Dear Weekend Jolter,
Make America Greece again.
A little over a week from now, our country will almost certainly be on an even more unsustainable budget trajectory than it already is. Even considering the inflation-fueling spender-bender over which the Biden administration presided these past four years, the fiscal effects of America's broken politics are likely to get progressively worse.
In 2024, there is no budget-conscious candidate. Such a person is not running for president of the United States. Donald Trump and Kamala Harris care as much about the national debt — and how its servicing is eating up a bigger and bigger portion of the pie — as AOC does. The election will allow one of them to keep wrecking the nation's finances in his or her own preferred style.
"America desperately needs a leader with the wisdom and courage to make correcting our unsustainable fiscal trajectory a major priority," the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget lamented earlier this month, in an analysis of the fiscal impact of the candidates' plans. America will not get one: The CRFB gave a "central" estimate (in between low- and high-cost estimates) that Harris's plans would raise the debt by $3.5 trillion through 2035, while Trump's would raise the debt by $7.5 trillion. That's above current projections, which are already unsustainable and likely will be worse in reality.
This is where this newsletter will quote Dominic Pino at length, because to do otherwise would be malpractice where budgetary issues are concerned. In his recent magazine piece on "the coming budget blowout," Dom noted that the Congressional Budget Office projects Social Security, Medicare, "and the borrowing required to fund them" will add $124 trillion to the debt over the next 30 years, with the rest of the budget roughly balanced over that time. This, as neither candidate proposes to address the entitlements crisis.
However,
the $124 trillion is almost certainly an underestimate, because it is based on CBO assumptions that interest rates will never rise above 3.8 percent in the next 30 years. All the extra government borrowing will increase pressure on interest rates. For each percentage point above 3.8 percent, tack on another $40 trillion or so.
The assumption that the rest of the budget will be roughly balanced implies that current law won't change. That means no recessions, no unforeseen need for increased military spending, and no major new spending programs without concomitant spending cuts. It also means all that stuff that's scheduled to expire next year and the year after actually does expire, in full, never to return.
And that's not going to happen. There's no way of knowing what world affairs will throw at the U.S. over the next three decades, and at least some, if not all, of the policies set to expire will be extended.
These policies include provisions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which both candidates, at least to some degree, would likely extend as part of a series of tough budget decisions that will have to be made next year.
In other words, the encroachment of reality will make budget projections worse than they already are. And the arrival of either Trump or Harris to the Oval Office will make them worse still, even in the likely event neither gets most of his or her agenda through.
For Trump, the red ink would largely result from a TCJA extension and possibly further income-tax cuts on top of that. He also wants to reduce the tax base by exempting tip income, overtime income, and Social Security benefits from taxation. The Republican nominee proposes tariffs to offset some of these losses, but this and other ideas wouldn't generate enough to cover more than roughly a third of the costs from his other proposals, according to the CRFB's "central" estimate. For Harris, the red ink would largely result from a partial TCJA extension and programs such as housing subsidies and expanded child tax credits and expanded child-care, long-term-care, and other benefits. She proposes more tax hikes than Trump to cover some of the costs, including an increase in the corporate tax rate, but, again, it's not enough (though the CRFB allows for a low-cost estimate under which her plan has no net deficit impact). And as the Economist notes in its own report citing these estimates, Harris's proposed tax hikes would weigh on economic growth (as would Trump's tariffs).
Taken together, the estimates amount to yet another illustration of how, while the Tea Party's populist spirit lives on, the movement's focus on spending cuts and budget reform is a distant memory. That emphasis could yet be revived. Dom highlighted some proposals with promise in his magazine piece. As seen in the latest burst of ads from Democrats in tough races who are touting their work with Trump on key issues, politicians will ultimately stand for the priorities they think voters find important. On fiscal sanity, the change will have to come from taxpayers who demand it.
The total U.S. national debt, today, is nearing $36 trillion. The CRFB concisely lays out what's at stake as interest payments gobble up more revenue and critical trust-fund programs face insolvency — lest the consequences of profligacy appear far off and intangible: "Our large and growing national debt threatens to slow economic growth, boost interest rates and payments, weaken national security, constrain policy choices, and increase the risk of an eventual fiscal crisis."
In four more years, when the pain is even more acute, perhaps the presidential candidates will propose doing something about it.
NAME. RANK. LINK.
