Aired on February 12, 2020 on My Faith Radio, Bill English talks with Carmen Leberge about President Trump’s budget.
Here are the show notes:
Trump Budget Proposal for FY 2021
Trump’s budget calls for ~ $1T deficits for the FY 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022.
As of today, America owes a total of $23,256,356,117,175.05
Intragovernmental debt – what agencies owe to each other, including social security, military retirement funds, Medicare and other retirement funds: 26% of Federal debt, or $6T
Public Debt – Foreign govt’s and international investors = $7T
Japan, China, United Kingdom, Brazil and Ireland are the top five foreign govt’s holding combined $3.1T (Japan and China each ~ $1.1T)
Trump cuts real spending for the following departments:
| Department | % Cut | Proposed Dept Budget (in billions) |
| Agriculture | 8% | 21.8 |
| Commerce | 48% | 7.9 |
| Education | 7.8% | 66.6 |
| Energy | 8.1% | 35.4 |
| Health and Human Services | 10% | 94.5 |
| Housing and Urban Development | 15.2% | 47.9 |
| Interior | 16% | 12.7 |
| Justice | 2.3% | 31.7 |
| Labor | 10.5% | 11.1 |
| State | 22% | 40.8 |
| Transportation (discretionary) | 13% | 21.6 |
| Army Corp of Engineers | 22% | 6.0 |
| Environmental Protection Agency | 26% | 6.7 |
| SBA | 25% | 739M |
Here are the proposed increases:
| Department | % Increase | Dept Budget (in billions) |
| NASA | 12% | 25.2 |
| Veterans Affairs | 14% | 105 |
| Treasury | 2.2% | 13.3 |
| Transportation (Mandated) | 8% | 66.2 |
| Homeland Security | 3.2% | 52.1 |
| Defense | .01 | 705.4 |
Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid + other mandatory programs: $3T ($2.4T for the first three, $600B for “other”)
Out of the total $4.829T budget, social security, medicare and Medicaid spending will account for 50% of our Federal spending.
By Comparison:
10 years ago:
Federal Budget was $3.6T or 25% less
Federal Debt was $14.082T or 39.5% less
Federal Deficit in 2011 was $1.3T
Discussion:
- The borrower is servant to the lender (proverbs 22.7)
- Total debt is just below $70K/person in the US
- How important should the debt be relative to other issues?
- Abortion
- Religious Freedom
- Social programs
- Other?
- My take – it is approaching the same status of importance
- If a war were to break out like WWII, we would not be able to borrow enough $$$ to finance fighting two wars simultaneously
- If interest rates were to rise 5% – prime goes from ~3% to 8%, the interest we would need to pay would rise significantly – certainly over $500B/year
- What can we do?
- Stay out of debt
- Get involved in both parties and make this a priority
- Get involved in non-partisan groups like the Concord Coalition
- Don’t accept “learned helplessness”
- Pray, pray, pray