The problem is a result of cumulative decades of holes blown in the budget. Seems there is an obvious solution. Stop giving tax breaks to hoarded wealth.
Nothing will remove the debt in short order, it will likely take similar decades to reverse.
Bush got rid of the surplus before the war with his tax cut. The GOP message was that the government shouldn't run a surplus- that means that we're collecting too many taxes.
And then we went to war(s) that blew additional multi-trillion dollar holes in the budget.
Historically speaking, the biggest deficit increases outside of huge external events (9/11, 2007 crash, Covid) always occur when there's a Republican President plus a Republican Congress.
This due to two dovetailing political innovations:
"Two Santa Claus Theory" where Republicans, faced with the Democratic "Santa Claus" strategy of delivering popular social spending programs, explicitly stopped balancing tax cuts with spending reduction, effectively becoming the "second Santa Claus" of "free" tax cuts whose real costs don't become apparent until long after they have been passed.
"Starve the Beast", where the eventual crippling consequences of unfunded tax cuts forces a steady degradation in popular government programs, removing the political cost of scrapping them and allowing them to frame the lowered quality of services offered as intrinsic to government itself, rather than an intentional outcome of the first theory.
The two have been shockingly effective together. The emphasis on messaging that the Republicans are the party of cutting programs and cutting spending made massive spending effectively "free" politically until fairly recently, as the actual consequences of that spending would later be attributed to either democratic programs or the vague concept of government malfunction, never the politicians who actually spent the money.
The time period does not matter. It's policy that matters.
The only significant rising costs we have seen: Medical welfare and War.
The only significant cuts to Revenue: Tax cuts
Bush's 2001 tax cuts were extremely short-sighted. I don't forgive them for refusing to consider that the surpluses of 1999/2000 were temporary.
But forcing Obama to sign off on making them permanent? Trump's pair of cuts in the face of massive debt? Just proves the GOP to be the most fiscally irresponsible group of ghouls in our nation's history.
Yes, because their interest is in meeting the demand of the people who bribe them. And the incredibly wealthy hoarders with mental illness are the ones cutting the bribes.
Cutting taxes while splurging heats the economy and makes it look like they are good for the economy, even better mess is then left in a Democrats hands.
Their plan is to engineer a fiscal emergency so they have an excuse to cut government programs and social spending. For example, they have had their eye on social security for a long time, but it is popular, and without a "emergency" it would be a blood bath in the voting booth, if they cut it.
Republicans will use any excuse to cut taxes. To quote Obama, a meteor could be hurtling toward the earth and the Republican solution would be to cut taxes.
Reminds me of how trump said they needed to cut a bunch of services to save on money, only to go on to then blow the equivalent value of those services on a daily basis in a war with Iran.
Kinda shows that the problem is the Republican party's attitude towards spending, rather than just trump.
Even discounting the war spending, GW's and the Republicans' tax cuts blew up the surplus, adding roughly $1.6 trillion to the national debt over ten years (2001-2011).
Make it a point to say "for certain people in the US the 90s were peaceful" lol.
Because that just kinda ignores how much war actually went on in the 90's. I mean, the US was directly involved in the Gulf war, Somalia, and a lot of other regions we were launching bombs.
Well thank god we never repeated the mistake of blowing up economic recovery by electing a Republican who goes to war in the Middle East on shaky justification, right?
The surplus was ultimately the result of the 93 budget passed by the Democratic trifecta before they lost control of Congress in the elections the following year, which included tax increases. Those tax increases were necessary to get the budget surpluses by 98. Republicans have spent the last 30 years reversing those and digging a us into an inescapable fiscal hole.
