- Where’s DOGE when you need it?…
- Politics and prostitution…
- I spoke with Elon personally at a private gathering of the financial elite. I saw firsthand how this game is played. And I made a decision — I’m not going to let Wall Street have all the fun. Click here to get the full details before it’s too late.
Dear reader,
Alas, today I bear distressing news — and it relates nothing to Iran.
The United States’ Treasury’s year-over-year budget deficit swelled to $164 billion in March.
Crystal-gazings had envisioned a $153 billion deficit.
Meantime, the deficit through the initial six months of fiscal year 2026 comes in at $1.17 trillion — the third-largest half-year deficit on record.
Incidentally: Iran conflict spending has yet to work its way onto the ledgers. I hazard deficits will balloon and balloon once it does.
Where’s DOGE When You Need It?
Mr. Ryan McMaken of the libertarian Mises Institute, in table-pounding frustration:
- In spite of the administration’s claims last year that Trump would implement hundreds of billions in spending cuts, the US federal government is now spending at higher levels than anything seen since 2021 when covid-related spending surged above all previous historical peacetime levels…
- Moreover, recent numbers reflect only a small amount of the true war costs coming out of the war with Iran. The full brunt of the runaway spending that will come out of this war have yet to be felt.
- Indeed, the war with Iran, with no end in sight, is now estimated to be on track to cost more than a trillion dollars above and beyond the current $900 billion pentagon budget, going into 2027. If current trends continue, federal spending in 2027’s fiscal year will make 2026 spending look mild by comparison.
Will current trends continue?
I do not know the answer. Yet I can discern little reason to suspect they will not.
In fact, I would be gobsmacked and flabbergasted if current trends do not continue.
I hazard they may even quicken pace. Of course… I concede the slender possibility that I will be proven mistaken.
Unchartered Territory
Meantime, debt piles up at rates truly frightful. Reports The Kobeissi Letter:
- The US debt crisis is heading into uncharted territory:
- The US government spent 18 cents of every Dollar of revenue on interest expense in Fiscal Year 2025, the highest since the 1990s.
- Interest expense as a percentage of revenue has TRIPLED since 2015.
- The CBO projects this will surge to a record 25 cents of every Dollar by 2035, meaning a quarter of all tax revenue will go to servicing debt alone.
- These projections assume no major slowdown, recession, or significant rise in Treasury yields over this period.
- The US debt crisis is intensifying.
Yet Nero fiddles and fiddles while Rome burns and burns.
Neither major political party will get good water on the flames. The resolve simply is not in them.
They may yell about it — if their party is out of power, that is — and they may sob about it.
Yet the tears that issue are the tears of the crocodile. They are not authentic.
The Party of “Fiscal Responsibility”
Since the Republican Party presently enjoys congressional majorities and the office of president… I presently train my cannons on that party.
Also, because they claim to be the party of “fiscal responsibility.”
As I have written of them before, here is their daily prayer to the Son of God:
“Lord, make me chaste, but not yet.”
That is, the ancient plea of St. Augustine is the modern plea of the Republican Party.
They thunder constantly about the necessity for financial chastity:
“We’re heading for a sovereign debt crisis if we don’t rein in government spending”… “We need to start making major cuts to the federal budget or face the consequences”… “Washington is out of control — we need to stop the out-of-control spending.”
These laments and more issue habitually from elected Republicans’ oral orifices.
Yet when presented with the opportunity to embrace chastity… they opt for promiscuity in each instance.
We Can’t Be Chaste Today
In the official telling, it is never quite time for chastity. And, this being an election year, you can be certain that chastity can wait.
As I have previously noted, we hear that:
“The midterm elections aren’t far off. We can’t gut spending now because it’ll cost us in the midterms. We’ll do it once the midterms are over.”
The midterm elections pass. They win. Republicans are subsequently free to request chastity of the Lord — chastity today.
Yet the temptations of the flesh seduce them… and they cannot put forth the request.
Additional excuses come issuing:
“Well, we have to think about the next presidential election. Cutting popular spending programs could cost us the election — and THIS is the most important presidential election in history. We can’t chance it. We’ll cut spending once we win the White House.”
Assume the Republican candidate wins the White House. Next comes the return of argument A about the midterm elections.
When the midterm elections have ended, argument B about the next presidential election comes surfacing yet again.
The World’s Oldest Profession Bears Resemblance to the Second-Oldest
On and on the business goes in predictable and dreary succession.
It is eternally chastity tomorrow. Yet it is eternally promiscuity today.
As old Ronnie Reagan once japed, “Someone once said that politics is the second-oldest profession. I’m beginning to think it bears resemblance to the first.”
Yet I hazard the 40th president had the order inverted.
The oldest profession bears resemblance to the second-oldest.
Brian Maher
for Freedom Financial News
