Tag: Reforms

Trump On Police Reform

After thumping his chest like the crazed primate that he is over the protests and the “attacks” on the police….LAW AND ORDER…was his Tweets on multiple days……but now trying to gain the upper hand especially when an election is a mere few months away he, Trump, has signed a Executive Order on police reform…..

President Trump signed an executive order Tuesday designed to improve police training in the wake of the George Floyd killing. “Reducing crime and raising standards are not opposite goals,” said Trump. His order falls short of what activists have been demanding, reports the Washington Post, though more sweeping reform measures are working their way through the House and Senate. Some highlights of Trump’s order, via the AP and USA Today:

  • Database: It would set up a national database to more easily track abusive officers and ideally prevent them from being hired elsewhere.
  • Training: It would encourage police departments to emphasize de-escalation training for conflicts, using federal grant money as leverage.
  • More help: It would set up a “co-respondent” program encouraging police departments to work more closely with social workers on calls involving issues such as mental health, drug addiction, and homelessness.
  • Chokeholds: Trump said chokeholds would be banned “except if an officer’s life is at risk,” though senior administration officials clarified that the order prohibits chokeholds ””except in those situations where deadly force is allowed by law.” The holds already are widely banned in police departments, per the AP.

Some of these points are good points…..but if they are not adopted by all PDs then these are just farts in the wind….which is what most police reforms in the past have been.

Training if done properly then it will help….again only if all PDs choose to become part of the solution if not then little will change.

My favorite part of his 27 minute diatribe was his statement on law and order and the people….

President Donald Trump on Tuesday delivered a rambling and authoritarian speech in which he defended U.S. police, attacked racial justice demonstrators, and proclaimed that Americans “want law and order” whether they know it or not.

“They demand law and order,” Trump said of the U.S. public. “They may not say it, they may not be talking about it, but that’s what they want. Some of them don’t even know that’s what they want, but that’s what they want.”

Really….a person who has no idea what the people are all about knows what is best….if that is not a fascist point of view then maybe you need to look up the definition.  He knows what his ‘slaves’ want.

Looks like Donald the Orange got the jump on the GOP who promised a package on police reform soon…..

Republicans, who have long touted themselves the party of law and order, appeared initially resistant to pursuing policing reforms in the immediate wake of George Floyd’s death and the protests that followed. But amid the growing chorus for police accountability, GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill are readying their own reforms.

Republicans in both the Senate and the House are starting to lay down some initial markers of reforms days after Democrats introduced broad legislation focused on police accountability. But it remains to be seen how much common ground will exist in the proposals and whether Democrats negotiate with the GOP on what many expect would be more incremental changes to policing.

https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2020-06-12/republicans-in-congress-consider-police-reform-bills

Just 8 days ago Congressional Dems offered up a bill on police reform….

Changing rules on “qualified immunity,” which can make it almost impossible to sue police for misconduct.

• Banning chokeholds and other practices that can lead to physical harm or death.

• Ending “no-knock” warrants in drug cases.

• Requiring police departments to report data on use of force and creating a national database to track police misconduct.

• Creating a national standard saying force should be used by officers only when “necessary to prevent death or serious bodily injury.”

• Limit the transfer of military equipment to local police departments.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/06/congressional-democrats-unveil-police-reform-bill.html

I think the Dems bill would do more to cease some of the abuses of the police….but there are some parts of it that I do not think will help

All in all…I do not see any of the incidents going down….damn I hope I am wrong but I think these ‘reforms’ are just band-aids for gun shot wounds (no pun intended) of police violence and abuse.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Closing Thought–11Jun20

De-Fund the police!

That is the slogan making the rounds during these days of civil unrest…..but is that really gonna work?

There are many naysayers to this slogan and of course they will use crimes like murder, bank robbery, rape et al as a way to belittle the very idea of de-funding police departments.

There is NO example where this would work right?

Well that statement is not accurate.

Take Camden, New Jersey…..

