Remember when President Trump was a first-time candidate and he said that if he were elected, he would get Mexico to pay for the border wall?

Well, that didn’t happen.

And remember when Trump was running again in 2024 and he said that he would stop inflation, have a healthcare plan in two weeks, release his taxes, bring down the price of gas, and end wars?

Well, that didn’t happen either.

And do you recall that after President Trump knocked down the East Wing of the White House without Congressional approval, people got upset? He said that his ballroom would be paid for with private funds and not any taxpayer money.

Well, a funny thing about that….

Senate Republicans are proposing adding a billion taxpayer dollars to an immigration bill to pay for security for the ballroom.

I’m beginning to think that you can’t trust the president to stick to his word.

These billion dollars are buried in a 70-billion-dollar spending package that Senate Republicans proposed for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol. It’s to finance these groups through the end of President Trump’s term.

Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley is the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee. He claims that the Department of Homeland Security has more than 100 billion dollars that haven’t been spent from the so-called Big Beautiful Bill.

Remember when Republicans said they were for fiscal responsibility?

Well, that is quickly becoming nothing but a distant memory.

Say what you will about Donald Trump, you have to admit he’s a hell of a salesman, but he’s not so good at following through after he’s made the sale.

When you count the Trump corporations and their subsidiaries, our president has filed for bankruptcy six times.

And while you might think it would be impossible to bankrupt a casino, our beloved commander-in-chief found a way to do it.

I worry that he may be on the verge of accomplishing his biggest bankruptcy yet, bankrupting the United States of America.

Remember when Donald Trump promised in 2016 that he would erase the nineteen trillion-dollar national debt in eight years?

How’s that working out?

In the last ten years, our national debt has more than doubled to thirty-nine trillion dollars. And while you can’t pin that all on Trump, he was in charge for six of those ten years. And say what you will about Joe Biden, he never made such an outlandish claim.

In the first 9 months of President Trump’s second term, the national debt has increased by 1.8 trillion dollars. And that’s before you add in the cost of the war and a slowing economy caused by a depleted immigrant work force, rising gas prices, and other goods transported through the Strait of Hormuz.

Over the years, I have found the response I get when I ask traditional Republicans and the MAGA Republicans about Donald Trump to be very interesting.

The traditional Republicans are more likely to say, “I don’t care for his rhetoric, but I like his policies.” When I ask them if it’s the deficits, the erasing African Americans from government websites, or the tariffs and inflation, they like the best, they tend to skirt the issue.

When I ask the MAGA Republicans the same thing, they will more than likely regurgitate one of Trump’s slogans or attack Biden. Pressing them on specific issues is useless.

Cuts are being made in programs that benefit the poor and the working class. Yet somehow the Senate Republicans can find trillions of dollars for a poorly thought-out war, and a billion dollars for a ballroom that the people who are paying for it will never use.

Remember how constant warfare, overspending, narcissistic leadership, and inflation led to the fall of the Roman Empire?

Or how the war in Afghanistan and a collapsing economy led to the fall of the Soviet Union?

We must never forget the expression that those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

I don’t think it’s too late to get America back on the right path. But if we don’t get our fiscal house in order, rebuild our connections with our allies, and get out of unwinnable wars, I worry that the America I grew up in will soon be nothing more than a faded memory.

Tom Becka is a long time Nebraska broadcaster who for over 30 years has been covering Omaha and Midwest issues on both radio and TV. He has been a guest on numerous national cable and news shows, filled in for nationally syndicated talk radio programs and Talkers Magazine has recognized him as one of the Top 100 talk show hosts in the country 10 times. Never afraid to ruffle some feathers, his ‘Becka’s Beat’ commentaries can be found online on Youtube and other digital platforms.

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