Borrow and spend, borrow and spend, borrow and spend. Pretty soon you're in a debt spiral and you have no options. If Republicans in Congress borrow this much money to please Trump, and cut taxes, fiscal conservatives will desert them in the midterms. The only votes they will have to count on are uneducated whites. All the while Texas is well on its way to being a swing state. Can't really see how, even if Trump manages to make it to the midterms without being impeached, they will hold congress.

Even with the congress they have, the Republicans will be spit between the remaining fiscal conservatives and Trump ass-kissers with no identifiable ideology. Democrats will be the largest united faction, and will be able to demand huge concessions to pass even bits and pieces of Trump's agenda. Which will have them going into the midterms with few or no accomplishments, while Democrats tout legislation they stopped, and what they tacked on to the few things that passed.

Or Democrats could go on attacking each other over little things and be easy pickings.

Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.

@1,
The repubs will do what they always do: run up the national credit card and then refuse to pay the bill. Then they'll blame democrats for it all. Everyone will believe them. Americans are retards.

@2,
Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit amphetamines.

And by "come to their senses" I can only guess he really means "all bow down before Zod - er, me!" Because, that HAS to be the most motherfucking delusional statement to come out of his mouth - thus far.

Maybe one of his gung-ho generals ought to remind him about what happened the last time the U.S. went on a nuclear spending spree.

@1 The debt and deficit only matter when there is a Democrat in the White House. But yes the Republicans will crash the economy once again, let's just hope Trump is as good as he says he is and he gets the job done in 4 years.

@5

When your debt begins to exceed your GNP, it goes from being a wedge issue to a real problem.

Deficit doves and deficit hawks have no say over bond rates. It doesn't matter if you see the glass half empty or half full. It's not up to you and your ideology. When *lenders* see you owe more than you produce in a year, they react, and that is when it goes really bad, really fast.

Even if you suddenly quit borrowing more, you're now paying more interest on what you already owe. If you raise taxes or cut spending in response, you lose GNP, making your debt even worse in relation. That's austerity. It doesn't work. If you don't, you have to borrow more to cover the greater cost of borrowing. Which makes the debt spiral worse.

It isn't a matter of "crashing the economy". Bush crashed the economy. You can recover from that. There is no escape from a debt spiral.

Oh, wait. Trump always reneges on his borrowing, goes bankrupt, and forces his creditors to renegotiate. Is that an option? Sure! But then your bond rating gets worse, your interest rates go up, your payments increase, you are right back where you started.

Regular Republicans crash the economy with their trickle down thingy. Throwing your country into a debt spiral is beyond that. It's banana republic strongman style. Hugo Chavez, Ferdinand Marcos type shit. Expect Trump and his family to flee the country to enjoy the stolen American wealth they stashed offshore.

Republican fiscal conservatives understand too much of these facts to go along with it. That leaves an opening for Democrats to unite (like they do lol) and extract concessions from a broken Republican caucus.

@6 "Republican fiscal conservatives understand too much of these facts to go along with it." *cough* Kansas *cough*

Kansas? GDP: $150 billion Debt: $26 billion.

This is a perfect example of glass half full kind of shit. Their debt to GDP ratio isn't even above average. It's just that deficit hawks find something to get excited about in there, only because they won't tolerate paying much of anything in taxes. But they have loads of options, assuming they even have a problem that needs fixing. The worst state in the US only owes 23% of their GDP. It's just a wedge issue.

Trump's budget plans and tax cut plans are on a whole other trajectory. They pass the debt spiral event horizon in only a few years. His unfunded spending is like his lying. All politicians do it, but Trump does it in a way that's a whole other universe of bad.

Where the hell was The Stranger when Obama announced his $1 trillion nuclear weapons upgrade? Did it not fit your narrative for President Peace Prize?

From Bill Moyers in March:

Isn’t it rather odd that America’s largest single public expenditure scheduled for the coming decades has received no attention in the 2015-2016 presidential debates?

The expenditure is for a 30-year program to “modernize” the US nuclear arsenal and production facilities. Although President Obama began his administration with a dramatic public commitment to build a nuclear weapons-free world, that commitment has long ago dwindled and died. It has been replaced by an administration plan to build a new generation of US nuclear weapons and nuclear production facilities to last the nation well into the second half of the 21st century. This plan, which has received almost no attention by the mass media, includes redesigned nuclear warheads, as well as new nuclear bombers, submarines, land-based missiles, weapons labs and production plants. The estimated cost? $1,000,000,000,000.00 — or, for those readers unfamiliar with such lofty figures, $1 trillion.

http://billmoyers.com/story/the-trillion…

@9
It's mentioned and linked in the article.. Were expecting the local weekly to do an expansive investigative piece on the subject?

@8 I'm not disagreeing with your economic analysis I am disagreeing with your belief that "Republican fiscal conservatives understand too much of these facts to go along with it."

http://www.salon.com/2016/12/23/sam-brow…

Global... warming? From nuclear weapons?

@1,

Forgive me for disagreeing with you, but you may have missed one historical trend I'd like to mention. For close to 37 years now, Republican presidents have engaged in actions that ought to have alienated their base.

Reagan had the CIA bring cocaine into the US to fund the Contras in Nicaragua. There ere lots of very staunch anti-communists who were pissed off that Congress halted funding for the Contras, but they didn't want to get in bed with drug dealers. That said, they fell in line. Regan is not condemned by social conservatives for assisting Blandon in giving Ricky Ross so much cocaine he couldn't sell it fast enough to keep up with supply, which forced him to develop crack as a product that would addict people and give them shorter highs to increase demand.

Newt Gingrich handed the GOP its only loss in a second term election since FDR, but he's still in front of every TV camera Fox can aim at him.

George W Bush spent us into a deep dark hole economically and then pushed TARP, which completely contradicts the idea that capitalism is all abut letting poorly managed companies fail. Republicans still defend him. They even blame Obama for TAP, even though O wasn't the President yet.

The point I'm making is, Republicans do not abandon their Presidents. They never, ever desert their commander-in-chief. It doesn't matter what he does. Trump could go on national television and rape a woman dressed as Lady Liberty as a live broadcast, and Republicans would defend that. It just doesn't matter to these people. To them, its all about he tribe. Principles mean nothing. Either you're in the tribe, or you're the enemy. Thats all politics is to them.

@2 & @3: Looks like I picked the wrong week to give up red wine.
Right now I need to become---Comfortably Numb.

I wonder if my beloved and I can both just go together quietly upon a bright
flash and then.....would we be listed among the lucky ones?

@13: PLEASE do not call members of the GOP a tribe. I consider that a grave insult to Native Americans---especially in the region where I live.

I consider Republicans a drunken, reckless, unchecked fraternity--because that's what their party really is.