City Council members in Minneapolis have vowed to “dismantle” the city’s police department, which would be an unusual—but not entirely unprecedented—move. CNN looks at the experience of Camden, NJ, which disbanded and replaced its police department in 2012 amid budget woes and corruption that was deemed unfixable. It hasn’t been an entirely smooth ride for the new Camden County Police Department, which has around 400 officers, including 100 hired from the old police department, but violent crime in the city has dropped by more than 40% over the last seven years, and officers, once widely feared, now host events like block parties, pop-up barbecues, and drive-in movie nights on the street once known as “Heroin Highway.”

County official Louis Cappelli says a lot of the improvement is down to “community-oriented policing.” When the new department was launched, officers were told to focus on walking beats and introducing themselves to residents. Cappelli says the department has made de-escalation a priority in training. Community leaders including pastor Ojii BaBa Madi say that while Camden still has many problems—and the force is still far less diverse than the community it serves—the city feels safer and a “productive dialogue” with police is now possible. “Us meeting with the community in the absence of crisis really changed the game,” Lt. Zsakheim James, who served on the old and new police forces, tells the Philadelphia Inquirer. “There are people who still don’t like the police, but there is a level of trust. There are people who believe in us, and believe in their ability to hold us accountable.”

This illustrates that reform and change can make a difference….so naysayers need to find a new way to crap on a good idea.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

De-Fund The PD!

The streets are alive!  It is time for solutions not symbolism!

After all the protests and the overreaction from the police plus the many many cases of racial abuse there is now a call to de-fund police departments.

First, I feel this is the wrong term to use for this leaves it open to interpretation and twisting of the meaning  as it is always done…..I figure there will be lots of mental midgets that will jump on the term and turn it into something it is not.  A great term for the “spin masters”.

The idea is starting to catch hold…..only the department is not going to be de-funded just parts of it and the funds go elsewhere….like to Community Services……

Some city PDs are starting to respond….

A veto-proof majority of nine Minneapolis City Council members vowed Sunday to “dismantle” the city’s police department, the New York Times reports. Standing on a hill before hundreds of people, they said the current department was beyond reform and will be replaced with a new public-safety system. “It shouldn’t have taken so much death to get us here,” said Kandace Montgomery, who heads Black Vision. “We’re safer without armed, unaccountable patrols supported by the state hunting black people.” The move comes a day after protesters cried “Shame! Shame!” when the city’s mayor, Jacob Frey, said he didn’t favor “the full abolition of the police.”

It also coincides with a grim Star-Tribune article on the city’s Third Precinct, which headquarters the officers who killed George Floyd. Calling it a “playground for renegade cops,” the paper looks at confirmed abuse incidents there—like officers kicking a handcuffed suspect until his jaw broke, pistol-whipping a low-level drug suspect, and letting prostitution suspects touch officers’ genitals before arresting them. The city also paid out $2.1 million between 2007 and 2017 to settle lawsuits against the precinct. “We are going to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department,” tweets Jeremiah Ellison, a representative in the city’s Ward 5. “And when we’re done, we’re not simply gonna glue it back together.”

New York City has decided to take things seriously as well…….

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Sunday he would accede to protesters’ demands by moving to shift funds away from the NYPD toward social services.

During his daily briefing, the mayor addressed the demonstrations that have gripped the city and nation for almost two weeks following the death of George Floyd while in police custody. De Blasio announced a number of reforms as proposed by a task force on racial inclusion, one of which was to shift funding from the police force to youth initiatives.

“The details will be worked out in the budget process in the weeks ahead. But, I want people to understand that we are committed to shifting resources to ensure that the focus is on our young people,” de Blasio said.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/de-blasio-nyc-to-cut-nypd-funding-shift-it-to-social-services

Is this a real opportunity or just another in a long list of promised reforms that have fallen into the trash heap of political promises?  Is this just a way to try and calm the protests?

