By Michael Woyton
Welcome to the United Casino States of America.
Famously, the convicted felon currently napping in the Oval Office bankrupted several Atlantic City casinos over his storied career.
And it looks as if he’s on his way to do the same thing to the United States.
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An announcement Wednesday from the Treasury Department said that this country’s budget deficit “soared” to its highest monthly level in more than five years, CNBC reported.
The shortfall for July totaled $432.3 billion, which is up 48 percent from the same period one year ago.
Additionally, this is the largest monthly deficit since March 2021.
Right now, the national debt is $39.9 trillion or $116,947 per every person in America. One of the main drivers of the debt is that we are not generating enough revenue to cover spending. But the uber-wealthy were given a massive tax cut by the president in the big ugly bill.
Outlays are way up — active duty military pay, veterans benefits, Supplemental Security income, Medicare and tariff refunds are causes.
But let’s be realistic: Direct military and defense spending are nothing to sneeze at.
Secretary of War Crimes Pete Hegseth’s military effort of choice in Iran has cost taxpayers $37.5 billion so far — and there’s no end in sight, especially when we’re looking at a potential $1.1 trillion defense budget for next fiscal year. We’ve also run out of difficult-to-manufacture weapons, though the administration denies that.
We even lost, thanks to the Iran war of choice, at least 45 really expensive drones that can cost between $30 million and $50 million.
On top of all the war spending, the adjudicated rapist got a bee in his decreasing bonnet that (old timey) steam catapults on aircraft carriers are better than the electromagnetic catapult systems currently in use, potentially costing billions of dollars.
Arizona Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly said that the elderly golfer shouldn’t be making those kind of decisions.
“He’s a marginally failed real estate developer with multiple bankruptcies,” The Hill reported Kelly saying. “He shouldn’t be weighing in on systems, on aircraft carriers.”
What is even more perplexing is that, according to recent reports, the Navy is evaluating “a major, costly redesign for its newest class of aircraft carriers” because what we already have doesn’t meet the con-artist-in-chief’s “aesthetic preferences,” The Independent said.
Redesigning the carriers, per a study from his first term, would cost billions of dollars and create major delays.
This “president” doesn’t care what anything costs because it sure as hell isn’t coming out of his pocket.
He wants to paint over the granite of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Executive Office Building only because it doesn’t match the nearby White House. Experts have warned that painting the exterior of the building would cause extensive damage, and by the way, it’s a National Historic Landmark.
His administration is also buying warehouses, supposedly for ICE, which are not being used, as well as aircraft that aren’t ever in the sky.
Then there’s the “free” Boeing 747-8 from Qatar that experts are estimating will cost taxpayers up to $1 billion when all the fixes are said and done.
With his diminishing state of mind, it is entirely possible that president donald j. felon* believes he is still running one of his casinos and, for him, it seems to be business as usual.
I wonder which country would snap up the U.S. if there were a liquidation sale.
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The problem with a single-payer universal health care system is that the wealthy won’t be able to profit off of your illness. And we just can’t have that. /sarcasm
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* I’m following what the wannabe king declared on social media that he will only refer to the Supreme Court in lowercase because he has a complete lack of respect for them after the illegal tariffs ruling.
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Lead art: screen grab from Forbes via YouTube.