ANALYSIS — President-elect Donald Trump and the spending-skeptical House may be on a path that could end in a collision over federal spending. Just consider his pricey idea of the U.S. purchasing Greenland.
A group of conservative House Republicans last month demanded deep spending cuts as Congress struggled to pass an extension of government funding as a shutdown deadline approached. They have not dropped those demands, with some even vowing to break with Trump should he try to increase spending.
Trump did just that during his first term, with the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget finding that “the government accumulated $7.8 trillion of gross federal debt while President Trump was in office.” Now, he’s talking about seizing and operating the busy Panama Canal and turning Greenland and Canada into U.S. states. Buying Greenland could cost up to $1.7 trillion, Arctic Institute analysts calculated in 2019, when Trump first floated such an acquisition.