I think all that “reform” is a good idea….but there should be more emphasis on the personnel…..hire good stable people and put the trash out.

All over this nation the city governments have had ample time and ample notice that this was needed and yet they all looked away and allowed the abuses to continue…..what makes us think they are serious this time around?

Keep in mind that this situation we have today was seen some 50 years ago……
The scenes are similar to the 1960s. In response Pat Gillham, assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at Western Washington University, says President Lyndon Johnson commissioned the 1968 Kerner Report, offering recommendations to police for managing protests.

But seeing the response this week with military-style vehicles and tear gas, Gillham thinks the report has been ignored.

“These things don’t create positive relations between the police and the community they promise to serve and protect,” says Gillham. “Just exacerbates things, which is exactly what the Kerner Report found 50 years prior.”

https://www.publicnewsservice.org/2020-06-05/social-justice/50-year-old-report-warns-against-police-tactics-used-today/a70445-1

Dems step in to save the police departments with a bill that would “reform” the PDs……

Democrats proposed a sweeping overhaul of police oversight and procedures Monday, the most ambitious change to law enforcement sought by Congress in years, per the AP. Before unveiling the package, House and Senate Democrats held a moment of silence at the Capitol’s Emancipation Hall, reading the names of George Floyd and others killed during police interactions. They knelt for 8 minutes and 46 seconds—now a symbol of police brutality and violence—the length of time prosecutors say Floyd was pinned under a white police officer’s knee before he died. The Justice in Policing Act would:

  • Limit legal protections for police. For example, it would revise the federal criminal police misconduct statute to make it easier to prosecute officers who are involved in misconduct “knowingly or with reckless disregard.”
  • The package would also change “qualified immunity” protections for police “to enable individuals to recover damages when law enforcement officers violate their constitutional rights.”
  • Create a national database of excessive-force incidents.
  • Ban police chokeholds.
  • Ban racial profiling and boost requirements for police body cameras.
  • Grant subpoena power to the Justice Department to conduct “pattern and practice” investigations of potential misconduct and help states conduct independent investigations.
  • The measure stops short of calls by activists to “defund the police,” a push to dismantle or reduce financial resources to police departments that has struck new intensity in the weeks of protests since Floyd’s death.
  • It is unclear if law enforcement and the powerful police unions will back any of the proposed changes or if congressional Republicans will join the effort

Please stop calling them “police unions”….nothing about them is about the worker and their protection.  At best they are associations to protect cops when they do wrong.

The Dems still are naive enough to think that good policy will win the day….sadly it NEVER wins out…..if it does it is then quickly changed…..

Again I think this move is just a political ploy to give them cover with the voter.

All the leaders are jumping into this and onto the bandwagon…..most of them have had how many years to get something done and yet now is the time they pick….could it be that the election looms?

This is an idea of what society and community could be……

At first blush, the notion that modern police departments could be defunded and dismantled seems, to many, like a misguided impulse from out of nowhere. Without police departments, how will we deal with violent crime? Sure, many on the left would agree that the war on drugs that has put so many people behind bars — especially people of color — must be radically overhauled or completely ended. But what about murder? Are we not going to arrest murderers anymore?

This concern has been raised by lots of people online, including some of my liberal colleagues. Few on the left would disagree that modern, hypermilitarized police forces have shown little regard for anyone or anything that doesn’t directly relate to the police or the protection of the interests of corporations and other business owners. (Even then, police departments nationwide haven’t done a great job of preventing theft.) And few on the left would disagree that heavy police reform is necessary, possibly at a federal level, or that the right to peaceful assembly guaranteed by the Constitution’s First Amendment should be reinforced as well. But getting rid of the police? How would you do such a thing?

https://www.vox.com/culture/2020/6/8/21281069/abolish-the-police-black-lives-matter-george-floyd-protests-minneapolis-new-york

A regular to IST Political Change was posted on the ideas to reform the police…..https://politicalcharge.org/2020/06/08/what-policies-does-your-city-need-to-adopt-to-decrease-police-brutality/

Please….any thoughts?