EDITORIALS
Let's be honest about what student-loan "forgiveness" is: The October Bribe
Plug the leaks, and then some: The Biden Iran Scandal Gets Worse
ARTICLES
Henry Olsen: Trump's Tricky Math
Noah Rothman: Is It Trump's Race to Lose?
Jim Geraghty: The Chronically Underestimated Kamala Harris
Audrey Fahlberg: Trump Campaign Leaning into Ex-President's Larger-Than-Life Personality in Final Stretch
Michael Brendan Dougherty: Trump's Two-Pronged Play for Normies and Populists
James Lynch: Kamala Harris Greatly Exaggerated Prosecutorial Record during District Attorney Campaign
Jeffrey Blehar: Harris Finally Crashes and Burns on CNN
Dan McLaughlin: This McDonald's Report Shows Why People Hate the Political Press
David Zimmermann: Harris Rejects Religious Exemptions for Abortion
Brittany Bernstein: McConnell Slams 'Sleazeball' Trump in New Biography: 'Stupid' and 'Ill-Tempered'
Timothy K. Minella: The University of Michigan Went All In on DEI. The Results Were Disastrous
Abigail Anthony: Republicans to Investigate Study on Gender Treatments for Minors after Researcher Admits to Concealing Results
Ian Tuttle: Why Everyone Is a 'Stoic' Now
Jimmy Quinn: Obama AG Sues Pentagon for Chinese Military Company, Prompting Stefanik to Blast Her for 'Selling Out'
Nina Shea: Don't Forget the Catholic Bishops Persecuted by China
Caroline Downey: Female Athletes Lost Almost 900 Medals to Trans-Identifying Men Worldwide, U.N. Report Finds
Ryan Mills: CBS Producer in Gaza Has History of Antisemitic, Anti-Israel Commentary: 'Are Jews Really Human Like Us?'
Charles C. W. Cooke: On Roald Dahl, Rollercoasters, Cassette Tapes, and the Infinite Universe
CAPITAL MATTERS
Matthew Lau follows up on Dominic's reporting on our struggling northern neighbor: Woe, Canada
LIGHTS. CAMERA. REVIEW.
Armond White looks back at a prophetic comedy: Chris Rock Decodes the Mysterious Black Vote
Brian Allen reports back on a "gloomy, rote, and smug affair" in Venice. He's serving up sass, so reader beware: A Vibrant, Vacuous American Pavilion at the Venice Biennale
FROM THE NEW, DECEMBER 2024 ISSUE OF NR
Charles C. W. Cooke: Will Conservatism Recover?
Christine Rosen: The TikTok Candidate
Audrey Fahlberg: Bernie Moreno and Sherrod Brown's Buckeye-State Brawl
Yuval Levin: The 2024 Stakes Are Lower Than You Think
Jack Butler: Meet the Mothmaniacs
James Rosen: Pete Rose and Civilized Man
EXCERPTS MORE ON POINT THAN A BOLSHOI DANCER
The new issue of NR is out, and, as you might have suspected, it's election-oriented. Charlie Cooke can kick things off — though I cannot promise that he will be channeling much “joy” here:
For traditional conservatives, this year's presidential election has been a dispiriting affair.
The Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, is an old-school San Francisco progressive who is ruthlessly hostile to most aspects of the American constitutional order, who exhibits no principled opposition to the most radical of her movement's policy positions, and who has thus far failed to demonstrate that she possesses leadership skills of any sort. At various points in her history, Harris has called for the abolition of private health insurance, for slavery reparations, for the prohibition and confiscation of handguns and modern sporting rifles, for the "Green New Deal," for defunding the police, for banning fracking, for ending ICE, and for taxpayer-funded transgender surgeries for prisoners and illegal immigrants. Elsewhere, she has supported nuking the Senate filibuster, packing the Supreme Court, abolishing the Electoral College, and nationalizing much of the United States' election system. Aware that the administration she serves is disliked and that she is personally unpopular, Harris has more recently been careful to equivocate on many of these goals. But there is no reason for voters to believe that dissimulation. Harris is weak, ignorant, and lazy, and, like Joe Biden, she will be swiftly captured by her side's interest groups if she wins the presidency. If she is sworn in next year, she will immediately become the most left-wing commander in chief we've had since the Second World War.
