Hendrickson’s View

Mark W. Hendrickson

Mark Hendrickson is an economist who recently retired from the faculty of Grove City College, where he remains a Fellow for Economic & Social Policy for the college’s The Institute for Faith and Freedom.

What Next for Illegal Immigrants?

While the number of ICE agents in Minneapolis has been reduced and tensions there seem to have subsided, one of the vital policy questions going forward is: What will the Trump administration’s immigration policy be for the rest of this year and possibly beyond?

One of President Donald Trump’s clear policy triumphs in the first year of his second term has been his success at halting the uncontrolled flood of illegal immigrants pouring across our southern border. The United States has largely regained control of that border, and the obvious policy is to maintain that secure status.

The other part of the immigration problem, however, remains unsolved: What is to be done about the millions — 10, 20, 30 or more million — of illegals currently residing in the United States? Rounding up and deporting all those who have entered the country illegally would seem to be numerically impossible. That being the case, are there any priorities that the federal government could set? Are there some categories of illegal immigrants that belong at the top of the list for deportation? Yes, indeed.

We need to ask a simple question: Which illegal immigrants pose more of a risk or problem to our society? Using this as the criterion, I would classify two groups of illegals as logical targets for deportation. The first group has been designated as a target from the start: Those with criminal records, whether for offenses committed here in the States or back in their home countries. The second group has remained largely unnamed, although I have seen encouraging signs lately that they are coming into focus and may soon receive the attention they deserve: Illegals who are collecting welfare.

Decades ago, Austrian economist and Nobel laureate F. A. Hayek warned that open borders and a large welfare state make for a very precarious policy mix. Naturally, people will resort to extraordinary means to escape poverty in their native country and immigrate into a society with generous government handouts. According to a recent report in The Washington Times, “61 percent of illegal immigrant households use welfare.” That is an astonishing, though not entirely surprising, number. In this day of massive government indebtedness and stories of the defrauding of federal welfare programs swirling about, those who are in our country illegally and milking the American taxpayer on an ongoing basis are logical targets for deportation.

Just as ICE agents should work with local law enforcement officials to help locate criminals, so immigration officers should huddle with those who manage the various welfare offices to locate illegal freeloaders.

But what should our immigration officials do when they find an illegal who is not receiving welfare benefits? Here, I will make a controversial suggestion: It is my conviction, based on a recent perusal of our immigration laws, that we have let far too few people immigrate legally. Another way of putting it is that, while we admit roughly one million legal immigrants annually, that number is too few relative to the current needs of our labor market. That is not to say that all those millions who entered illegally should stay here — not at all. But some of them, definitely.

The United States needs immigrants for economic reasons. In sectors such as agriculture, hospitality, elder care, construction, and various forms of grunt work, we face labor shortages that the domestic workforce, even at full capacity, is unlikely to fill. The larger reason, though, is that our elaborate welfare state requires more taxpaying laborers in order to continue to fund the benefits that seniors like myself receive. This isn’t opinion; it’s mathematical reality.

One of the most serious challenges facing the world as a whole is the large number of countries facing imminent population implosions that threaten the fiscal viability of their welfare states. The United States is in better shape than most, but even here, the only way we are going to fund programs such as Social Security and Medicare on present trajectories will be by seeing our population grow. There are those currently advocating natalist policies designed to incentivize women to have more children, but even if such programs were to be wildly successful, those additional workers wouldn’t be entering the workforce for a couple of decades. In the short run, our population will only grow through immigration.

Question: Which illegal immigrants are causing more harm — those who are working and paying taxes, or those who are ripping off taxpayers? That suggests a policy compromise: U.S. immigration policy going forward should concentrate on expelling illegals who are receiving any kind of welfare payment. Meanwhile, make some sort of accommodation for illegal aliens who are working and paying taxes and can be properly vetted. Provide them with an ID card that would give them permission to continue to work in the country, but would also include stipulations such as: 1) no right to apply for citizenship for 10 (15?) years; therefore, no eligibility to vote; 2) denying them ineligibility for welfare payments for a similar period.

While I entertain no sanguine hopes that the two political parties will suddenly embrace bipartisan compromise, I think the essence of what I have proposed — namely, that the United States welcome those from abroad who seek an opportunity to work while excluding those looking for a free ride — would be very acceptable to earlier generations of Americans.

