Trump’s $10 trillion stimulus plan

The new president takes a hacksaw to the weeds in the federal budget

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By Stephen Moore

All of Washington seems to be in cardiac arrest over the news reports late last week that President Donald Trump is planning a budget with $10 trillion of budget cuts over the next decade.
We can only hope and pray that the report is accurate. Let’s also hope that Mr. Trump has the backbone to stick with this plan to staple the stomach of the federal government. This is an enterprise that has been borrowing $1 trillion a year for the past decade and is expected to continue to do so for years and decades to come. The national indebtedness will soon exceed $20 trillion and everyone in Washington is denial about this mestastiszing cancer cell rather than ordering radiation therapy before it kills off the economy.



Why is everyone so shocked about this story that from The Hill newspaper that Mr. Trump wants to take a hacksaw to the overgrown weeds in the federal budget? Time for a chill pill.
Yes, even in Washington $10 trillion is a whole lot of money. It’s roughly equal to the entire amount of debt that was accumulated by Barack Obama in eight years.
The scaremongers say that cuts of this magnitude would have devastating effects on social programs and vital federal services. Wrong. Even with this overdue downsizing, the federal government would still grow in size over the next decade. It just wouldn’t grow by nearly as fast it is projected to if nothing at all is done.
Here are the parameters we are talking about. First, over the next decade the United States government is expected to spend close to $50 trillion. So Mr. Trump would cut one in five dollars of expected spending