When Grover Cleveland — arguably the United States’ last non-“progressive” president — won his second term after a one-term hiccup named Benjamin Harrison, list makers and ordinal number enthusiasts faced a challenge: was Cleveland to be called the union’s 22nd president, or the 22nd and 24th president?
The two-term presidents before him had all served their terms consecutively, but we spoke of each four-year term in office as the presidents’ respective first and second administrations. Historians and archivists chose the clunky 22nd/24th double listing for Cleveland, which brings us to the current president, formerly the 45th and now the 47th.
One presidency was just not enough for Donald Trump.
But what will he be remembered as? It is possible that his tombstone will have a forty-something on it, but the “th” may very well stand for “trillionth” — for under his watch the public debt of the federal government rolled over on Wednesday, past $40 trillion.
I remember when people held signs up emblazoned with “No Trillion Dollar Debt!” How “forty years ago” is that?
There’s an old law of liberty: people out of power demand freedom, people in power demand more power. Trump sounded more libertarian when running for office, and he seems to conform to a very old corollary of the law: politicians running for office protest debt, politicians in office add to it.
FDR is the grand example, yet it is Trump who may come to be identified with it.
“The unprecedented [sic] $40 trillion figure highlights competing administration priorities,” declares The Seattle Times, “from boosting the defense spending that the U.S. relies on to carry out President Donald Trump’s almost-6-month-old Iran war to lowering the cost of gas
Isn’t this mere Trump-bashing? For while Trump may someday receive the blame, in truth it belongs to both parties and almost all politicians.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Illustration created with Nano Banana
See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts
3 replies on “The Forty-Trillionth”
Responsibility isn’t a quantity analogous to water. There is a more and a less to responsibility, but an increase in the responsibility of one party doesn’t of itself logically entail a decrease in the responsibility of another party, and each of multiple parties may be fully responsible for something.
I wouldn’t say that Trump had much responsibility for the federal debt accumulated before he first became President, though he played a rôle in politics, supporting political officials who had some effects upon spending.
But in his first term as President he pushed expenditures that he should instead have opposed and could successfully have vetoed. Yes, he was not the only person responsible; none-the-less, he was fully responsible. Moreover, he pursued policies such as protection of domestic manufacture that reduced revenues. And he left people in power who used that power to encourage the constituent states to shut-down economic activity.
Trump, having established perverse precedent that could be used by the Biden Administration, even bears some responsibility for the depredations of that Administration.
Trump 2.0 is not as mad as the corporate left claims; he may not be as mad as he seems to me. But, even if there is a method to his apparent madness, the fact remains that he has advocated spending that he could instead veto, and pursued policies that inhibit production and hence revenues. Congress is fully responsible for passing measures that he advocated and for failing to curtail his use of administrative powers, but that makes Trump not one bit less responsible.
Unfortunately, most of the corporate left and their useful idiots think that a part of the solution is to be found in increasing tax rates. But we are on the wrong side of various Laffer curves. Trump’s oft-denounced tax cuts are not the problem nor even part of the problem. For the sake of America, the US should drastically curtail spending and reduce tax rates.
It doesn’t take a brain surgeon!
Used in a sentence: ‘It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to know that unless our government debt load is slashed, the U.S. is on a slippery economic slope’.
Perhaps Congress needs more brain surgeons, members who understand basic economics, or men and women who have the guts to risk their reelection for the long-term stability of the country.
I wrote ‘The Point Of No Return For Interest Rates…What It Means For Property Buyers’ here
https://hallmarkabsservice.substack.com/p/us-rising-interest-ratesis-there
Only recently have I seen ‘second administration’ used when speaking of a president serving a second term. Reelecting the incumbent president didn’t mean a new administration. A new Chief Executive signaled a new administration. The 2024 election resulted in the 47th presidential administration.
Like FDR, Grover Cleveland ran for president in four consecutive presidential elections. On his fourth try, the Democrats rejected Cleveland and instead nominated William Jennings Bryan. Maybe they still had respect for the two-term tradition set by George Washington.
One presidency wasn’t enough for Donald Trump? It wasn’t enough for Ulysses S. Grant or Theodore Roosevelt either. Grant sought a third term in 1880. Roosevelt sought a third term in 1912. Trump might have been the fourth POTUS to serve non-consecutive terms.
Barack Obama gave us our first trillion dollar deficit. Since then it has doubled. Four years from now, the debt will probably be $50 trillion. How long do we have before the debt bubble bursts? Almost all politicians are to blame but so are almost all voters. We put these people in power.