Trump is merely following the foot steps of his predecessors- each one leaves our descendants deeper in debt.
Follow the money, see the agenda- now, if you want to point a finger at starting the decline, pick a time and we'll go from there. As Natural Citizen said- (and results prove it) it's been a bipartisan effort.
I was born in 1947 and every President in my life time has increased the debt. They have also increased the size of the Federal government. Both Democrat and Republican.
The Democrats always really screw it up. However, the best we get from the Republicans is that they decrease the rate of growth but never absolute growth. Despicable, isn't it?
The last three elections I have voted for somebody that ran on a platform to decrease the absolute size of government. He didn't win.
America really has it head up its ass. Most Americans would know what fiscal responsibility was if it bit them in the ass.
I too was born in 47 and yes the debt keeps increasing- politicians lie- ALL politicians on either arm of the duopoly- there is no discernible difference - rhetoric (lies) don't count. Results speak for themselves.
They abandoned the constitution way before you or I were even gleams in our Daddy's eyes.
The issue of U.S. government debt was not central after WWII, when the U.S. dominated industrially, financially and in every other way, since our natural capitalist competitors had been utterly destroyed in the war. Also for a short period after the USSR collapsed and before the 2008 Financial Crisis, there was a new absurd burst of American “triumphalism” which allowed Americans to ignore how rotten and corrupt our whole way of life, our whole economic system, had become; to ignore that world economy had already profoundly changed and we were losing our “place in the sun.”
Truly ALL OUR LIVES most of us have been living a pipe dream, feeding on the vanishing fumes of our addiction to debt, the Fed and Wall Streets’s self-destructive financial skulduggery and overseas adventures. Not only did we
not learn the lessons of Vietnam so long ago, we learned all the
wrong lessons about most everything. So our debts grew, our statesmanship vanished, our leadership at all levels became even more corrupt and entitled, we became more addicted to using sanctions and military force to get our way, even as we made enemies out of potential friends and wasted real treasures.
It was easy to believe our leaders, even as they divided us into tribes, or at least to believe that “we” and our system were uniquely superior.
All our leaders in both parties told us that, and we believed them. We were after all reasonably well off and “the most powerful country in the world.” This stupendous arrogance is still there. As it becomes evident that we can no longer afford our empire abroad, that our system can no longer afford to give everybody a comfortable middle class existence, Americans will have to decide — either 1) adopt fundamental social and democratic change domestically and reset relations abroad, or 2) double down on partisan witch-hunting at home and warmongering adventurism internationally.
