One of Donald Trump’s famous catch phrases during his campaign has been “Under Budget and Ahead of Schedule”, in reference to the many construction jobs he has completed while meeting these goals.
Trump used his “Under Budget, Ahead of Schedule” motto and applied it to how the United States government should be functioning, instead of always exceeding it’s budget while failing to produce. If campaign spending numbers versus actual results are any indicator of how Donald Trump will manage spending when is president, I’d say we are about to experience the leanest federal budgets in our nation’s history.
Reuters has estimated that Donald Trump’s votes came at a cost of only $4.57 a piece, while Hillary was spending roughly twice that number at $8.80 per vote. Remember though, these numbers are only based off of what the Trump and Clinton campaigns actually raised themselves, it does not include Super PACs or other organizations that spent massive amounts of funds on advertising, mostly in support of Hillary Clinton. I’d wager that if the Super PAC’s spending was added to the equation, Clinton’s campaign is probably closer to spending 3 times as much money per vote than Donald Trump.
Overall, it is reported that Hillary Clinton’s campaign raised over $520 million on their own compared to $270 million for Trump, whose donations broke the record earlier this year for the number of small donors contributing to a presidential campaign.
Relying heavily on an unorthodox mix of social media, unfiltered rhetoric, and a knack for winning free TV time, the New York real estate magnate likely paid less than $5 per vote during his insurgent White House bid, about half what Clinton paid, according to a Reuters analysis of campaign finance records and voting data. Those figures assume the candidates spent all the funds they raised.
Trump’s cost-effective win has upended prevailing concepts about the influence of money in American politics and raised the question of whether a lean, media-savvy campaign can become the new model for winning office in the United States.
The former secretary of state stuck to the more traditional campaigning model of launching expensive television ads and funding hundreds of staffers who fanned across the country to work to increase voter turnout on Election Day.
She spent more than $237 million on television ads and more than $42 million on hundreds of staffers.
She also benefited from spending by the Super PACs supporting her candidacy, which are allowed to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money but cannot coordinate directly with the campaign. More than a dozen people, including hedge fund magnate Donald Sussman and global financier George Soros, wrote multi-million checks to Priorities USA, the primary PAC supporting her campaign, according to filings.
America’s national debt has more than doubled under Barack Obama, which will end at around 20 Trillion dollars by the time he leaves office. If Hillary Clinton was elected she would likely continue, or accelerate, government spending that would further drive our country in debt.
Thankfully, Donald Trump has proven that he delivers on his “Under Budget, Ahead of Schedule” motto, not just during the primaries, but now in the presidential election as well. Next year, we will find out just how much Trump can reduce government spending and waste, perhaps delivering an actual balanced budget for the first time in decades.
Like Trump says, “Wouldn’t it be nice if our government were run like that?”
