TRUMP, REPUBLICANS RIDICULED AS FEDERAL DEFICIT, $3.7 TRILLION SPENDING HIT RECORD HIGHS

https://www.newsweek.com/conservatives-criticize-republican-federal-deficit-trump-spending-record-congress-debt-tax-cuts-1454024

Fiscal conservatives and Democrats alike are ridiculing Republican congressional members and President Donald Trump after federal spending hit a $3.7 trillion record and the budget deficit climbed to $867 billion so far this fiscal year.

The massive 27 percent deficit increase from last year is only expected to worsen as Trump's $1.5 trillion tax plan from a year-and-a-half ago fails to "pay for itself" as the White House previously claimed. Congress also passed another over-budget spending bill earlier this month. The Treasury Department report predicted on Monday a $1 trillion deficit in two months at the end of the fiscal year and analysts noted it's the most money the federal government has spent in the first 10 months of a fiscal year since 2009 efforts to pull out of the Great Recession.

"In case there were any remaining doubts about whether Trump's tax cut would pay for itself, it hasn't," Chris Lu, a previous White House cabinet secretary and deputy secretary of Labor under former President Barack Obama, said on Tuesday.

Fiscal critics blasted the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 which was passed by a Republican majority in both chambers of Congress before being signed into law by Trump that December. This week, both Democrats and Republicans criticized the budget passed August 1 which suspended the debt ceiling until the end of July 2021 and put spending levels about $320 billion above limits set by a 2011 law. Trump championed the budget deal as a "great victory" for the U.S. military and veterans as the Defense Department was allotted record amounts of taxpayer money.

Kentucky GOP Senator Rand Paul said earlier this month the budget deal marked the "death of the Tea Party movement" among fiscal conservatives. Twenty-three Republicans joined five Democrats to oppose the budget deal.

"Great work by Mitch McConnell in deepening our budget deficit. I guess it was worth it to give his rich friends and donors a tax break," said Amy McGrath, the Kentucky Democratic challenger to the current Republican Senate Majority Leader.