“lego ergo scribo”

8 Point Plan To End Police Brutality

The protests as usual have brought about lots of talk about what is need to make the use of police brutality a thing of the past.

Operating with the backing and encouragement of President Trump—who has threatened to deploy the military to suppress protests—and the aid of thousands of National Guard soldiers, police forces throughout the US are engaged in an ongoing rampage.

More than 11,000 people have been arrested in the less than two weeks of protests that followed the police murder of George Floyd. Most have been attacked by police and arrested for “failure to disperse” or violating curfews, under both Democratic and Republican mayors.

Thousands of peaceful demonstrators have been teargassed, pepper sprayed, shot with rubber bullets and beanbags, beaten with truncheons and pushed to the ground, leading to serious injuries and in some cases death. While largely ignored by the mainstream media, video after video of police attacks have gone viral on social media, fueling popular outrage.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/06/06/viol-j06.html

Lots of talk, especially from politicians, it is a good subject to pad the resume for the next election….I am sorry but I doubt see many of them as sincere……

These protests and the brutality are NOTHING new.

Police brutality has been with us for many many years…..

Eugene Williams, a 17-year-old black boy, was stoned to death by white people in 1919 after he swam into what they deemed the wrong part of Lake Michigan.

In response, black people in Chicago rose up in protest, and white people attacked them. More than 500 people were injured and 38 were killed. Afterward, the city convened a commission to study the causes of the violence.

The commission found “systemic participation in mob violence by the police,” Khalil Muhammad, a professor of history, race, and public policy at Harvard Kennedy School and author of the book The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America, told Vox. “When police officers had the choice to protect black people from white mob violence, they chose to either aid and abet white mobs or to disarm black people or to arrest them.”

https://www.vox.com/2020/6/6/21280643/police-brutality-violence-protests-racism-khalil-muhammad

We all, except for the racist, want to see an end to the brutality….and there is a proposal that I kinda like…..it has an 8 fold path…..

Amend federal civil rights laws to allow more effective prosecution of police misconduct by changing the standard from willfulness to recklessness;

Abolish “qualified immunity,” so police officers can be held civilly liable for abuses; Prohibit the transfer of offensive military equipment to police departments

Strip federal funds from departments that violate civil rights;

Create a federal model policing program that emphasizes de-escalation, non-lethal force and culturally competent policing in which access to federal funds depends upon the level of reform adopted. As part of this effort to modernize and humanize police departments we need to enhance the recruitment pool by ensuring that the resources are available to pay wages that will attract the top-tier officers we need to do the difficult work of policing;

Provide funding to states and municipalities to create civilian corps of unarmed first responders to supplement law enforcement, such as social workers, EMTs, and trained mental health professionals, who can handle order maintenance violations, mental health emergencies, and low-level conflicts to aid police officers;

Require agencies to make records of police misconduct publicly available;

Require all jurisdictions that receive federal grant funding to establish independent police conduct review boards that are broadly representative of the community and that have the authority to refer deaths that occur at the hands of police or in police custody to federal authorities for investigation.

In addition, the boards would be authorized to report to federal authorities other types of abuses by police including patterns of misconduct. This would be supplemental to current federal authority to commence investigations. Clearly we need to enhance federal funding for such investigations.

So far these are the best I have heard…..

I see where there can be cheating on these requirements…but that is nothing unusual….there is always fudging federal statutes….there has been too much for too long…..

Learn Stuff!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Stop Pretending Reform Will Help

Politicians have lined up, especially Dems, to call for reform….to include former president Obama….

Barack Obama has told young people of colour “your lives matter” in public remarks that supporters welcomed as an antidote to Donald Trump’s racially charged and divisive threats to crack down on civil dissent.

America’s first black president on Wednesday expressed faith in young people in the US and said he remained “optimistic” about the future despite the police killing of George Floyd and mounting crises that Trump’s critics say leave the country crying out for leadership.