The Republican nominee — for the third time in a row, Lord help us! — is Donald J. Trump, a capricious, narcissistic old man who tried to steal the 2020 election by rewriting the 1876 Electoral Count Act and the Twelfth Amendment to the Constitution, and who is able to run again only because the GOP declined to impeach and convict him for that attempt. On policy, Trump has some advantages over Harris, especially in the realms of illegal immigration and the judiciary, but he is a long, long way from being a conservative, and his egotism, poor discipline, and lack of attention to detail make the prospect of a second term an alarming one. At various points since he lost power, Trump has suggested "suspending" or "terminating" the Constitution, and, unlike most of the judges he appointed, he continues to demonstrate a faulty understanding of the limits imposed on the power of the presidency and of the role of the federal government. If Trump becomes president again next year, he will worsen our civic culture, spread corrosive lies with abandon, and make the work of the country's constitutionalists more difficult.
It is true — and mercifully so — that the American system makes it difficult for elected politicians to effect sweeping changes to the legislative and constitutional status quo. It is also true that words and habits matter enormously over time. The best response to a politician who proposes drastic changes to the political scaffolding is a better politician who dissents. The best antidote to a free-spending, tax-hiking advocate of overbearing government is an eloquent champion of a responsible and limited state. The best counterpoint to a lightweight weather vane who adopts every batty social theory on offer is a grounded Chestertonian who has mastered the opposite case. By picking Trump as its standard-bearer, the Republican Party has rhetorically ceded every one of these crucial fields. In the short term, it may get away with it. In the long term, there will be a price to pay. We will all pay a price for its fecklessness this year.
It would be inaccurate to suggest that the 2024 election is about literally nothing, but, certainly, it is about very little that is comprehensible or concrete. Useful plebiscites set two coherent visions against each other. This plebiscite is entirely opportunistic. Like that of Kamala Harris and her Democratic Party, Donald Trump's approach to this election has been to play Santa Claus for his Americans of choice, without any regard for the consequences of his vows. If he sees a group whose votes he wants to win, he offers that group special treatment. In Las Vegas, Trump has promised that the federal government will no longer tax tips; in Detroit, he has promised that the federal government will offer a deduction on the interest on loans for American-made cars; in New York, he has promised to restore the SALT deduction that his own 2017 tax bill finally managed to limit. Among seniors, he promises that Social Security benefits will be tax-free; among shift workers, he promises that overtime will be excluded from taxation; when addressing firemen, police officers, and the military, he promises to exempt them from taxation completely. When IVF became an issue, he announced that he not only supported its remaining legally available but that taxpayers would foot the bill. Trump has no plan for our endless deficits, he has no interest in reducing the debt, and he is allergic to discussing the entitlement reform that will be necessary to fix both problems. Worst of all, when he is pushed on any of these questions, he asserts either that everything will somehow be magically magnificent or that he will fix each and every problem the country faces by collecting large across-the-board import tariffs. Trump denies reality, avoids unpleasant topics, and acknowledges no trade-offs. As a practical matter, one can make an electoral case for such an approach. One cannot, however, call it conservatism.
Given the closeness of the polls — and the likelihood that the election will yield divided government — the prospects for dramatic change seem slim for at least the next two years. Conservatives should not confuse that outcome with victory.
As Noah Rothman wrote earlier this week, we're at the stage where pundits (that includes the press) are just trying to find new ways to say the presidential race is tied. All of us, guilty. So rather than make that point again, I offer two different perspectives on the state of play. First, from Jim Geraghty, on how Kamala Harris has long been underestimated:
It is almost required in conservative circles to insist that Kamala Harris is stupid. And Lord knows, speaking off the cuff, she serves up some stinkers. Since she was handed the Democratic Party's nomination without any competition, even her prepared remarks have been mostly anodyne fluff. She still regularly demonstrates the political instincts of a lawmaker shaped by the far-left environs of San Francisco, oblivious to what constitutes the political center in swing-state America. In just the past week, she skipped the Al Smith Dinner, told a heckler shouting "Jesus is Lord" that he's at the wrong rally, and responded to another heckler who accused her of "billions of dollars invested in genocide" in Israel that "what he's talking about, it's real, and so that's not the subject I came to discuss today, but it's real, and I respect his voice."
But there's this nagging complication — if Kamala Harris is as stupid as her critics claim, why does she have the Democratic presidential nomination and a roughly 50–50 shot of being the first female president in U.S. history? Do you know how many ruthlessly ambitious Democratic men and women have desperately yearned to get where she is? How many smart, tough, shrewd, often underhanded and cold-blooded pols have tried to claw their way up the greasy pole and fallen short?
And somehow this supposed dunce managed to do it?