Yeah, he gave them everything they wanted and they still hated him for it. Newt Gingrich was very big on widening the partisan divide for whatever reason and the legacy sticks with us to this day.
clinton (and credit to G Bush sr for beginning the work) did the hard thing of staying the course with military spending draw down. (we were at peace post cold war... was no point to the bloated military spending) we got total DoD spend down to like 300-350 billion. and it was painful, and people hated clinton for base closings. shitty fly over states and nowhere parts of the country with nothing but miltary pork were fighting BRAC commissions hard.
clinton also raised taxes a tiny bit. like 1% to the income tax, and 1-2% on the corporate tax rate. and.... as we now have. 40ish years of proof. broad economic policy... giving breaks to working class. infrastructure investment. ...broadens the overall tax base. (vs bullshit trickle down economics which kills tax revenue and never leads to any meaningful job creation/tax expansion)
we currently are at DoD spend of 1 trillion + total war machine spending is 1.6 ish trillion (DoD, vet affairs, Dept of Energy nuke aspects, NSA/CIA budget. --if you consider DHS/ICE "national security" it pushes us closer to 2 trillion. but... there's also all the slush and bribes and bullshit spending we give israel or whatnot)
Bush jr, Trump 1st term. massive massive tax cuts for corporations, and elimination of certain tax elements for the wealthy. Have left astronomical short falls in revenue.
of the 30+ Trillion in national debt. 25-28 of that is bush/trump tax cuts. 08 financial crash stimulus was a small number of Trillion and Covid stimulus was another small group of Trillions. think 4-6
but if you eliminate crisis spending. republican tax cuts are 90-95% of the debt.
trump has added over 2 trillion... racing toward 3 trillion, in under 2 years. and his big beautiful bill alone is projected to add 8-10 trillion to the debt, and that doesn't account for anything like tariffs (loss to the economy/tax revenue of all the businesses that have died, people laid off) costs to keep Washington DC a shitty national guard occupied area. the ICE gestapo bullshit happened all over the country. Wars in Iran, kidnapping south american leaders. or other dumb fuck policy Trump gets us into.
Yep, budget compromises across the aisle that hit programs that were “pet favorites” of both sides of the aisle.
Then subsequent administration came and blew a hole in it to favor one side of the aisles favored programs, instead of building on that balance.
Democrats always try to get budgets under control. Corrupt grifters and Republicans always blow holes in the budget for the people that cut their bribes. Mamdani had to reorder the budget after a grifter. Clinton had balanced the budget then the idiot Bush went hog wild, then Obama reeled in the excess and was on track to get the budget more and more balanced. Then Trump gave away money to the corrupt people curring bribe checks, the Biden tries to fix it. And now Trump and the republicans are literally destroying everything again in order to shovel more money to the hoarders..
The economy crashed when that happened. A lot of people never talk about that. It ALWAYS crashes when the budget is balanced, just look up the history. Especially look up when the US had 0 debt. It was always just a depression. Most people don't understand that the money printer doesn't have a budget... that's the whole point of printing money. You decide what you need in your economy.
There are steps we as a people could take to balance the budget, but it seems most aren’t ready for that yet. It’s clear our government doesn’t seem to care much about its own citizens. We need more safeguards in place, like being able to vote leaders out when their approval ratings drop too low. What’s happening in America is a disgrace to its people, its ancestors, and those who risked and embraced change to build the nation we have today. We’re not living up to what America is supposed to stand for.
who needs a balanced budget? the US has to take on debt to fix things. it's what you are taking on debt for that matters. tax breaks to the filthy rich aint it boss.
Its because Americans are retarted unfortunately. Their test scores are propped up by foreigners and exchange students 🤣😂🤣 that is a big factor why US is the way it is.
But what if you are being extorted by Voldermort to do his bidding like you did 24 years ago the last time he went in front of Congress talking about WMDs in super-dooper secret trucks, so secret we haven't found them yet?
Yeah - this is the barrier to a balanced budget, right here: There's legitimate debate over the role - and reach - of government. Dems, when elected, pursue their prerogatives by expanding the health and welfare side of gov. There is lots and lots of evidence supporting an ROI, data-based solutions approach to governance. It works!
Republicans, though, don't care about democratic legitimacy. R's follow dems by cutting capital gains taxes and then blame the health and welfare side as "budget busting." And low-info, SM-following people eat up overly-simplistic explanations to complex, collective action problems that taxation and good governance solve. And presto!
A very one-sided debate about how dem programs create deficits while the deficit explodes under R presidents goes completely un-commented upon
The proper solution is, on the contrary, to increase taxes in order to get more money, AND THEN invest this in meaningful domains (healthcare, infrastructure, environment). This will compound into huge gains for the future.