Obama spoke at an event by the My Brother’s Keeper alliance, a program of the Obama Foundation, that was called “Reimagining Policing in the Wake of Continued Police Violence.” It was the first public appearance by the 44th president since Floyd was killed by a white Minneapolis police officer kneeling on his neck, sparking nine days of nationwide protests that have been mostly peaceful but marred by some incidents of violence.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/03/obama-george-floyd-remarks-protests-trump

Nice words….but he had 8 years in White House to accomplish something…..and here we are.

Then there is the new ad from candidate Biden….

Again he was in the White House for 8 years and yet…here we are again.

Then there are all the pundits that have the answers to the problems….they are paid to have these…so take most of them with a grain of salt.

Let’s be honest….the police have immunity from prosecution in some cases and it was given by the Supreme Court….

Qualified immunity, created by the Supreme Court in the 1970s, shields police and other government officials from liability in civil rights lawsuits when the illegality of their actions was not “clearly established” at the time of the offense.

The Supreme Court Has a Chance To End Qualified Immunity and Prevent Cases Like George Floyd’s

Learn more about ‘Qualified Immunity’…..https://www.vox.com/2020/6/3/21277104/qualified-immunity-cops-constitution-shaniz-west-supreme-court

Not to worry there will be a mass of bills to change things when it involves the police and each one will be just to pad a resume for their next election…..or it it makes it to the Senate it will die a slow death for the Senate is where great bills go to die.

What I am saying is that ‘reforms’ will not change a damn thing….why?  They are easily swept aside but another administration.

The first thing we need to do is….stop blaming those ‘bad apples’….why?

There is a long long legacy of brutality by the police…https://www.salon.com/2020/06/03/bad-apples-are-not-the-problem-americas-police-have-a-long-legacy-of-brutal-misconduct/

Let us not forget those state legislatures……they were slow if not slower than the national leaders in ceasing the brutality……

 
1 of 7
FILE – In this March 5, 2019 file photo Ohio House minority leader Emilia Sykes delivers the Democrat’s response to the Ohio Governor Mike DeWine’s Ohio State of the State address at the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus, Ohio. Only about a third of U.S. states have enacted laws addressing police use-of-force in the six years since a national protest movement emerged over the killings of black men by white police officers. Sykes criticized GOP lawmakers this week for failing to enact laws recommended by former Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s task force that hold police accountable. (AP Photo/Paul Vernon)

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) —

A wave of police killings of young black men in 2014 prompted 24 states to quickly pass some type of law enforcement reform, but many declined to address the most glaring issue: police use of force. Six years later, only about a third of states have passed laws on the question.

The issue is at the heart of nationwide protests set off by the May 25 death of George Floyd, a black man who died after a white police officer in Minneapolis pressed a knee into Floyd’s neck for several minutes while he pleaded for air.

Now, some lawmakers and governors are hoping to harness the renewed wave of anger to push through changes on the use of force they couldn’t manage after 2014, a year that included the deaths at the hands of police of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, Eric Garner in New York and 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland.

“We’re absolutely at a point in time where we have to do more,” said Maryland state Del. Vanessa Atterbeary, a Democrat who will chair a working group announced this week that will take up use-of-force standards for that state.

Pushback from politically influential law enforcement unions prompted some states’ use-of-force proposals to stall, while others have opted for voluntary programs to change policing practices. In some states, lawmakers have even broadened the powers of police, such as increasing penalties for those who attack officers or, as in Tennessee and Utah, limiting the power of independent review boards that investigate police conduct.

https://apnews.com/bd27ce94833a6c021329086973112eaf

I do not have all the answers but a start would be to recall all the military equipment and let the police use the law as the weapon not the arms made for war.

Training in law enforcement and community not tactics for going to war.

One attempt to do something (to illustrate my point)…..