Trump Scraps CO₂ Rule as Part of Tackling Climate Alarmism

In what may well be the finest domestic policy achievement of the Trump administration, President Donald Trump and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the rescission of the so-called endangerment finding on Feb. 12.

The 2009 endangerment finding (which wasn’t really a “finding” at all, but a political slogan that ignored sound science) held that carbon dioxide (CO₂) — the basis of the human food chain (since CO₂ is an essential nutrient of plant life, and plant life in turn sustains and nourishes animals and humans) and the gas that we celebrated when catalytic converters were added to automotive engines in the 1970s to convert toxic carbon monoxide to benign CO₂ — a vital, beneficial gas, was a potential threat to life on Earth due to an alleged possibility of human consumption of fossil fuels warming the global atmosphere to a harmful degree.

Finally, after decades of propaganda, cynical manipulations, and malevolent machinations on the part of the climate alarmist movement, Trump has liberated us from this malicious myth and paved the way for the removal of the anti-prosperity, hence anti-human, “green” policies that have waged war against affordable, reliable energy.

Climate alarmism has indeed been a scam, a hoax. Early whistleblowers in the scientific community were pointing out 35 years ago how federal funding flowed overwhelmingly to those scientists and universities willing to hop on board the climate alarmist train. Scientists repeatedly cited computer models as “proof” of the alarmist scenario, even though actual climate data conflict with the computer models.

In recent decades, billions upon billions of tax dollars were spent to advance a political agenda under the guise of “climate alarmism.” Billions more dollars were funneled to various green boondoggles in perhaps the most extensive corporate welfare/cronyism scheme in history.

The climate alarmism hoax was abetted by federal agencies tampering liberally with climate data. Perhaps that is why the Senate has explicitly exempted any research and data collection or information analysis conducted by or for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (the agency charged with monitoring climate change) from the Data Quality Act, a law that mandates sound science in policymaking.

All of this was going on even though scientific data showed that over the past half-billion years of Earth’s history, there has been no substantial correlation between global temperatures and the concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere. This was also obvious in recent history, for the warmest decade of the 20th century (the 1930s) had lower CO₂ levels than the coolest decades (approximately the late 1940s through the late 1970s). In fact, at the very time in 2009 when the left was trying to pass a cap-and-trade scheme to tax CO₂, its allies in the scientific community were backtracking — saying that well, yes, CO₂ warms the atmosphere, but even though CO₂ concentrations were rising strongly then, they thought that the atmosphere might cool for the next few decades.

Indeed, as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change itself has stated, it is impossible to make accurate climatic predictions because of the chaotic nature of climate. Humans will never be able to predict, much less control, the climate, but as I have written before, economic prosperity has greatly enhanced human survivability of Mother Nature’s mighty convulsions. Yes, the notion of human-caused global warming catastrophes has been a hoax — “the big green lie.”

The climate alarmism hustle has been, as Trump said, “ridiculous” from the start. The greenhouse effect (necessary to make our planet habitable) is not the control knob on Earth’s climate. Solar radiation, cosmic rays, ocean currents, volcanic (both terrestrial and submarine) activity, and cloud cover all affect Earth’s climate significantly. And even the greenhouse effect itself is not regulated by how much CO₂ is in the atmosphere. The dominant greenhouse gas is water vapor, but if the messianic left (I call it that because it insists that it must have power in order to save life on Earth) had proposed regulating water usage, it would have been laughed off stage.

Climate alarmism was never about climate. It was all about power and money. The messianic left in our country has long craved total power. What better way to gain more control over American lives than to cite a hypothetical climate apocalypse? Then, our would-be “saviors” would (for our own good, of course) expand their power over our lives, such as by regulating the temperature setting in your house and imposing mileage limits on travel. And, of course, they would need to impose taxes on CO₂ emissions — the mother of all taxes because of the ubiquity of energy consumption in our modern economy — thereby diverting ever more wealth (and the power that goes with it) from the private sector into the hands of the savior/overlord class.

