It’s time once again for our monthly check-in on CNSNews.com editor Terry Jeffrey complaining about the ballooning federal deficit but refusing to admit that a Republican president and Republican-controlled Senate is largely responsible for it. He served up the usual in a July 13 article:
The federal government set records for both the amount of money it spent and the deficit it ran in the first nine months of fiscal 2020 (October through June), according to data released today in the Monthly Treasury Statement.
During the October-June period, the government spent a record $5,004,372,000,000 while it collected $2,260,069,000,000 in total taxes.
The resulting deficit of $2,744,303,000,000 was the largest the federal government has ever run in the first nine months of a fiscal year.
As per usual, the words “Trump” and “Republican” appear nowhere in the article, and it’s illustrated by a stock photo that includes Democrats — in this case, Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Chuck Schumer along with Trump and Vice President Mike Pence — even though, again, Republicans and not Democrats are in control of the Senate and Pelosi controls only one-half of one branch of government.
This was followed by a July 15 column by Jeffrey that whined:
Back in fiscal 2019, which ended last September before COVID-19 hit, the federal government set two records.
It collected more money in individual income taxes than in any previous year — and then spent more.
Did the Americans who paid that record sum in income taxes get their money’s worth?
Or were they ripped off?
[…]Now assume all of that remaining $441,061,000,000 was used to help pay for the $600,706,000,000 the government spent on the Department of Defense and Military Programs in fiscal 2018.
After expending every dollar of remaining individual income tax revenue, the government would still need to find another $159,645,000,000 to fully fund the nation’s defense.
Thus, after funding the “benefits and services for people with low income” that were counted in the Congressional Research Service report and the net interest on the debt and a portion of the Defense Department and Military Programs, there would be no revenue left from individual income tax collections to pay for such things as a Department of Justice or a Department of State.
Or a White House, House or Senate.
Again, Jeffrey failed to state the unambiguous fact that it was a Republican president and a Republican-controlled Senate that took the lead in allegedly ripping Americans off.
UPDATE: Jeffrey also failed to mention that he and his employer, the Media Research Center, contributed to this growing federal deficit by accepting more than $1 million in Paycheck Protection Program money. That tells us that Jeffrey really doesn’t have the courage of the conservative principles he likes to espouse.