H.R.1232 — 114th Congress (2015-2016)All Information (Except Text)

Bill History – Congressional Record References

 
And it ended with a thud of non-action.

Another attempt from the same timeline….

The Demilitarization of Police Act requires law enforcement agencies to disclose and justify the need and cost of any military equipment they own (e.g. machine guns, armored vehicles, night-vision scopes, camouflage fatigues and flash-bang grenades). Law enforcement agencies must provide the [legislature/council/commission] at least 90 days notice before any future acquisition of military equipment.

Based on New Jersey SB 2364 and SB 2365 (2014)

Read the Act….https://publicleadershipinstitute.org/model-bills/public-safety/demilitarization-police-act/

A Case for de-militarization…..

https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1280&context=mjrl

Time to end for good the 1033 Program which is the way police gets their weapons of war to use on the civilian population.

Just a few reasons why I do not trust the politicians and pundits and their calls for reform…..

This country needs CHANGE…..not reform.

The call for reforms is what you do when you want nothing to be done.

Enough talk!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Student Debt Can Be Fixed

One of the biggest issues that many Millennials are dealing with is their student debt…..which in most cases these days is massive. Many are looking to the candidates for an answer to their misery.

I am happy to say that all my years in college was paid for by my G.I. Bill and some scholarships….but nowadays students are not so lucky….most of them are saddled with massive debt thanx to getting an education.

Congress needs to grab their nuts and do something about this problem…..and they can if they would just grow a pair……

Students borrowed approximately $91 billion in federal loans in 2018, bringing the total outstanding loan balance to nearly $1.5 trillion.1 For many, college would not have been possible without such readily available financing, but the burden of debt has become too much. More than 1 million borrowers default every year,2 and millions more are stuck in what feels like an endless cycle of interest payments3 and benefits applications.4 Borrowers of color, in particular, are struggling to repay their debt, exacerbating long-term inequities and causing higher education to be more of a gamble than was promised.5

All of these woes are part of the college affordability crisis, but they are also part of a more arcane problem: The United States’ federal student loan repayment system is broken. This year, however, Congress has a chance to fix it.

The stars seem to have aligned for a long-overdue reauthorization of the Higher Education Act (HEA),6 the country’s primary legislation governing postsecondary education. Senate Education Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-TN), who plans to retire at the end of the current congressional session, will likely be motivated to burnish his legacy by passing the first HEA reauthorization in more than a decade.7

Since HEA was last updated in 2008, the loan system has moved to 100 percent direct lending through the federal government.8 This completely federalized system has resulted in many benefits: less on-the-ground industry influence in lending;9 repayment programs that are unavailable in the private market;10 and, though it may seem ironic given the current dissatisfaction with the repayment system, stronger consumer protections.11 Perhaps most importantly, the transition to direct lending saves the federal government roughly $6 billion per year—funds that have resulted in an infusion of $36 billion of mandatory funding into the Pell Grant program over the past 10 years.12

Nevertheless, now that direct lending has been the primary federal loan system for nearly a decade, it is time for a major revamp to address modern problems.

https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education-postsecondary/reports/2019/03/07/467005/congress-can-fix-student-loan-repayment/

The idea of a free college education is a great idea but will not fly……however the system of debts needs reforming if not changing…

Entitlement Reform? (The GOP 2019 Song)

Some things never change……with the news of  an ever expanding deficit and the spineless GOP has the lame same idea as in the past….entitlement reform.  Pathetic pack of losers and even more so now with the King Don in the Oval Office.

With all the drama that leaks from the White House…..nothing is being said about the deficit.  Nothing is being said that the worthless tax cuts are expanding the deficit….that is until today when GOPer Sasse of Nebraska told Morning Joe that he wants to work on entitlement reform to help the deficit.

I love this crap!  The GOP will focus on deficit control after blowing it up with their massive tax cuts for rich bastards….this is a continuing story…once they, the GOP, are in the minority the deficit and entitlement reform is primary on their minds but when in majority it means little and is seldom mentioned…..these toads are all too predictable.

