February 14, 2019

On Wednesday's edition of The 700 Club, Pat Robertson blasted the exploding federal deficit after Treasury reported it has ballooned up to 22 trillion dollars.

And guess who Pat Robertson scolds?

Let's find out.

"Our national debt is now at the record high -- it's $22 trillion dollars. Government spending is out of control," Robertson said.

Wow, it sounds like he's taking some serious shots at Donald Trump, his modern-day lord and savior, right?

Robertson said, "And the latest proposals from Democrats will only make it worse..."

"We are going to talk about they are proposing that will absolutely horrifying."

It's only horrifying to people like Robertson, who make exorbitant amounts of money and not their viewers.

As usual Trump and conservatism can do no wrong.

Co-host Terry Meeuwsen said, "the Green New Deal and Medicare for all."

Robertson then played a canned critical exposé on calls to tax the uber-wealthy by Elizabeth Warren, Julian Castro and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Not a word was spoken about the Trump administration or their role in exploding the debt in the last two years.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, total public debt stood at 78% of America's gross domestic product in fiscal year 2018, the highest percentage since 1950. The deficit -- or the difference between what the government spends and what it takes in over any one year -- jumped to 3.8% of GDP in 2018, up from 3.5% in 2017.That's particularly unusual in such a strong economy without major new expenditures. If no changes are made, the CBO projects that public debt will rise to 96% of GDP by 2028. A big chunk of that -- $1.9 trillion between 2018 and 2028 -- will be due to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act,the CBO reported last April.

How quickly they forget:

When he was campaigning for the White House, Mr Trump said he believed he could make the US debt free within eight years.

“I think I could do it fairly quickly,” he told The Washington Post.

Instead, Trump has exploded the debt for no other reason than to pay off the very rich.

And what about conservative claims that Trump is collecting more revenue than ever before so the rich do not need to be taxed more?

This number comes from the most recent monthly Treasury report through July 2018. The report organizes its data based on the fiscal year, so the 2018 numbers include 10 months -- from October 2017 to July 2018.According to the report, individual income tax receipts were up by 7.8 percent compared to the equivalent 10-month period in 2017. So that provides some support for the claim.

But the same Treasury report shows that corporate taxes were down during the first 10 months of the fiscal year. In fact, they were down by 28.5 percent -- a whopping plunge, but not a surprising one, given the sweeping corporate tax cuts included in the new law.

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