Observations: Damn the torpedoes!
“Admiral Farragut” Trump orders full speed ahead
While I’ve (quite correctly) compared President Trump to Andrew Jackson, on budget matters he only seems to talk like President Jackson, the only US president to pay down the Federal debt. His fiscal policy instead mimics the tactics of another 19th century American hero, Admiral David Farragut. At the Civil War Battle of Mobile Bay, (then) Rear Admiral Farragut exhorted his fleet forward despite mines with a famous order, “Damned the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!” Bond vigilantes be damned, President Trump reissued Farragut’s order to the House of Representatives, and like the admiral’s fleet, they duly complied.
One of my pet peeves with official Washington is its proclivity for expressing everything fiscal in 10-year budget effects that – depending on one’s majority or minority status – are either used to make legislation sound very impressive, or very scary. Ten-year budget scoring also is an excellent way to obscure budget fakery. This makes the 10-year projections simultaneously useless for economic analysis but perfect for political polemickry. President Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” is no exception.
Sifting through phase-ins, sunsetting of tax hikes and spending cuts that almost surely will never happen, I try to estimate the effects on spending, taxation, the budget deficit, and economic growth over a realistic horizon: the next two years. The results may challenge at least one pillar of the consensus.