On the contrary, cutting spending means not investing in the future, simply for short-term gains, and then spending much more in the future
"We heard you loud and clear. We're doubling defense spending and cutting taxes to the top brackets so the wealth trickles down to average Americans. Also we cut wasteful programs such as public education and welfare by 90% to further help the American people"
Cut spending everywhere? Our infrastructure has been neglected for decades though. That’s the most depressing part of our debt to GDP ratio. Sitting at 100% wouldnt be the end of the world if we had just finished a sweeping nation wide infrastructure push but the fact the ratio is that high when the unfunded liabilities are also sky high is a gut punch.
What they meant by "cut spending" in the case of infrastructure was:
Donate the infrastructure and the means of maintaining it to private companies owned by the people who lobbied for it.
Allow those private companies to fulfill their fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder profits by inventing new ways to charge the populace for using what used to be freely available.
Bow to those companies' demands to subsidize their costs, bailout their failures, and provide them with even greater tax benefits to thank them for their service.
Ignore the fact that the subsidies, bailouts, and tax savings were spent on dividends and stock buybacks instead of maintaining the infrastructure, and the quality of service is degrading far beyond the original problems they claimed privatization would solve.
Blame the failures on "Big Gubmint", and use some of the profits to push puppets who work for them into government positions where they can divert more control of the nation away from the people and into their own hands where they can sell it for scrap.
Conservatives take the same approach to the nation that a crackhead with a sawzall takes to your catalytic converter.
> Simply raising taxes implies this a solely a revenue issue which is inherently is not.
Why don't we try it as one of the many potential levers that we adjust? Why must it be treated like a black and white issue where you can either raise taxes or reduce spending? Let's start by taxing the top 0.1% and incorporate it as a part of a comprehensive budget balancing plan?
>Edit: hidden post history conservative tries to argue for cutting spending on public assistance programs that keep the poor fed and offers medical support for lower income families. name a more classic duo.
The proper solution is to increase taxes in order to get more money, AND THEN invest this in meaningful domains (healthcare, infrastructure, environment). This will compound into huge gains for the future.
On the contrary, cutting spending means not investing in the future, simply for short-term gains, and then spending much more in the future
Agree fully that it’s more complicated than one lever. However would add that creative the original budget hole was a publicly open strategy by conservatives to force cuts to social service spending.
Then let's not spend a billion on a fucking ballroom. Can we at least start there? How about not outfitting the Qatari bribe jet with another billion? How about the TEN BILLION he's trying to grift from the DOJ as a "settlement" ?
Seriously, Reign in Trumps vanity and corruption and we'll save billions.
Clinton balanced the budget. Obama reduced it. And they did it without touching Medicare, Medicaid or SS.
Meanwhile, by the time he's through, Trump will have contributed more to the debt than anyone. And how have past GOP admins done with the budget? Bush Jr? Reagan?
This isn't a structural problem. This is (mostly) a Trump/GOP problem.
For the record I am 1000% in favor of defict reduction and hated how Biden handled his budgets (the man was fucking awful IMO). Both sides need to get real, but please do not talk about cuts that impact the most vulnerable in our society while the GOP is doing what its doing.
Clinton presided over a massive economic bubble as well as the post-cold war reduction in spending, plus bi-partisan spending cuts from the Republican majority congress of his second term.
So you'd need the Republicans to agree to tax rate increases, the economy to fire off at 9% growth for years, and the Democrats to agree to spending reductions on Medicare and Medicaid.
A billion here a billion there soon you're talking about real money.
But seriously you aren't going to nickle and dime your way out of the deficit let alone the debt, there will have to be both hard cuts to programs people like, increases in taxes across a wide base, and changes in policy that may upset people to kick start growth to start the economy back up again.
Absolutely not. The proper solution is, on the contrary, to increase taxes in order to get more money, AND THEN invest this in meaningful domains (healthcare, infrastructure, environment). This will compound into huge gains for the future.
On the contrary, cutting spending means not investing in the future, simply for short-term gains, and then spending much more in the future
You're wrong. You start with "defense" and subsidies. You then tax the rich and corporations to add to the repayment.
Then you actually use and implement the constitution and ensure attacks to democracy like j6 is persecuted. You do this for 20 years and see what happens.
>The obvious solution is to cut spending...everywhere.
