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Daily Mail
19 hours ago
- Business
- Daily Mail
Savings, shares, houses and inheritance... this is how Rachel Reeves plans to mount a series of damaging tax raids on Middle England: DANIEL HANNAN
We are reduced to eating the seed corn. There is no other way to describe hiking taxes when they are already at a 70-year high, when the economy is flatlining and when the Government is adding more than £100 billion a year to our national debt. Raising taxes even further is an act of desperation. It is a way for ministers to get their hands on a chunk of revenue at the expense of maiming the private sector and, in due course, getting less revenue while impoverishing ordinary workers.
The Sun
3 days ago
- Automotive
- The Sun
Donald Trump slams ‘big-time drug addict' Elon Musk as toxic feud intensifies
DONALD Trump called Elon Musk a 'big-time drug addict' as his spat with the world's richest man intensified. The US President is said to have blasted his billionaire ex-backer as reliant on ketamine in phone calls. 2 It came after the Tesla billionaire linked Mr Trump to paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Their feud went public on Thursday night as both men used their own social media platforms — X and Truth Social — to insult each other. Mr Musk, 53, turned on the US leader, calling his Congressional spending bill a 'disgusting abomination' on Wednesday. The President, 78, has called it his 'big, beautiful bill', but Mr Musk believes it will increase national debt by an unsustainable amount. It triggered the ugly public bust-up, with Musk calling for Trump to be impeached and accusing him of being a close associate of Epstein. Yesterday, Mr Musk deleted the post, which was seen hundreds of millions of times. The Washington Post reported Mr Trump used private calls to urge his allies not to pour fuel on the fire and told Vice President JD Vance to be cautious. But the President, whose campaign took £250million from Mr Musk, is also said to have become weary with the tycoon's alleged drug use. He called Mr Musk an 'addict' in the calls and claimed he 'lost his mind' after leaving the administration. The businessman previously admitted using ketamine, but it is alleged he became so hooked last year it affected his kidneys. Trump insists Elon Musk is lashing out at 'big beautiful bill' for personal reason as he admits he's 'disappointed' in Tesla boss Mr Musk officially left the government last week but said he would remain as a 'friend and adviser' to Mr Trump. The President last night said he had 'no intention' of speaking to Mr Musk, adding: 'I think it's a very bad thing because he's very disrespectful'.
The Guardian
3 days ago
- Business
- The Guardian
Trump bill set to add trillions to US debt pile – can America stop it climbing?
In this febrile political era, few issues command stronger bipartisan support than the need for fiscal responsibility. Barack Obama and Donald Trump committed to curtail the US national debt on their respective roads to the White House. And yet, no matter the party, Americans have been able to count on one thing above most: the national debt will keep climbing. And here we are again. With Trump's 'big, beautiful bill' threatening to add once more to the US's huge debts, several Republican senators are threatening to block his current spending plans, with Rand Paul of Kentucky among those highly critical. Departing the White House, Elon Musk, the world's richest man, branded the bill a 'disgusting abomination'. But this administration is not alone. For decades, economists have expressed concern about US debt. Politicians have repeatedly pledged to tackle it. All the while, the pile continued to swell. Back in 2008, when Obama declared on the campaign trail it was high time Washington started 'taking responsibility for every dime that it spends', it stood at about $14.46tn. Back in 2015, when Trump promised on the trail to 'bring it down big league and quickly,' it stood at about $24.07tn. Last year, it rose to $35.46tn. On Wall Street, concern has been mounting to the brink of panic. Calling on Trump to reduce the deficit – the gap between what the US federal government spends and the money it raises, mainly via taxes – the billionaire investor Ray Dalio warned in March of a crisis within three years. 'I can't tell you exactly when it'll come,' he told Bloomberg. 'It's like the heart attack.' Trump appears to have paid little attention. While he dispatched the billionaire industrialist Musk to wield the axe across the federal government in the name of efficiency, Trump also pushed for sweeping tax cuts that impartial analysts estimate will add trillions of dollars to the debt pile. The anxiety stepped up a gear last month, when the ratings agency Moody's stripped the US of its last major top-tier credit rating, and cited the size of the debt pile now – and how large it expects it will grow. 'Successive US administrations and Congress have failed to agree on measures to reverse the trend of large annual fiscal deficits and growing interest costs,' said Moody's, predicting that 'current fiscal proposals under consideration' would not lessen spending or reduce deficits. 'Over the next decade, we expect larger deficits as entitlement spending rises while government revenue remains broadly flat.' There is technically a cap – known as the debt ceiling, or limit – on what the federal government can borrow. The first such broad limit, introduced in 1939, was set at a mere $45bn. Time and again, the US treasury department has been forced to ask Congress for the ceiling to be lifted, or suspended. This process has repeatedly sparked legislative battles on Capitol Hill in recent years, drawing in unrelated issues as the US drifted towards default on its debts, and prompting questions over the reliability of US debt as an investment – and calls for the limit to be scrapped altogether. Sign up to Business Today Get set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning after newsletter promotion Explaining its downgrade last month, Moody's noted that, as US deficits and debt have swollen, interest rates have risen, and interest payments on US government debt have increased markedly. The ratings agency expects the federal debt burden, equivalent to 98% of US gross domestic product (GDP) last year, to rise to 134% of GDP by 2035. 'Talk is cheap. People can say a lot of things,' said Owen Zidar, professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University. 'It's easier to see what the policies have actually been.' When faced with a choice between prioritizing deficit reduction or an expensive policy, such as Obama's widening of health insurance coverage, 'it's not unreasonable to prioritize health insurance coverage', Zidar suggested. 'The key thing is to avoid big mistakes that are hard to reverse.' The Clinton administration made some 'hard choices' about where, and where not, to spend, he said, adding that tax cuts and the Iraq war under the Bush administration in early noughties were 'a big part of why we have debt and deficit problems today'. Presidents have historically managed to reassure investors, up to a point, that they shared their concern. 'If we stay on the current path', Obama said during a debt ceiling battle in 2011, 'our growing debt could cost us jobs and do serious damage to the economy.' But the volatility of Trump, who called himself the 'king of debt' and once even mooted only paying back half during his first run for the presidency, has added a layer of doubt. 'The Debt Limit should be entirely scrapped to prevent an Economic catastrophe,' he wrote on Truth Social, his social network, this week. 'An erratic administration that generates a lot of uncertainty and calls into question things that have been true for most of the western world, that is a frightening prospect when the fiscal fundamentals aren't as good as they have always been,' said Zidar.