The regulations spawned by the endangerment finding were indeed “disastrous,” as the president stated. I warned at the time that designating CO₂ as a dangerous substance would open a veritable Pandora’s box of costly regulations, and it did. Limiting fossil fuel usage while subsidizing less efficient wind and solar energy has slowed economic activity, although thankfully, we are not in as desperate straits as the European nations that have gone more radically “green” than we have.

Indeed, according to a U.N. study more than a decade ago, the price tag for weaning the world from CO₂-emitting fossil fuels was estimated at $552 trillion (that’s “trillion” with a “t”) — or in other words, about a decade’s worth of global gross domestic product, an inconceivably large economic disaster for human beings. And besides the heavy hit to economic growth, the government-mandated massive increase in “renewable” (intermittent) sources of energy also have their own pronounced negative environmental consequences.

Thank you, Mr. President, for your wisdom and clear vision in rescinding the pernicious endangerment finding. We need this return to sanity.

In Memoriam: Robert Duvall

The actor Robert Duvall passed away Feb. 15 at the age of 95. Classifying him as an actor doesn’t do his career in entertainment justice.

In addition to 145 acting credits, Duvall had 14 producer credits, four writing credits, and five directing credits. His work was honored by more than five dozen awards and nominations, topped by the Academy Award for Best Actor for 1983’s “Tender Mercies.” His active career in television and cinema spanned more than 60 years.

The range of roles he played would be the envy of any actor. The superlatives that come to mind in looking back at his body of work may be unoriginal, but they are most fitting: Iconic, memorable, path-breaking, genius.

Duvall was a member of that dwindling generation of actors who emerged in the early 1960s. He had acting credits in a number of classic TV series of that decade: Rod Serling’s “Twilight Zone”; “Route 66”; “The Untouchables”; “Alfred Hitchcock Presents”; “The Virginian”; “The Fugitive”; “Combat!”; “The Wild Wild West.” And let us not forget his triumphant return to television in 1989’s super-popular miniseries, “Lonesome Dove.”

He exploded onto the film scene with his unforgettable portrayal of Boo Radley in 1962’s “To Kill a Mockingbird.” My wife, a former actress and director herself, showed excerpts of that film to her college theater classes. Duvall’s performance vividly illustrated how much could be communicated nonverbally as well as through how lines were spoken. He engaged the viewer, using subtle changes of expression to suggest various subtexts and intriguing questions: Is he unbalanced or just odd? Does he know things that he won’t state? What caused him to be that way, etc.?

I was a bit young to fully appreciate Duvall’s role in “Mockingbird” when it came out, but years later, I saw it and was dazzled. The first show I remember seeing him in upon its release was the 1970’s cynical “M*A*S*H” in which he played the smarmy, clueless, repellently pious and devoid of empathy Major Frank Burns. Duvall, a very pleasant fellow in real life, had the great actor’s ability to make himself thoroughly unlikable in little ways.

Indeed, “M*A*S*H” was one of many movies in which Duvall demonstrated his excellence at ensemble acting. Whether he played the lead character, a co-lead, or a supporting role, his performances were gold.

Some of the lead roles he played, in addition to the afore-mentioned “Tender Mercies,” included playing the title characters in 1979’s “Ike,” a TV miniseries about the war years of future president, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, and another major figure of the 20th century, “Stalin,” in 1992. He also played the title character in 1997’s “The Apostle,” which he also wrote and directed; the tragedy “The Great Santini”; and “The Judge” (2014), in which he starred opposite Robert Downey, Jr.

The list is much longer for Duvall’s movie roles in which he worked alongside other top names in the business. Examples include Steve McQueen in “Bullitt” (1968); John Wayne in “True Grit” (1969); Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, etc., in “The Godfather,” Parts I and II (1972 and 1974); Alan Arkin, Laurence Olivier, and Vanessa Redgrave in “The Seven-Percent Solution” (1976); Brando and Martin Sheen in 1979’s dark, traumatic (apocalyptic?) “Apocalypse Now”; Robert Redford in “The Natural” (1984); Kevin Costner in “Open Range” (2003); Tom Cruise in 1990’s “Days of Thunder”; and 2012’s “Jack Reacher.” (Dear reader: I’m sure I’ve omitted some of your favorites here, for which I apologize.)