How is that an "obvious solution"? If this was a household budget we would be telling people to reduce their spending and look for additional sources of income.
It’s almost comical. Every administration for the past 49+ years has come in with the idea of cutting their way to a balanced budget, and each come out the other side finding minimal to insignificant fat.
DOGE being only the most recent debacle.
Seems like the options are either carry the weight of compounding tax breaks for hoarded wealth, or have a working government without unsustainable debt.
The proper solution is, on the contrary, to increase taxes in order to get more money, AND THEN invest this in meaningful domains (healthcare, infrastructure, environment). This will compound into huge gains for the future.
On the contrary, cutting spending means not investing in the future, simply for short-term gains, and then spending much more in the future
Can't we just come up with a plan to make money as a people so we can fund the stuff we want? I'm not very high up on the ladder so from my perspective that's just how life works. You make money to fund your programs and what not. I can't just borrow a trillion dollars or whatever and then declare bankruptcy because i'd rather not pay.
Yes, but there will be big economic fallout. I reckon 1 out of 4 jobs is directly related to government spending. That is one reason they don't cut. No one wants to be President when that happens.
The solution is even easier than that. Just pass a balanced budget amendment or a law saying that you can't expand the debt limit beyond a certain point. The rest is up to politicians to figure out how to comply with the law/constitution. This is where elections come into play. If the public decides it would rather raise taxes than cut spending, then they can vote for the Dems. If the public decides that taxes are too high and they want to cut spending, they can vote for the GOP. Currently the parties can lie to the public by making the solutions seems easy (just raise taxes on the rich, cut military spending, or just cut spending in general). This is all fiction. Raising taxes on billionaires and multi-millionaires won't fix the budget deficit (if the politicians would even do that do the donor class). Taxes would have to be raised across all income levels to fix the situation (and shore up Social Security etc). Additionally, cutting funding to NPR isn't going to make a dent either. Spending across the board will need to be curbed, especially defense and the large entitlement programs like SS/Medicare.
The best solution I've heard regarding cutting spending is just to freeze spending at current levels for several years.
In the end it will most likely be a combination of both spending cuts and tax increases (with the bulk of it coming from tax revenue increases)
EDIT: Its a giant sh** sandwich and everyone is going to have to take a bite
Understand the sentiment, in principle it sounds reasonable. However I don’t think it would ever be workable. Government needs to be nimble enough to adjust to situations.
Also, debt limits technically exist, but dont seem to be working as designed.
Why would taxing the rich not solve it? IT would absolutely solve it (or at least go a long way to solving it depending on the taxes imposed) and US even have global taxation, so they cant even leave to country to avoid it.
A Constitutional fix is not even going to fix anything if either parties cannot come to a consensus. That's a pipe dream.
Just like you said, we have decades of budget malfeasance. Remember in the 90s and early 2000s, the "pork" bills where some random house politican would just insert his/her pork projects into bills and it simply just get approved? Anything from a not needed high school stadium video board to some random ass art project to put in the middle of town. So much excess waste was had back in those days and still is today.
Raising taxes is nowhere close to being enough. We would need to hike taxes, significantly reduce government spending, and whittle away at the $42T debt so that interest doesn’t eat us alive.
We’re either going to buckle up and endure a “hard” decade to fix this problem immediately or we will have a century of severe economic hardship
any attempt to stop the rich from hoarding wealth will be undone the moment the next set of politicians roll in. seems like we've been on a cycle for my whole life every decade or so Republicans roll into power, slash taxes for the rich, remove benefits for the poor, spend like drunken sailors with government contracts for their rich pals, and then finally people get sick of it and try democrats who slowly claw back the budget but don't fix everything overnight so we start the cycle again
The U.S. doesn't have a revenue problem, it has an expenditures problem. However, our debt problem is so bad we are going to have to raise taxes while cutting spending or worse...inflate the debt away, which will crush most of America.
Honestly, could probably solve the current situation by enacting universal national healthcare. Going by the numbers we would see the returns within 5-10 yrs.
I love people who say we have don't have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem.
Those are two variables in the same equation.
Meanwhile your insistence on cutting spending allows the trifecta to actually occur- higher taxes, higher spending, and higher inflation.