Finally a true GOPer…..blame the deficit on entitlements and not on their stupidity with the budget for the Pentagon or those  worthless tax cuts of 2018.

But what are these reforms that the GOP will embrace?

Paul Ryan made the TV rounds giddily hawking his plan, saying, “Do we want to get entitlement reform? Of course we do.

His intentions could hardly be clearer, but there are still people out there worried about stating this fact too openly. Earlier this month, Maya MacGuineas, president of the non-profit Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

“Gutting,” of course, is exactly what Republicans mean when they talk about “reforming” “entitlement” programs. But MacGuineas was correct to point out the many politically loaded words partisans throw around when talking about programs that benefit poor Americans (with “reform” being high up on that list.)

https://splinternews.com/what-we-really-mean-when-we-talk-about-entitlement-refo-1821222884

Let’s look at the most recent news about the deficit…….

The federal budget deficit has surged to $779 billion in fiscal 2018, its highest level in six years as President Trump’s tax cuts caused the government to borrow more heavily in order to cover its spending. The Treasury Department said Monday that the deficit climbed $113 billion from fiscal 2017, the AP reports. Debt will likely worsen in the coming years with the Trump administration expecting the deficit to top $1 trillion in 2019, nearly matching the $1.1 trillion imbalance from 2012. The deficit worsened because tax revenues are not keeping pace with government spending. The government’s fiscal year runs from October to September, unlike calendar years that begin in January. Tax revenues were essentially flat in fiscal 2018, while spending increased 3.2% as Congress gave more funds for military and domestic programs.

Revenues generally tumbled after December when Trump signed into law $1.5 trillion of tax cuts over the next decade. The tax cuts have caused economic growth to accelerate this year with Federal Reserve officials anticipating gains of 3.1%. But the Trump administration initially promised that the tax cuts would pay for themselves through stronger growth—and there is no sign so far of that happening. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin suggested in a statement that the underlying source of the widening deficit was growth in government spending, rather than the tax cuts. “Going forward the President’s economic policies that have stimulated strong economic growth, combined with proposals to cut wasteful spending, will lead America toward a sustainable financial path,” Mnuchin said. But William Gale, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, noted that the tax cuts are unlikely to generate a long-term bump in economic growth

The deficit is Ryan’s biggest nightmare….which in itself is a self inflicted wound…..because of the GOPs policies the deficit expands…..

Rep. Paul Ryan said one of the biggest disappointments from his term as House speaker was his inability to address the growing mountain of federal debt.

“On healthcare itself and debt and deficits, it’s the one that got away,” Ryan said at a Washington Post event.

As speaker, Ryan helped oversee a rise in spending that is already adding to the deficit. Under his tenure, the amount of outstanding federal debt grew by just over $2 trillion, and the federal deficit expanded from $438 billion in the 2015 fiscal year to $779 billion in the 2018 fiscal year.

https://www.businessinsider.com/paul-ryan-federal-debt-deficit-gop-tax-law-2018-11

2019 will bring the GOP chest thumping about the deficit…..any person that watches our system at work can see just how hypocritical the GOP is…always…..

It gets humorous at the attacks on the people of the US as the cause of the deficit soaring……the truth (no GOPer wants to hear that)….is their massive budget increases for the Pentagon and then those worthless tax cuts of 2018 have done more than any entitlement program.

Of course the GOP will say that Dems hate the Pentagon and the military and that they do not want Americans to have more money……THEY ARE LIES!

The honest approach would be to have all income including bonuses pay into the system….and that taxes be paid according to income…..those are simple fixes that will go NO where.

For those that want to debate entitlement reform……this is a collection of cards that can be printed and used as a reference….

https://www.vox.com/cards/entitlement-reform/what-is-entitlement-reform

Further Reading:

https://mic.com/articles/61613/what-the-debate-over-entitlement-reform-is-really-about#.dUIM5n33I