One of the odder movies starring Duvall was the 1996 movie “A Family Thing.” In that weirdly improbable script, Duvall and James Earl Jones played half-brothers who never knew about each other until well into middle age. While it was intriguing to watch the two venerable actors play off each other, the story wasn’t strong enough to overcome its stretched contrivance.

One of the most sensitive performances Duvall gave was in the 1991 movie “Rambling Rose.” It included a brief, awkward (and mercifully not over-explicit) sexual encounter with a young Laura Dern. Duvall masterfully displayed an utterly credible mixture of vulnerability, when he was taken by surprise, and then integrity as he extricated himself from a would-be disaster.

If I could recommend one Duvall movie that, for some reason, did not catch on when it was released in 2003, I would heartily recommend the delightful and endearing “Secondhand Lions,” in which he and Michael Caine play a couple of retired Texan members of the French Foreign Legion who share a coming-of-age summer with their grand-nephew, played by Haley Joel Osment. In this movie, we see the type of character I think Duvall most enjoyed playing: A tough, no-nonsense, crusty exterior hiding a tender, good heart that peeks through with a twinkle or glint in the eye.

Active in film until 2022, Robert Duvall was a star for the ages. Thank you for all the great memories, sir, and rest in peace.

A Super End to Another Football Season

The NFL once again reaffirmed its position as the leading team sport in the United States.

The Super Bowl is over. This is the time of year when America’s football fans resign themselves to the grim fact that it will be another half-year before we see our favorite college or NFL football team compete again.

Some fans will enter the off-season exhausted, many will feel the pangs of disappointment, and a few will even suffer withdrawal symptoms. But those effects tend to be short-lived. The sentiment that will grow among the vast majority of football fans will be hope — the deep yearning that next season “the good guys” (one’s own team, of course!) will achieve more success.

The just-concluded season provided a wealth of vivid memories from both the pro and college games for us to savor while we wait. Let’s start by reviewing the NFL season, and then the college game.

Many commentators have said that Super Bowl LX between the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots was a not-so-super ending to the season. “Where were the points?” “The offenses were pathetic,” and “What a boring game” were common complaints. Indeed, if you were hoping for a high-scoring shootout, it didn’t materialize. As for me, though, call me “old school,” but I thoroughly enjoyed watching the defenses excel and dominate.

I should explain my bias: I became a Detroit Lions fan in 1959. In the early ’60s, our offense was mediocre, but the defense was elite. My Lions fielded the original Fearsome Foursome (Sam Williams, Alex Karras, Roger Brown, and Darris McCord) on the line; Hall of Famer Joe Schmidt and multi-year All-Pro Wayne Walker at linebacker, and three Hall of Famers in the defensive backfield — Night Train Lane, Dick LeBeau, and Yale Lary.

Watching those players throttle opposing offenses was a treat. Tough defense is what the Seahawks, especially, but also the Patriots, brought to Super Bowl LX. For fans who appreciate suffocating defenses, Sunday’s game was an outstanding exhibition.

Since I am still a hardcore Lions fan, I didn’t have a horse in this race, so I just sat back and enjoyed the hard-fought game. The Seahawks’ defense was awesome. Seahawk running back and Super Bowl MVP Kenneth Walker III showed an uncanny ability to break tackles and keep his balance when getting hit. Quarterback Sam Darnold deftly escaped numerous close calls to complete just enough passes to put his team in position for a Super Bowl-record five field goals by Jason Myers while also connecting on one TD pass.

Perhaps the biggest subplot of the game was the ultimate redemption for Darnold. Having had the misfortune of being drafted by the Jets eight years ago, he bounced around between several teams before finally proving to be one of the sport’s finest quarterbacks when he led the Vikings to 14 wins last year. The Vikings are probably kicking themselves for declining to extend Darnold’s contract. Instead, the Seahawks happily signed him and watched him become the first QB to win 14 games in consecutive seasons for two different teams on the way to hoisting the Lombardi Trophy.

One of the most impressive moments of the evening was the awards ceremony. The graciousness, composure, and sincerity of Darnold, Walker, and their young head coach, Mike MacDonald, were touching. These men deserve to be heroes and role models for the younger generation (if not for older generations, too).