They will inflate the currency until the debt is manageable, while cutting the real entitlements in the name of austerity, and raising taxes on everyone except the uber wealthy because "the debt is so big we all have to help pay it off."
Meanwhile all the intelligent people just want Bezos and Musk to pay 30% tax or whatever a working person pays for actually working.
Or just cut costs. Or a combo of both. Just taxing the rich isn’t gonna solve anything really bc then politicians will just keep spending more and more. Gotta do cost cutting as well.
We cut taxes in good economic times and blow our chances to make any money to get ahead and at off the debt. It's like deciding to work part-time when you're healthy and able bodied.
directly taxing would cause political issues so realistically it would not work, I think a better solution is to raise taxes while introducing tax breaks for spending money for internal investments
To add to this. The debt was $5 trillion when Clinton left office and the only significant spending changes were tax breaks for wealthy reducing tax revenue requiring borrowing, increased defense spending (doubled then tripled), increased police and prison spending.
America needs 50+ years of Democratic rule like we had from 1932 until 1994 when the US experienced the largest expansion of a middle class in human history. Things started to go down hill with Ronnie Raygun and then Newt Gingrich just steepened the slope.
OR, or or or... We cut spending AND increase taxes! How about that?! Medicare, delete it. Social security? Gone. Military? Cut it in half. Increase taxes on everyone. Then in a few short fifteen years or so, we could be at a surplus :-)
30-40% of it has been issued during the Trump admins....and another less big chuck under Biden admin. The problem has accelerated along with inflation.
The current admin is having a full scale war with no exit plan while over spending by a trillion a year. Inflation is 6%. Conservatively trump will hit 50% of all issued debt.
The thing you are right about is that there is no will to fix it.
That is certainly an obvious solution if you don’t care about actually solving the problem! People who say things like this never seem to actually look at numbers. Seizing the assets of every billionaire in the country wouldn’t pay for a single year of current spending.
You say "cumulative decades" like there are not two periods in time where there are massive outlier spending spikes that can be directly traced to a common source.
Also covid relief to try and keep voters afloat in the same lifestyle they were accustomed to and massive amounts of covid-relief grift (some of which was clawed back under Biden).
Really? Because for as long as Ive been alive the problem is Republicans. They tank the economy, Dems turn around and fix it. Bush Sr was the last Republican administration that didnt dump our economy in the gutter. Even worse now, as displayed in our visit to China that is currently taking place, the US is now number 2. Even WORSE, we isolated ourselves so much that all of our trade partners and Allies are turning to China. We arent going to recover from this betrayal for generations because the world doesnt trust the American people to elect competent leadership. The US is done, the question is, how far will we fall?
The Republikkklan will drive it up another $10+ trillion over the next 3 years and then theyll scream about it as soon as a Dem president gets back into office.
I think if companies take any form of a hand out from the government or state taxes. They should not be allowed to alter prices for a year and have to retain a high percentage of workers. Also have their finances regularly inspected(they may do this one already though)
The last time Congress actually passed a budget was when Clinton was president. Since then, the pass appropriation bills which just extend the last passed budget.
Congress shouldn’t be allowed to pass any legislation u til after the pass a budget which is their constitutional duty.
Well it’s Biden and Hussein obamas fault because Trump said so.
In reality, the current administration is on a spending spree for things nobody asked for. Someone is so damn vain and must have their picture all over the place, tear down the east wing with no plan to have the replacement ready, repaint the reflecting pool for more than what was told with no bid contracts, start a war no one needed and then the wasteful defense spending. We have a spending problem with nothing to replace that. All while dropping the amount the oligarchs in America pay into for Taxes and cutting more holes in the tax system.
Deficits and debt aren't inherently bad things. That depends on what it's being spent on.
Infrastructure, R&D, providing services, deficit spending during a recession? Sure.
Tax cuts for the already rich, unnecessary wars and hardware because the president is a toddler who likes action movies and wants a battleship, golden statues, grifts, golf, and payouts to cronies? No thank you.
In the terrible household budget analogy, a mortgage is (mostly) fine, but an equivalent amount of debt to go on vacation is guaranteed to be bad.