Fox News
4 days ago
- Business
- Fox News
FLASHBACK: Trump ran on being 'King of Debt' in 2016, bragged he could eliminate national debt in 8 years
When Donald Trump ran for president for the first time, he campaigned on reducing the national debt, referring to himself at the time as "the king of debt" and telling voters he would pay off the nation's multi-trillion-dollar debt in 8 years. "I'm the king of debt. I'm great with debt. Nobody knows debt better than me," Trump said during an interview with CBS's Norah O'Donnell in the lead up to the 2016 election. "I've made a fortune by using debt, and if things don't work out I renegotiate the debt. I mean, that's a smart thing, not a stupid thing." "We've got to get rid of the $19 trillion in debt," Trump said a few months prior on the campaign trail during an interview with The Washington Post. When asked how long it would take, Trump responded: "I would say over a period of eight years … The power is trade. Our deals are so bad." The nation's ever-rising debt is once again a focus for Trump, as GOP defectors over his "big, beautiful bill," have largely staked their concerns around arguments that the Republican Party's new spending package will increase the national debt and deficit too much, with the Congressional Budget Office estimating it will add roughly $3 trillion over the next decade. The debt currently stands at more than $36.2 trillion according to Fox Business' U.S. National Debt Tracker. Elon Musk, who has cemented his stance in recent days against the Trump-endorsed spending package – leading to a highly-publicized feud between the two leaders – has argued that bill "undermines" the work he did while leading the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) because it does not cut spending enough. "This immense level of overspending will drive America into debt slavery!" Musk declared early on Wednesday in a post on X, shortly after he called the bill a "disgusting abomination." Shortly thereafter, Musk referenced an X post from GOP Utah Sen. Mike Lee, which argued that "the accrued interest on the national debt now exceeds $1 trillion a year." This is more than the country spends on defense annually, Lee's post added. "And yet Congress continues to add to the debt at an astounding rate of $2 trillion per year—with our national debt growing faster than our economy." In another X post from Musk, in the lead up to his feud with Trump this week, he succinctly described the U.S.'s $36.2 trillion debt as "scary." Even before the highly publicized feud between Musk and Trump over the contentious GOP spending package, Musk called the rising national debt "terrifying" and lamented "America is headed for de facto bankruptcy very fast." "President Trump is the first president in modern history to seriously tackle the waste, fraud, and abuse in our bloated government. He has already trimmed billions in astonishingly mindless government spending across the administration, and now he is spearheading The One, Big, Beautiful Bill – which will be the largest deficit reduction in decades," White House spokesman Kush Desai said to Fox News Digital in a statement Friday afternoon.
Fox News
4 days ago
- Politics
- Fox News
Could A Very Public Spat Blow Up The Big, Beautiful Bill?
President Donald Trump has been pushing the 'Big, Beautiful Bill,' which could add an estimated two trillion dollars to our national debt. However, former 'Godfather' of DOGE, Elon Musk, went on X on Thursday, slamming the legislation. FOX News Sunday Anchor Shannon Bream joins to discuss the drama surrounding the budget bill, as well as President Trump's proposed travel ban and the war in Ukraine. Artificial intelligence has become a popular and valuable tool for many students. However, many teachers say the technology is being abused, allowing them to cheat and have models do their work for them. Steven Cicciarelli, a Lecturer of English at Saint Peter's University, joins The Rundown to share his firsthand experiences in the classroom and discuss how students are using AI to cheat, as well as what educators are doing to combat it. Plus, commentary from FOX News Legal Analyst, Gregg Jarrett Learn more about your ad choices. Visit
