President Trump has reshaped the country’s economic policies, but the outlook for the budget remains dire.
In the first year of his second term, President Trump has tried to radically reshape America’s economy. He has slashed taxes, raised tariffs to their highest levels in almost a century, unilaterally canceled federal spending, pushed down immigration and pressured the Federal Reserve to sharply lower interest rates.
When it comes to the overall federal budget, though, the effect of these dramatic changes has nearly been a wash. The country is still on track to borrow what economists consider an alarming amount of money in the coming years. But the situation, on paper at least, has gotten only somewhat worse, but not significantly, under Mr. Trump’s unorthodox policy mix.
Those were the findings of the Congressional Budget Office, the nonpartisan scorekeeper, in its annual benchmark forecast for the federal budget released on Wednesday. Compared with its projections from January 2025, before Mr. Trump took office, the federal government is now expected to run a $23.1 trillion shortfall over the next nine years, rather than a $21.8 trillion one, a $1.4 trillion wider gap.
The C.B.O. said that the amount of debt held by the public is expected to become much larger than the annual output of the economy, reaching 120 percent of gross domestic product in 2036. That would surpass levels reached in the aftermath of World War II and put the world’s most important economy at risk of a destabilizing debt crisis.
U.S. Budget Hole Set to Deepen by Trillions
Interest costs on growing debt soak up bigger share of spending, CBO forecast says
https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/u-s-budget-hole-set-to-deepen-by-trillions-b5dfe11b
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) said “something needs to be done” on the issue of affordability in America or Republicans will be imperiled in the upcoming midterm elections.
“Fiscal conservatism has not been talked about at all during this administration,” Haley told Fox News’s Bret Baier on Tuesday evening. “And I think now is the time to focus on the value of a dollar, which is weakening, on how we get more money in Americans’ pockets, how we increase jobs, which are flattening and start to make American people feel like they can’t have hope.”
A new U.S. jobs report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Wednesday morning revealed a spike in 130,000 new jobs in January, far surpassing economists’ predictions after a slump in employment growth in 2025.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5733614-haley-fiscal-conservatism-jobs/
GALLUP will no longer measure presidential approval after 88 years
https://thehill.com/homenews/media/5733236-gallup-stops-presidential-approval-ratings-polls/