Indeed. Once you accept the notion that they don't stand by or believe in anything and will gladly contradict themselves within minutes, "understanding where they're coming from" becomes pretty simple: they only say or do what benefits them, and their wealthy benefactors, most at any given moment with zero regard for consistency.
Media that pretends that statements by pathological liars are nevertheless worthy of attention, amplification, and of being "balanced" against verifiable truth.
> It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it. When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.
But they do, and it's simpler than you think! It just doesn't sell on political trails very well, so they don't say it.
The consistent platform and actual ideals are: personal and family wealth expansion. And they don't mean families in general, they mean singularly, their family.
>It baffles me how the party that now hates NATO, and ran on “no new wars” … needs an annual defense budget of 1.5 trillion.
Shouldn't baffle anyone, really. They're already showing us what they're doing with these huge budgets. 1) Grift as much of it out and into the pockets themselves and allies as possible, and 2) build an even bigger military to do reprehensible shit like Venezuela, Cuba and Iran.
They haven't given up on Greenland, mark my words. Or Canada for that matter. (I mean, Musk and Theil's families have been publicly involved in movements to try and make this a thing for decades now.) They just had more pressing threats to their power that popped up in the meantime, and they had to back-burner attacking NATO allies until they finish fumbling Iran and the Epstein stuff.
They know it'll take everything the US has got if they think they're gonna eventually stand against the EU, especially now that it's clear that Russia won't be able to hold down the Eastern European front as strongly as it may have once seemed.
>They want the current status quo
What makes you think this? They've very publicly stated over the years that they want the current status quo destroyed, and their current actions show us that they were not lying when they said these things over and over again. They believe that the current world order, both domestically and internationally, is a broken one, and that the age of free democracy and global cooperation needs to die.
This isn't conjecture on my part, I'm just pointing out what the power players driving policy in the White House have been saying publicly for their entire lives. Anyone reading this shouldn't take my word for it - go look up what Elon Musk, Peter Theil, Marc Andreessen, Russle Vought, Stephen Miller, JD Vance, and other main players have said over the years on subjects like democracy, globalism, international cooperation, or macroeconomics. Then consider that these same people have now hollowed out the institutions meant to keep powerful people with insane ideas from being able to enact their nutso plans. Finally, ask yourself what will happen when a much-weakened democratic republic tries to hand their current power over to other elected officials that Americans choose as representatives that will put a stop to what they're doing.
Do we think they'll just bend over and prepare for consequences due to something as silly as a vote? Or do we think they'll rely on their wealth and power to enable them to finally complete their dream of ending free democracy, and try to either prevent or ignore the results of elections going forward? We should all hope for the former and try to make it happen as best we can, but anyone not preparing for the latter is being dangerously naive at best, willfully ignorant at worst.
>It baffles me how the party that now hates NATO, and ran on “no new wars while Democrats are in office"...needs an annual defense budget of 1.5 trillion.
FTFY. Conservatives are awfully hawkish when Republicans start wars.
You need a military budget of 1.5 trillion to ensure they'll do what you want when you direct them on your own population. There's no other reason for such a budget.
That's what actually matters in end, is what the government actually does, relative to the cost being either resources consumed that would otherwise be available to others or impact on individual freedom, and distortions in markets that degrade economic planning. The total debt relative to some criteria, if its higher in some sense, just may indicate a higher difficulty in there being additional things left worth doing more than the cost. But there are so many other aspects, like reserve currency share, or velocity of money (like due to just technical aspects - digital vs paper cash), affecting what is or is not a high of debt its kind of pointless to worry about debt vs more directly caring about the bad things we care about debt for, like inflation, wasteful spending, gov overreach, misappropriation. Having some arbitrary statutory limit on debt is such an imprecise, blunt way to do this.
Exactly, debt is not a bad thing if that debt is incurred on investment. But giving more money to people who already just hoard it and spend very little, in comparison to the amount that would be spent if that money were more evenly distributed, is the same as printing money and immediately taking it out of supply.
The proper solution is to increase taxes in order to get more money, AND THEN invest this in meaningful domains (healthcare, infrastructure, environment). This will compound into huge gains for the future.
