With the November 5 election of Donald J. Trump and the backing of a Republican majority in the House and Senate, that day has arrived. What will a second Trump administration look like? Say what you will about Trump 1.0, he failed to deliver on his promise to “drain the swamp.” Federal government spending—adjusted for population growth and inflation—grew 2.19 percent per year, and that was before the arrival of covid. Tack on the panicked, over-the-top response to covid and real per capita spending grew at a 6.51 percent annualized rate under Trump, more than triple the average rate during 14 presidential terms from 1961 to 2016.
With American politics, at least on substantive economic issues, the status quo is always the base case. While the Democrats tend to push the envelope on bigger government, the historical role of the Republicans has been to consolidate those gains. And yet, from 1961 to 2016 there has been little difference between the two parties as the GOP managed to slightly outspend the Dems.
As the author says, Trump gets a mulligan to perform on his promises. This time he may do what he says he can do, but that remains to be seen. He has to get his team into place and remove the deep state’s team. It looks like he is going to have some stiff resistance to removing the miscreants and lefty/Marxist/socialist/communist/murderers that are infesting our federal government. He cannot do anything about the state governments but, then again, the deep state has been taking care of that for the last one-hundred and twenty years, hasn’t it?