The record indicates that whatever Harris's results are on an I.Q. test or other measure of intellect, she is particularly talented by another measuring stick, one that may be even more important in politics: She is exceptionally skilled at getting other people emotionally invested in her success.
Second, here's Audrey Fahlberg's report on how the Trump campaign is leaning into the GOP nominee's personality to try to gain the upper hand in the closing days:
After the Democratic ticket's "brat" summer and Harris's strong debate in early September, Republicans feel confident that the vibes are shifting their way now, when momentum matters most. From his latest McDonald's drive-thru stunt to his casual "bro" podcast appearances in recent weeks, the former president's campaign has made a deliberate effort to showcase his persona more on the campaign trail this cycle to engage low-propensity voters, particularly men, and turn them out to the polls.
"It's not just his time hosting The Apprentice show. President Trump has been the best brand manager and communicator for himself and his businesses for his entire career," Trump campaign strategist Brian Hughes said in an interview with National Review. "Part of what makes that work is that he is human. He is funny. He is thoughtful. There's a lot about him that the mainstream media has created this caricature to try to avoid talking about or avoid showing." Or as Hughes's colleague Alex Bruesewitz put it an interview with Semafor this week: "What we're doing better this time around than he's ever done before is leveraging Trump as a person: The celebrity of Donald Trump, the unmatched aura of Donald Trump."
Harris has raised a jaw-dropping $1 billion since emerging as the Democratic nominee. But with two weeks to go, she is losing steam on the polling front at a time when some voters still don't know much about her or view her as too scripted on the stump.
The teleprompter-reliant Democratic nominee has worked to reverse this narrative by appearing more casual on the stump in unconventional-style interviews and sharing more personal details about herself — something she has long been uncomfortable with. "It feels immodest to me to talk about myself, which apparently I'm doing right now," Harris said recently during an interview with radio host Howard Stern. . . .
Naturally, Republicans say this strategy is falling flat. "If there's one word to describe Donald Trump, it's authentic," Republican National Committee chairman Michael Whatley tells National Review in an interview. "Kamala Harris is not authentic. Her campaign right now is in free fall because they still don't know how to portray her."
Nina Shea, with the Hudson Institute, documents China's systematic persecution and repression of Catholic bishops:
Pope Francis remains enthusiastic about the Vatican's provisional agreement with China on the appointment of bishops. He recently told journalists it is a "good result" of dialogue. Yet repression against the Catholic Church in China has intensified since the deal was signed in 2018.
At least ten Chinese Catholic bishops, all Vatican-approved, are currently in indefinite detention, have disappeared or been forced out of their episcopal posts, or are under open-ended investigation by security police. To evade Western sanctions, the Chinese Communist Party uses less bloody and more hidden methods of coercion against these bishops than the show trials and physical torture of the Mao era.
Baoding's Bishop James Su Zhimin suffers the longest continuous secret detention: 27 years so far, after he led a large procession to a Marian shrine. The CCP had previously imprisoned and severely tortured him. Wenzhou's Bishop Peter Shao Zhumin is in secret detention, following an arrest last January. He has been placed in secret detention without due process six times since 2018. Bishop Augustine Cui Tai of Xuanhua diocese was last arrested in April 2021 and placed in secret, indefinite detention for the fourth time since the agreement was signed. This continues a cruel 30-year pattern against him.
Having spent much of the past 30 years in detention, Zhengding diocese's Bishop Julius Jia Zhiguo was placed under house arrest in 2018. In 2020, police transferred him from the house to a hotel, where his diocese believes he remains. Police recently dismantled the orphanage he ran for 30 years. There, in defiance of state "Sinicization" laws, he allowed children to pray. In May 2021, local police closed the seminary of Xinxiang's Bishop Joseph Zhang Weizhu and placed him in indefinite detention at an unknown location. He was arrested soon after having cancer surgery. . . .
As a precondition of the agreement, in 2018, China had Pope Francis demote Bishop Vincent Guo Xijin from his position as Mindong diocese's principal bishop, and replace him with a government-appointed bishop, who had been excommunicated. Then-auxiliary bishop, Guo faced restrictions in his pastoral ministry and was evicted from his home, forcing him to sleep on the street in wintertime. Later, the government cut off his utilities and arrested and tortured some of his priests. In 2020, he resigned. His whereabouts are unknown.
CODA
Apropos of nothing, here's a crackling, complex, bruiser of a song — "The Czar" — from the Mastodon vaults. It . . . gets loud. Enjoy.
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