On the contrary, cutting spending means not investing in the future, simply for short-term gains, and then spending much more in the future
Trump is definitely setting new records here when it comes to deficit spending and this new pointless war in the middle east is not helping at all. But it’s kinda disingenuous to think Trump is the sole reason the debt is as high as it is right now. The past few administrations have all added to the national debt and the administration that comes after Trump will add to the national debt. Unfortunately the older generations have collectively come to realization that they’ll be long dead when this debt seriously becomes a problem. So they’ve simply stopped caring. It will be Gen Z, Millennials, and Gen Alpha who will pay the price for that 40 trillion. In the form of inflation and likely increased taxes.
Trump’s decisions this past year have certainly accelerated events such as the end of the petrodollar which will certainly make the national debt an issue much sooner than anticipated. But him leaving office doesn’t mean the problem will begin to resolve itself.
Not exactly. Deficits and debt are ok UP TO A POINT. ...but when it begins to exceed GDP and is growing faster than the economy is growing, that is an unsustainable red flag.
...and red flags like that impact borrowing capacity. Ultimately, the credit worthiness is impacted, REGARDLESS of what the money is spent on.
So I agree it's generally ok at low levels - but what we have today is not stable. Cuts on entitlements are absolutely coming along with persistently high inflation.
Austerity isn't the answer. Social Security is underfunded because the US has done little to reduce income inequality or reign in tax avoidance by the rich and corporations. We have a revenue problem rooted in an inequality problem. The richest Americans control vast and unimaginable wealth, but somehow the solution is to gut entitlements (so called because we are fucking entitled to them) after we've been paying to fund our parents' and grandparents' retirements? OK cool; Uncle Sam can cut me a check, with interest, for all the SS taxes I've paid.
I still remember when bush did the tax rebates. Even in middle school I asked my dad why the country would give money back when they owed so much. He said something along the lines of what you said but lemented they should use it for that but they won't.
2: Taxes on the billionaires whose net worth is increasing faster than the national deficit and who are getting rich off of tax cuts and loopholes, and stop spending money on stupid things like multi-trillion-dollar military budgets and $10 billion payouts to the president.
I have no idea how Republicans have fooled the American people to believe that they are better for the economy. There is no data over the last 4 decades that substantiates that claim, the data shows exactly the opposite. Democrat administrations are better for the economy and it is not even close, for every key metric, from job creation, GDP, deficit spending.
Hopefully this second Trump administration finally drives that home. Republicans destroy the economy and run huge deficits, because they always give tax cuts to the rich, that never trickle down.
It is absurd, Elon Musk wealth in 2010 was estimated to be $650M, 16 years later it is $800B+. A similar path for Bezos.
Why Americans continue to support a system that allows such a huge transfer of wealth is beyond me.
Those specific states are ones with relatively low populations overall, and a larger percentage of rural voters (e.g., the Dakotas, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, etc.). So yes, rural voters do have disproportionate electoral power in the US, much to our collective detriment, since consistent majorities of those voters neither understand nor share the priorities of citizens living in the large, modern, multi-ethnic and multi-racial urban areas which actually drive our economic growth and global relevance.
They're not fooled. I live in a +70 Republican area and they gleefully vote for ethnic cleansing, concentration camps, gender policing and forced birth in lieu of financial solvency. The only reason any of them are slightly upset now is because the austerity they demanded on others is finally coming to roost and hitting themselves.
They're all Small Businesses™ that think they have the same clout as multishore corporations.
Prosperity Gospel nonsense. Obviously Musk and Bezos are geniuses that earned everything they have.
(Bezos I think more than Musk or Trump REALLY HAS, I mean I understand horrible worker policies but he's the smartest out of the whole Presidency or cabinet or entire Admin. He knows how to keep his mouth shut and just enjoy his money.)
These people absolutely knew what they put in office. They WILL do it again if offered. They will burn everything down so some Brown people can get eaten by alligators. They will blow their own two feet off and close all the shoe stores if a Black man has shoes.
I don’t disagree, it is a cult of hate, bigotry, misogyny, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia and they are a lost cause. That is the 30% of Americans who say Trump is doing a great job, the economy is great, who live outside objective reality.
But for the remaining 70%, the independents or others that see themselves as more centrists/moderates and whose votes decide election outcomes, those are really who I am speaking about.
