The U.S. Federal Budget

This Blog often finds itself defending Trump, or at least taking a positive view of America’s rather turbulent direction of travel. Unfortunately the Trump presidency is always awash with blown up dramas of Trump gaffes, u-turns, insults and self-congratulation which certainly make the news story that he is like no other occupant of the White House ever, but actually have little to do with the ongoing governance of our closest ally. The nation to which we have uniquely close ties across the cultural, professional, scientific, academic, military, security, intelligence, commercial, business and family arenas.  But not politics. The politics of the two countries are very different, usually polite, mostly correct but  rarely close. Moments of camaraderie have happened, but they are the noted exceptions rather than the general rule.

The latest attempt to agree a federal budget brings out two important elements which are to be welcomed. The first is Trump’s own observation that his country has wasted, often under Republican administrations, $7 trillion  in the Middle East, the only good of which is to try and clean up the bad resulting from previous efforts. A continuing and continuous process.

The other is the need to renew and update the national infrastructure, much of which is past its use by date and crumbling, but to put the onus on individual States to do more to renew their own fabric and pay for it. This is entirely right. The American people do not, most of them anyway, like the concept of federal government and all hate federal taxes. So if you want small government you have to do stuff in your own State and pay local taxes for programmes voters approve. Or leave it to private enterprise and pay the tolls to deliver a profit to shareholders who carried the risk. It’s that simple.