The NFL once again reaffirmed its position as the leading team sport in the United States. With the help of a salary cap and awarding the highest draft picks to the teams with the worst records, the league has made it possible for downtrodden teams to quickly improve and challenging for successful teams to remain on top.

This past season, my Lions, the Baltimore Ravens, and, most notably, the Kansas City Chiefs, faltered and failed to even make the playoffs. On the other hand, the Patriots soared to the Super Bowl after having won only four games the previous season. Other teams that registered quantum improvements were the Chicago Bears, Jacksonville Jaguars, and Denver Broncos. Who will emerge next year? Tens of millions of NFL fans will watch that intensely.

Switching over to the college game, the ultimate Cinderella story dominated the headlines. The perennial doormats, the Indiana Hoosiers (who, up until last season, had the most losses in college football history) went 16–0 to win what many considered the most improbable national championship. And they did so in style, dominating perennial powers Alabama and Oregon in the playoffs before prevailing against a Miami team that had multiple high draft picks on its roster in the national championship game.

Coach Curt Cignetti may shake up the college sport with his unconventional approach of keeping contact practices to a minimum, while Heisman Trophy winner, QB Fernando Mendoza — he of the cherubic countenance and unspoiled wonderment of a child — will inspire thousands of young football players.

While many of us fans found the emergence of a new champion a breath of fresh air, there are dark clouds hovering over college football. The pay that players are receiving sometimes exceeds what they could earn playing in the NFL. As a result, many players good enough to earn a roster spot in the pros remain in college where they can receive more playing time and more money.

A year ago, national champion Ohio State paid its football players approximately $20 million. This past season, OSU’s payroll soared to $35 million, yet the Buckeyes were eliminated in the quarterfinals of the playoffs.

Currently, more than 4,000 college players have entered the transfer portal, where they are free to accept the most lucrative offer that comes their way. Will NCAA football become a contest of which universities can raise the most money for football players? What will that do to continuity, team spirit, and loyalty?

It seems to me that the NCAA will have to try to emulate the NFL by imposing the equivalent of a salary cap. If they don’t, elite college players will soon earn more than all but the highest-paid professional players. I can almost guarantee that whatever steps are taken to try to bring some order and financial stability to the college game, there will be complaints.

I can absolutely guarantee something else: Football fans will follow their teams as avidly as ever next year, regardless of the financial machinations taking place behind the scenes. I just hope NCAA football can approximate the NFL’s parity-producing policies so the sport isn’t divided between financial royalty and perennially poorer also-rans.

When Greatness Goes Unrecognized

As the Baby Boomer generation advances in years, we learn with increasing frequency of the passing of many of the people who were famous in our teens and 20s. Just this week, two bright stars who entertained me and millions of others way back then left this world. On Monday, Chuck Negron, one of the three lead singers in the band Three Dog Night, passed on at the age of 83. He was followed on Wednesday by Mickey Lolich, the long-time star pitcher of the Detroit Tigers and hero of the 1968 World Series, who was 85.

I don’t know if these two men ever met, but they have something significant in common. Despite highly impressive careers, neither one was elected to the Hall of Fame in their field. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland has baffled music fans for years by never inducting Three Dog Night into membership. Similarly, the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, never enshrined Mickey Lolich.

Let me make the case for each of these stars being admitted to their respective Halls of Fame.

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame has long been perplexing in its decisions about whom to admit. One fails to detect any sort of pattern or fixed criteria for induction. To a white boomer like me, many of the inductees are total unknowns. Others — Patti Smith immediately comes to mind — are one-hit wonders. Granted, “Because the Night” was a gusty, catchy song, but the rest of her work lies far out of the mainstream and enjoyed little commercial success. I’m not arguing that commercial success should automatically get a singer or band into the Rock Hall of Fame, but to induct a one-hit wonder while shunning a musical act that cranked out hit after hit that kept them on the radio and filled performance venues year after year is baffling. Doesn’t music that has obvious mass appeal to millions count for something?

For those of you too young to remember Three Dog Night’s heyday, there were years when they sold more records than the Beatles, had more gold records than the Rolling Stones, and played to larger audiences than great bands like Creedence Clearwater Revival. Between 1969 and 1975, Three Dog Night had 21 consecutive songs in the Top 40. According to the latest AI online search, that remains a record.

