Wall of debt

No promise catapulted Donald Trump to the top of the Republican presidential field with greater velocity than his pledge, at rally after rally, to build a “big, beautiful wall” along the United States’ southern border — “and make Mexico pay for it.” Excise that last finger-in-the-face clause, which was often accompanied by “believe me” or “mark my words,” and the promise wouldn’t have garnered anything close to the swells of applause it did from crowds inherently allergic to most new government spending.

Now Trump and congressional Republicans have done exactly that, outlining plans to make American taxpayers foot the tremendously expensive bill for a project that would wastefully militarize the entirety of a 2,000-mile stretch at a time when the flow of undocumented immigration is actually going from north to south.

Of course, they add a yuge asterisk: Mexico will reimburse U.S. taxpayers after construction begins, maybe after it finishes.

And if you believe that, we’ve got a border wall to sell you.

By Trump’s low-ball estimate, creating the massive barrier along one of the world’s most productive crossings, where well over a half-trillion in goods are exchanged annually, will cost $8 billion to $12 billion. Honest independent estimates put it as high as $40 billion.

Pile this bill atop the President-elect’s pricey promise to ratchet up immigration enforcement inside America’s borders.

And his plans to invest hundreds of billions more in the U.S. military.

And his Twitter pledge to “greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability,” another multi-hundred-billion-dollar commitment.

And his vow, currently being tested, that “there will be no cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.”

And his pitch (a worthy one) to gin up a trillion dollars in new infrastructure investments.

And his plans to deliver a tax cut that would slash revenues by a hard-to-fathom 4% of the nation’s gross domestic product — nearly twice the size of Ronald Reagan’s and George W. Bush’s massive revenue reductions.

What spending cuts Trump has fuzzily proposed would deliver roughly $740 billion, nowhere near enough to compensate for the binge.

The national debt more than doubled under Bush and nearly doubled again under Obama. America cannot afford to sit back and wait to see what happens under the self-proclaimed “king of debt.”