Thanks for your civil, serious response. It is a little light on details but then Trump seems always unspecific about the plans. Still, thanks for a civil response.
Two numbers for the year 2015, the last full year of federal budgeting I could quickly find. The federal deficit was $18 trillion. Gross federal revenue was $3.2 trillion.
Trump says in 8 years he will eliminate the deficit.
That would be like a person making $40,000 per year paying off a $225,000 mortgage in 8 years. That is not plausible - unless the person has large assets he can unload.
Of course, the federal government, as Trump says, does have huge assets. One aircraft carrier might fetch six billion dollars on the open market but I assume Trump would not sell one to the likely high bidder, Red China.
What about the federal governments huge land and energy resources? There's potential there but the sales would need Congressional approval.
I'm doubtful Congress, or the American public, would stand for Alaska and its energy resources being purchased on the open market by Russia, China, or Saudi Arabia.
Trump could limit bids to federal land and energy to just American companies he trusts and likes but if taken off the international market the assets would generate lower bids and less revenue. In other words, a fire sale to the Goldman Sachs and others like them.
I'm sympathetic to cutting the federal government down to size. In fact, that is the only thing I can imagine reversing our death spiral. But Trump talking about it will not do it; especially when he talks just as often about expanding the federal government's responsibilities to include paying for all health care and "great communities."
I conclude Trump has no workable plan to reduce the role or expense of the federal government.
“The federal deficit was $18 trillion.”
Self correction. The national debt was $18 trillion. National debt. Just wasn’t thinking.
Trump has never said that he wants Government funded healthcare for all, although that has been misreported frequently. Trump’s healthcare plan is private insurance with competition across State lines.
Veterans would be able to use the same doctors and hospitals as everyone else, not just VA facilities. Trump said that he supports a saftey net so that the indigent and those with preexisting conditions are not left without any care.
As a physician I know that America used to take care of the indigent with charity care by physicians and hospitals, all picking up part of the care. Hillary Clinton destroyed the charity system by polarizing insurers and hospitals in her attempt to create a Government Healthcare system. Within 5 years all the city/charity hospitals began to close creating a desert of care for the indigent and those with preexisting conditions.
Charity care is now provided much less well and more expensively by Medicaid. Donald Trump has said that those patients will continue to be cared for but more efficiently. That is what people are falsely calling single payer health care. Trump has contributed to the confusion by everyone will have Health Care. Trump means that no one is left to die on the street. They aren’t now and he is reassuring that they will not be after Obama care is dismantled. He has categorically stated that the vast majority will have private healthcare that they direct. He is in favor of HSA. There will be a second system for the indigent.
https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions/healthcare-reform
http://www.ontheissues.org/2016/Donald_Trump_Health_Care.htm