{"id":1649,"date":"2026-08-26T04:38:26","date_gmt":"2026-08-26T04:38:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationallogisticspost.com\/?p=1649"},"modified":"2026-08-26T04:38:26","modified_gmt":"2026-08-26T04:38:26","slug":"the-40-trillion-national-debt-and-the-budget-hawk-ruse-that-led-to-maga","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationallogisticspost.com\/?p=1649","title":{"rendered":"The $40 Trillion National Debt and the \u2018Budget Hawk\u2019 Ruse That Led to MAGA"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A<\/span>n unsettling milestone occurred in recent weeks, with the federal government\u2019s debt surpassing $40 trillion. When I cast my first ballot in 1984, the $1.5 trillion of national debt was considered a looming crisis. It had nearly tripled and was considered an even bigger crisis by the time Ross Perot first ran for president eight years later. When Donald Trump ran for president in 2016, the amount was up to $20 trillion.<\/p>\n

Read more The Chink in Ukraine\u2019s Armor<\/a><\/p>\n

There is consternation about this new milestone among politicians and pundits professing to be fiscally conservative. It concerns me too. But there are two other aspects of this generations-long \u201ccrisis\u201d that I find politically significant:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. An imminent financial catastrophe due to deficit spending has been prophesied for decades. Like the climate apocalypse, which has also been imminent for decades, it never happened.<\/li>\n
  2. False-flag conservative \u201cbudget hawks\u201d used the budget crisis as a reason to never advance other conservative agenda items, while never actually cutting spending either.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    As to point number one above, something that cannot go forever won\u2019t. Deficit spending to the degree our Congress spends money is a huge problem, and having 14 percent of federal spending\u00a0go just to service interest on the national debt is obviously bad.<\/p>\n

    But is a financial meltdown or a default on the national debt imminent? In 1996, when the national debt was about $5 trillion, Ross Perot stated that, \u201cWe are approaching the brink of a financial disaster.\u201d Thirty years later we\u2019re still approaching that brink. Maybe we\u2019re almost there. Or maybe we have many more decades to go.<\/p>\n

    But this is why point number two is so important to the rise of MAGA and Donald Trump, and also why we cannot let \u201cthe deficit crisis\u201d be used as a reason to suspend the cultural battles that are being won under President Trump. For the 24 years after Ross Perot\u2019s first presidential foray, the stated domestic priorities of Republicans and budget hawks in Washington were \u201cfiscal conservatism\u201d and \u201climited government.\u201d We never got either.<\/p>\n

    When George W. Bush was re-elected president in 2004, Republicans controlled the White House and both houses of Congress. Despite holding all the power in Washington, the party of spending restraint and limited government could not even find the will to cut funding to PBS. Of course, they somehow found plenty of money for foreign wars and nation-building, and during the mortgage crisis of 2008, Congress also found money to bail out major corporations and the \u201ctoo-big-to-fail\u201d financial institutions.<\/p>\n

    Read more The Spectator P.M. Ep. 242: Has Sorority RushTok Gone Too Far?<\/a><\/p>\n

    For those of us who cared about the budget situation, but also cared about other cultural and domestic issues too, it was a huge betrayal. We were constantly told that because the fiscal situation was a priority, there wasn\u2019t enough \u201cpolitical capital\u201d to also address issues such as border security.<\/p>\n

    Even worse, the \u201cfiscally conservative budget hawks\u201d wouldn\u2019t even cut obvious targets of waste, such as aid to foreign despots or funding for NPR, because those appropriations were just \u201cdrops in the ocean.\u201d However, if there was ever \u201cdrop in the ocean\u201d spending that was a priority to the conservative base, the budget hawks suddenly found religion, and would oppose it as an unacceptable increase in federal spending. Five billion dollars for a border barrier was a \u201cbudget buster,\u201d while at the same time Congress was still appropriating billions of dollars to the PLO, and hundreds of millions of dollars to abortion mills.<\/p>\n

    It is frequently pointed out that to make significant headway in reversing the growing federal deficit, \u201centitlements\u201d will need to be cut. Entitlements means Social Security and Medicare, of course. That is likely true, but proposing to cut Nana\u2019s Social Security is a non-starter when the government is still funding drag workshops in Ecuador. The only way that the American public will entertain a serious discussion about cutting Social Security and Medicare is once all the other ridiculous, non-essential spending has been cut first.\u00a0(RELATED: Your Next Senator Will Finally Face the Social Security Decision Point)<\/strong><\/p>\n

    The $40 trillion deficit should be addressed. But MAGA conservatives will never again fall for the budget hawk ruse, nor will we allow our agenda to be sidelined while waiting for Congress to rein in wasteful spending.<\/p>\n

    Read more Mark Carney\u2019s Smuggler\u2019s Blues<\/a><\/p>\n

    READ MORE from Buck Throckmorton:<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Natural Gas, AI, and the Industrial Boom Nobody Wants to Talk About<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Repealing the 17th Amendment Would Save\u2026 John Cornyn<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Two Roads to the Same Communism<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    A most wonderful article<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1648,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-debt-crisis"],"yoast_head":"\nThe $40 Trillion National Debt and the \u2018Budget Hawk\u2019 Ruse That Led to MAGA - National Logistics Post<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/nationallogisticspost.com\/?p=1649\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The $40 Trillion National Debt and the \u2018Budget Hawk\u2019 Ruse That Led to MAGA - National Logistics Post\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A most wonderful article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/nationallogisticspost.com\/?p=1649\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"National Logistics Post\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-08-26T04:38:26+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nationallogisticspost.com\\\/?p=1649#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nationallogisticspost.com\\\/?p=1649\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nationallogisticspost.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/af6e6ad9b3cf5bfe495dc5541ee6a5cc\"},\"headline\":\"The $40 Trillion National Debt and the \u2018Budget Hawk\u2019 Ruse That Led to MAGA\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-08-26T04:38:26+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nationallogisticspost.com\\\/?p=1649\"},\"wordCount\":768,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nationallogisticspost.com\\\/?p=1649#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nationallogisticspost.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/a49ef2d5b6d8328713981dfbcbdb71b4.png\",\"articleSection\":[\"Debt Crisis\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/nationallogisticspost.com\\\/?p=1649#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nationallogisticspost.com\\\/?p=1649\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nationallogisticspost.com\\\/?p=1649\",\"name\":\"The $40 Trillion National Debt and the \u2018Budget Hawk\u2019 Ruse That Led to MAGA - 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