trillion a year.”
Trump: “No, but I’m renegotiating all of our deals, Bob. The big trade deals that we’re doing so badly on. With China, $505 billion this year in trade. We’re losing with everybody.”
— exchange during a Washington Post interview, March 31, 2016
Of all the wildly impossible assertions made by Donald Trump, the notion that he could eliminate the nation’s $19 trillion in debt in just eight years ranks near the top. Trump suggests he can manage this feat simply by cutting better trade deals.
If only it were that easy. As we have noted repeatedly, eliminating a trade deficit does not mean the money ends up in government coffers. (Morever, Trump is wrong to say the trade deficit with China is $505 billion; it’s $366 billion, according to the Census..... (READ ON)
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
#151 not according to the ruling on the the matter from the USSC.
Legally they could stop sending checks tomorrow.
Sorry-he said he could cut 300 billion out of a 85 billion dollar program
Did you see a /s ( sarcasm off ) tag?
No sarcasm involved.
So some hack journalist knows more about how to run a business and debt negotiations than Donald Trump.
Right.
You make the case why Trump believes his followers are so stupid that either they will believe anything he says at face value or will twist themselves into a pretzel to try justifying his errant nonsense.
LOL!
Guess Trump has your number, and the number of a bunch of other 'inside the box' thinkers.
Must be dark in there.
Trump is a panderer. He wants to keep the ethanol subsidies for Iowa, Planned Parenthood does “wonderful,” things, and yet Trump can wave his magic wand (just like Trump Taj Mahal casino; Trump Shuttle; Trump steaks or Trump University), and have the debt vanish without raising taxes and cutting out subsidies. And yet find money to rebuild the infrastructure and much more for our military build up. This guy, as his erstwhile supporter Ann Coulter recently said, has gone “mental.”
He should have stuck to his “Reality Show.”
By if Trump says it it must be true even if one has to twist oneself into a pretzel to defend this errant nonsense. This is the sad state of Trumpkins.
I see you don’t want anyone to rattle your echo chamber.
Your candidate could have thought of it, but he didn’t, doesn’t have it in him.
Bloomberg did it, he made 40 billion. He did it without a million from his daddy to start with, and without a $200 million inheritance, and with no bankruptcies.
It sounds impossible, but it’s really not. Simply peg the Federal budget increase to no more than “population growth + inflation”. That’s about 2.2-2.5%. Historically, the GDP increases faster than that.
Given Hauser’s Law, taxes will quickly (in about 4-5 years) eliminate the deficit, meaning the debt will start being reduced.
Could it happen in 8 years? No. But in 8 years we could start putting a dent in the national debt, the first time since Eisenhower. And we’d be on a path towards eliminating the debt over the following couple of decades.
Thanks for the opportunity, I do not feel the need to convince you that the attempt is worth the effort.
From what I have read it would be a multi-pronged approach including but not limited to eliminating Government waste, selling Government assets like unused buildings, oil rights etc, returning Education to the states and eliminating unnecessary Government Departments.
The plan would include a reexamination of the services we perform for other Nation’s defense and the support we disproportionately give to Nato & the UN.
As the EPA, corporate tax structure and regulatory strangulation are lifted there will be a better business climate and more startups, people off welfare and paying tax is a double plus.
The border wall and the decrease in spending on illegal aliens will factor in has been shown in communities that have reversed their deficits by enforcing the existing laws and cutting 1/3 or more of their illegal population.
Its a process of putting a house in order. Trump believes that you set a difficult goal and if you don’t quite reach it you get further than you would if you set a less ambitious goal. In my life that has been true.
On the other hand Bloomberg is a soft drink Nazi.
And he started with a $10 million severance package when Salomon Brothers was bought and he was laid off. That was the money he used to start his financial information services company.
It can be done. Turn all federal government social programs over to the 50 states. Let the states decide if they want to keep the programs. The transition can be done over 3 or 4 years. The federal government can fund the programs during the transition. After that the states will pick up the costs. The federal government will then look more like the framers intended.
The US budget is $3 Trillion so the debt is 6 times annual income. Get rid of all the dead beats, the bond holders take a haircut, and added receipts from increasing national GDP instead of increasing the beuracracy and you are home free.
Duh - if you want the best vendors for ice rinks, you go to where hockey is the national sport and that means Canada. It is a mature and experienced industry there and that means best product for the best price. Those of us who do business research see the beauty in his approach.
“Legally they could stop sending checks tomorrow.”
I know that! I was just pointing out that the government is trying to “take credit for SSA as some sort of a a “freebie” that you had not part in creating through your contributions. But let them try to stop sending out SSA checks and see what the result is. They don’t dare, at least they don’t dare until the money runs out!
#177 Newsflash: the current payees get checks funded by borrowing money.There is No fund set aside, it’s lock box full of IOUs.
“#177 Newsflash: the current payees get checks funded by borrowing money.There is No fund set aside, it’s lock box full of IOUs.”
So why are any of the current members of our workforce paying into it?
“Its a process of putting a house in order. Trump believes that you set a difficult goal and if you don’t quite reach it you get further than you would if you set a less ambitious goal. In my life that has been true.”
Yes! Even so-called conservatives here seem to think it can’t be done. They are like the Democrats who, when the price of oil goes out of sight, start their “chant” about “it’s foolish to start drilling now because the resultant increase in supply is at least ten years down the road.” And based on what we have seen the past couple of years, that is a bald-faced lie. So too is it a lie that we can’t fix our fiscal disorder. “The Ostrich Collection” in Washington, on both sides, don’t have the fortitude, nor the desire (because it would piss off their donors) to tackle the problem. At least Trump is willing to try and he has the right places to cut identified. I’d take an increase in the unemployment rate if those who are making it go up used to work for the government in some unneeded capacity.
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