Three of those hits rose to Number One — the amazingly original “Mama Told Me (Not To Come),” the ebullient “Joy to the World,” which probably has the most unique and memorable vocal opening in rock history (“Jeremiah was a bullfrog!”), and the mellow and melodic “Black & White.” Negron sang lead on “Joy to the World,” as well as on the band’s first hit, “One,” its second hit, “Easy To Be Hard” (from the soundtrack of the iconic ’60s musical “Hair”) the sweet, easy-to-sing-along-to ”Just an Old-Fashioned Love Song,” among others.

To me, it is incomprehensible that Three Dog Night is not in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. The case for Mickey Lolich being in the Baseball Hall of Fame is a bit murkier, although I believe a strong case can be made.

As a lifelong Tigers fan, I’m undoubtedly biased, but those of us privileged to watch Mickey Lolich in his prime enjoyed watching a master craftsman dominate opposing batters. Lolich’s star shone most brightly from 1968 through 1975, and especially from 1969 through 1972, when he was a three-time All-Star and peaked at 25 wins, 308 strikeouts and 376 innings pitched, including 29 complete games, in 1971. With a pudgy belly and a slightly slouched posture, Lolich looked harmless enough — until he got on the pitchers’ mound and overwhelmed batters.

Lolich is still 23rd all-time on the career strikeouts list. He was the last pitcher to win three complete-game victories in the World Series, with his most famous game being the Game Seven victorious duel with the formidable Cardinals ace Bob Gibson. On that blessed day for us Tigers fans, Mickey (on only two days’ rest) and the Tigers prevailed, 4-1, to come back from a three games-to-one deficit to capture the 1968 championship. Indeed, complete games were Mickey Lolich’s calling card. Nearly 40 percent of his career starts — 195 — were complete games. That is unfathomable today when one considers that there were only 28 complete games last year spread over all of major league baseball’s 30 teams.

I suspect Lolich was not admitted to the Hall of Fame because some of his other career stats were near the borderline of what a “typical” Hall of Fame pitcher accumulated. I emphasize “some” of his stats. In the important modern stat WAR (Wins Above Replacement), Lolich’s score was higher than such well-known Hall of Fame pitchers as Lefty Gomez, Dizzy Dean, Bob Lemon, Catfish Hunter, and Jack Morris.

In fact, it is comparing Lolich’s record with Morris’ that is most intriguing. Morris was the first truly dominant starter for the Detroit Tigers after Lolich retired. Compared to Lolich, Morris had fewer complete games — 175 to 195, fewer shutouts — 28 to 41, and a significantly higher ERA (Earned Run Average) — 3.90 to 3.44. Morris’ won-lost percentage was higher (.577 vs. .532), but that was impacted by Lolich playing on weaker teams that had trouble scoring runs. Alas, no Hall of Fame for Mickey Lolich. The gatekeepers at Cooperstown have decided against it.

In closing, let me say that the ways of Hall of Fame selection committees are often inscrutable, and they lead to endless debates among fans. For whatever reasons, Chuck Negron and Mickey Lolich have not been enshrined in their respective Halls. But they have been enshrined in my personal Hall of Fame. To me, they were both stars of the first magnitude, and they provided loads of happy memories with their outstanding performances. Rest in Peace, men, and thank you!

The Fiscal Folly of Handing Out $2,000 Tax Rebates

President Donald Trump has been talking about sending millions of taxpaying Americans $2,000 from the revenue that has flowed into the Treasury from the tariffs that Trump has raised. What the president is doing is politically clever and economically irresponsible.

Ever since Mr. Trump became a serious presidential candidate in 2016, it has been clear that he is neither a traditional Republican nor a conventional conservative. He is rightly described as a populist, and as such, his strategy is exactly what we would expect of a presidential candidate in today’s democratic system: To gain popularity with voters.

