Does no one in Washington understand the wise saying make hay while the sun shines?

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America’s fiscal course is unsustainable, and we all know it. Year after year our spending has increased while our revenues have fallen short. But instead of tackling this shortfall head-on and jeopardizing their re-election bids, our leaders have chosen to borrow enormous amounts of money to cover it.

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In July 2019, the U.S. economic expansion that started right after the 2007-2009 Financial Crisis peaked entered its 10th year, making it the longest on record. According to The Wall Street Journal, “more than 20 million jobs had been created so far in the expansion that started in mid-2009, and the net worth of American households – the value of assets such as stocks and housing minus debts such as mortgages and credit cards – had increased by $47 trillion.”

 

Unemployment was low and job creation seemed solid. In fact, the labor market had experienced an astonishing recovery from the 2007-2009 Financial Crisis. In July 2019, the seasonally adjusted official unemployment rate was 3.7 percent. Although there is debate among economists about the magic unemployment target, this is a great number. Some would even say that America had reached its full productive capacity – meaning we were finally at a point where almost everyone who wanted a job had one and that our workforce was producing at near to full speed. By many measures, the U.S. economy looked strong.

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But, as always, here is where we got ourselves into trouble.  During our claw back from the financial crisis, it was impossible to know exactly how long the economic expansion was going to last. After all, the American economy looked great before the financial crisis also, to the point where practically no one saw it coming.  Meaning, everything was great – until it wasn’t.

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Therefore, while we were fortunate enough to be in an expansion, the smart, responsible course of action would have been to use those critical years to solidify our financial stability; spend money on investment in our future through cutting-edge research and development and intelligent infrastructure projects; and finally tackle the root causes of the financial Apocalypse that is quickly bearing down on us (a.k.a. Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid).

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Instead, Congress and the first Trump administration drowned us in debt, passed extremely expensive tax cuts, started trade wars, tried hard to slash regulations, restricted legal immigration, and allowed our workforce to remain in denial and ill-prepared for the harsh realities of the 21st century workplace.

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While things like deep tax cuts, contentious trade policies, outlawed immigration and eviscerated regulation provide great one-liners at campaign rallies, taken together many of the first Trump administration’s actions were incredibly reckless and devastating for our long-term economic outlook… and we're going to prove it to you in the following pages, with actual facts straight from the United States government.

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Let’s look at the three financial bombs that started ticking during the first Trump presidency – you know, the three bombs that then exploded mightily when COVID-19 hit (see above).