May 23, 2018 2 min read

After reading Dave Ball’s exposition of the Trumpian party line, I scratch my head wondering where he gets his information. He almost never cites any sources, cites them incorrectly or invents something out of thin air.

To take Sunday’s (May 20) piece as a case in point, I ask him to treat us with some examples of Democrats who advocate “repealing the Second Amendment.” This is pure delusion, modeled after Trump’s own playbook.

Ball’s comments on the budget, tax cuts, etc., are irresponsible nonsense. Google is not hard to use and I spend quite a bit of time there. The Congressional Budget Office did NOT report a $190 billion federal budget surplus, “the largest surplus in history.” (This sounds like Trump’s claim that his inaugural crowd was the largest ever seen.) Take a look at Table S-1 of the actual budget: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/budget-fy2019.pdf

There, you’ll find the following information, nonfictional, nonfake. The actual deficit for 2017 was $665 billion. The projected deficit for 2018 is $873 billion; for 2019 it’s $984 billion; for 2020 it’s $987 billion, and it’s so depressing I won’t go any further. Keep in mind, too, that much of this debt and interest is owed to Arabs and Chinese. So if Trump and congressional Republicans want to address international payment imbalances, this would be a good place to start.

If Dave Ball is the O-R’s designated conservative spokesman, you could do better.

Bill McDonald

Washington