Trump tweets wildly misleading comparison of the national debt in his first month to Obama's
Source: Business Insider
On Saturday morning, President Donald Trump took to Twitter to point out a fact he thought the media was underreporting: the decrease in the national debt in his first month.
"The media has not reported that the National Debt in my first month went down by $12 billion vs a $200 billion increase in Obama first mo(nth)," tweeted Trump.
The tweet, which echoes something Herman Cain said on Fox News' Fox & Friends an hour before, doesn't make sense for a few reasons.
First, it is true that the debt has probably ticked down but as noted by the Atlantic's David Frum, this is mostly due to the federal government rebalancing its intra-governmental holdings. Debt outstanding to the public has barely budged since Inauguration Day.
-snip-
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-tweet-on-national-debt-in-first-month-under-obama-stock-market-2017-2
The article goes on to point out that
1) the current figures are due to a budget passed before the Trump admin started, so he has little to do with it, and
2) "most importantly, the economic circumstances during his and Obama's first month in office are vastly different."
Link to the David Frum tweet mentioned in the article:
Link to tweet
= new reply since forum marked as read
I live in Tennessee, and I am pretty sure the info you just posted will come in handy this very day.
I.e., the federal government is STILL operating under a Continuing Resolution, which mandates that agency spending remain at fiscal year 2016 levels. And in the case of CRs, funding to agencies only gets allocated monthly at 1/12th the rate of what is expected for the year.
The CR goes until April 28th and I haven't heard a peep out of Congress and whether they have any appropriations for FY17 even ready to vote on yet.
In addition, let's see what happens even BEFORE the CR is up for renewal (and a shutdown occurs if it's not extended or is replaced with regular appropriations), when it's time to raise the debt ceiling (estimated to happen some time next month), which could mean default if it's not done. 
... Trump, as becomes more apparent every day, creates his own data when the facts don’t suit him. (See: greatest electoral victory since Reagan, widespread voter fraud, highest murder rate in 45 years, unreported terrorist attacks, etc.) And economic policy is highly dependent on the best possible understanding of what’s going on.
Trump is preparing a budget that predicts the economy will grow by around 3.5% per year for the next several years, according to a Wall Street Journal report. Mainstream forecasters like the Congressional Budget Office, the Federal Reserve and private research outfits think that’s way too high, and expect growth closer to 2% per year. The Trump administration hasn’t yet published its forecasts, which will be part of the 2018 federal budget Trump must submit to Congress in a few weeks
... Trump’s economic proposals so far rely heavily on supply-side assumptions about tax cuts and infrastructure spending producing a big boost in growth.
Trump’s team is already looking into ways to restate trade deficits that would make them sound worse than they are, ... ((that little trick is explained in the article, which will no doubt be used to justify trade wars -Progree))
....Trump is not like other presidents. His contempt for data and science is unprecedented. He dismisses facts that are irrefutable. And he has made promises, such as 3.5% economic growth, that reality may not abide.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trumps-plan-to-declare-victory-on-the-economy-194250110.html
And Newman goes on to explain how bad economic assumptions can be ((and likely will be)) used to justify bad economic policy ...
As for Bush's supply side tax cuts, they "failed to produce a notable boost in growth, and simply added to the national debt."
what with the debt ceiling debacle and all. 
(or will it be a debacle? )
