Two words: Deficit spending.
In December, Republicans gleefully passed a tax bill that will add $1.5 trillion to the deficit and Donald Trump triumphantly signed it into law.
Last week, Republicans championed another bill that will inflate the deficit by another $400 billion in deficit spending and Trump quickly gave it his imprimatur.
But that’s not enough deficit spending for the man who once dubbed himself ‘the king of debt‘—the leader of a party that spent years demonizing deficits and raising itself up as the party of so-called “fiscal responsibility.” The New York Times writes:
President Trump on Monday sent Congress a $4.4 trillion budget with steep cuts in domestic programs and entitlements, including Medicare, and large increases for the military, envisioning deficits totaling at least $7.1 trillion over the next decade.
You read that right, it adds $7 trillion—with a T—to deficits. A lot of that price tag goes toward padding the Pentagon’s budget and about $200 billion is directed at infrastructure spending. But Trump thought Congress was just a little too generous with non-defense spending over the next couple years, so the White House is trying to chip away at funding for programs like food stamps and Medicare that help save the lives of the nation’s most vulnerable.