A populist will assiduously avoid pursuing unpopular policies, even when such policies might be necessary for the economic well-being of the country. Foremost among such policies would be shrinking the national debt. Anyone who is not a financial illiterate knows that government debt cannot rise indefinitely without destabilizing our financial system, but any politician who pushes for the major spending cuts necessary to reduce the debt will alienate voters and be punished at the ballot box. Trump knows this, and so, in spite of some pious pronouncements about reducing the national debt, the debt has risen from the previous year in four of the five years that Trump has been president. Yes, when Trump replaced Barack Obama in the White House, the budget deficit went up (from $585 billion in 2016 to $665 Bn, $779 Bn, $984 Bn, and finally $3,123 Bn in 2020 when COVID messed up everything). Preliminary figures indicate a 2.8 percent decrease in the deficit in 2025 compared to Joe Biden’s last year, although that improvement could be erased if Trump’s tariffs are nullified by the Supreme Court and all those revenues have to somehow be refunded. On the positive side, there have been a number of highly publicized spending cuts under Trump this year, but the dollar total has been modest.

Before the Trump loyalists call for burning me in effigy, let me credit our president for some much-needed economic sanity. The differences between Trump’s economic policies and those of the Biden administration are significant: Mr. Trump has championed supply-side tax cuts and gotten rid of harmful suffocating regulations; he has saved us from the UN’s socialistic wealth-transfer scheme masquerading as climate policy; he has scuttled DEI’s un-American quota nonsense in favor of good old-fashioned meritocracy; he has served notice to American universities that they should not take government subsidies for granted; he has stopped the ruinous, ridiculously costly flood of illegal immigration into our country.

That being said, there are still serious shortcomings in the president’s economic policies. He simply is not a budget hawk, or at least, he has no stomach for making deficit- and debt-reduction a core pillar of his policies. This is not a new development. In his first term, in the summer of 2019, he made a quiet deal with then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi to suspend the debt ceiling for two years — long enough to get him through to the election without having to fight for deficit reduction. In making this deal, Trump consented to a $320 billion spending increase over previously negotiated ceilings.

Another indication of how uncommitted the president is to deficit reduction occurred during his presidential campaign in 2024. Trump proposed eliminating taxes on Social Security benefits. While I personally would benefit from such a policy, I oppose it as fiscally irresponsible. We all know that the Social Security System faces serious funding shortfalls within the next decade. Taxes on Social Security benefits are earmarked for the Social Security and Medicare trust funds, so to reduce that source of income into the funds at a time when they already are underfunded is fiscally reckless. It is no different from when President Obama reduced Social Security withholding from paychecks by 2 percent to increase working Americans’ take-home pay. Reducing the government revenues that fund a vitally important government program that is chronically underfunded only exacerbates the problem. Why did Trump propose this? To curry favor with voters, of course, just like Obama did. Sad.

Perhaps I am being too cynical, but I see Trump’s current tactic of dangling $2,000 checks before Americans as a political maneuver, skillfully played. Trump and the Republican Party are hurting at the polls as more and more Americans fret about the cost of living. What better time to propose giving them $2,000? Trump has put himself in a can’t-lose situation. If the Supreme Court disallows the Trump-imposed tariffs on the plain-as-day constitutional grounds that trade policy and “imposts and duties” on imports are congressional prerogatives, then the president can tweet to millions of American taxpayers, “You would all have an extra $2,000 except but for that nasty Supreme Court, which has kept me from helping you.” (Of course, Mr. Trump will use more colorful language and more capital letters than I did, but you get the point.) And if the tariffs are allowed to stand, Trump looks like Santa Claus (to the envy of Democrats who want to monopolize the Santa Claus role of government).

In regard to the national debt, however, Trump’s tantalizing talk about $2,000 handouts is as economically unwise as it is politically clever. It is proof that reducing the national debt is a low priority for him. Like St. Augustine, who prayed, “give me chastity, but not yet,” Trump may indeed like the idea of spending reductions, but not so much as to give up the political gain of using government funds to buy popularity. Once again, the debt “can” would be kicked further down the road.

The bottom line is that our populist president’s debt reduction talk is not backed up by serious debt reduction action. The ultimate blame for our ongoing national debt fiasco, of course, lies not with Trump, but with the American voter. Too many Americans are so addicted to the concept of a Santa Claus government that they won’t elect anyone as president who is serious about significantly shrinking the federal government.     *