Because there's a vicious cycle of GOP getting in office, screwing things up and because many changes take months to years to actually be felt by the public it's a democrat is in office at that moment. Democrat goes in, fixes all the stuff, meanwhile GOP are yelling "the national debt! Fiscal responsibility! They're spending all your tax money on immigrants!" Public get angry and vote a GOP back in to repeat the cycle. Guarantee it's gonna happen after the midterms. Dems could absolutely sweep the GOP but GOP will scream about things being so expensive cause there'll be gas shortages, tariffs, forlorn trade partners, which....is caused from Trump's fuckery. Doesn't matter though cause the American public has the memory of a goldfish and will proceed to blame the Dems that just came into power at that point. Also guarantee there'll be a lot of "Why haven't the Dems absolutely fixed everything" 6 months in despite having maybe a slim majority in Congress and the two other branches of government working against them. Change at the scale we need, which is full systemic change, will take time and consistency, neither of which things Americans are good at. Like, it'll be great if Congress is flipped. Gonna need that same energy in 2028 though in order to ennact any of the sweeping changes many are hoping for.
I'll tell you exactly how they do it: they claim that it takes multiple years for economic changes to have meaningful effects.
This conveniently allows them to take credit for all the gains under Democratic administrations, and push all blame for the failures under Republican administration, onto the Democrats.
And they are dead serious about this, and absolutely refuse to even consider analysis showing that this is not the case.
Because most people are stupid and have a sheep like mentality cultivated through decades of underfunding of the education system as well as daily propaganda from the media.
do you have a good source that shows how democrats are better for the economy across all of these metrics? like maybe in one place? i do not disagree at all, i just want something easy to send to my boomer relatives
The current Republican President of the United States has stated the economy always does better under Democratic administrations. Under his complete control he is proving himself to be 100% correct.
I hope the opposite. Republicans suck, but the economy doens't have problems because of too much government spending; it has problems because of what that spending is focused on.
This is the basic issue: GOP and esp Trump-GOP (which just is GOP now) have driven down taxes on the wealthy and corporations while also siphoning public money to those same people. Like, that’s it … that’s the story with the One Trillion growth in the deficit over the last year. Trump has accelerated the fuck out ‘spending’, but not on the public. It’s money all going to corporations, Trump, Trump’s family, and Trump’s bullshit vanity projects too. The fix here is simple and it’s not one that can be weaponized to cut actual spending in public programs in the future: Raise taxes on the wealthy and stop transferring public money to the same. Literally none of this can happen though as long as the GOP remains in power.
Writing a budget break into the Constitution is not a good idea. It only works as long as the economy grows and there are no sudden emergencies. Example: Germany. The break was brought in by the conservative government as basically a form of austerity that drove severe underfunding in public investments, which was covered up by a booming export economy. Now successive governments need to contort themselves into loop holes to secure the debt they need to find badly needed infrastructure and arms reinvestment. It wasted legislative time and can then be challenged or overturned by the supreme court.
These jags have just rebranded the (objectively terrible) idea of a balanced budget amendment to a “fiscal responsibility” amendment.
They also want to go the constitutional convention route which, in the current political climate, sort of feels like shooting yourself in the dick to stop your foot from bleeding. It’s not a perfect metaphor.
Two things that American politicians take for fact.. 1) can’t raise taxes 2) can’t cut spending. Aside from the cold civil war there is no environment for political bipartisanship. Will take a major economic catastrophe to force change à la Great Depression. Those buying 30 year bonds are betting 5% is worth it on the eventual winner of the struggle for identity of America.
A constitutional fix is a nice idea, but totally ignores current reality. The Federal reserve was the latest institution captured by MAGA, the most corrupt American regime ever to exist. I can only imagine investors in US Treasuries literally have no better option.
Fair point on the political gridlock deficits usually aren’t about economics alone, they’re about what voters will tolerate.But I’d be careful with the no better option take on Treasuries global capital still tends to run to U.S. debt during uncertainty, which says confidence in the system isn’t gone, even with all the political noise.
No. Republicans love to drive up the deficit with tax cuts for the wealthy and war spending then use the same deficit to attack any kind of spending on the common good like education, housing, and health care. We don't need a constitutional fix that would constrain our ability to respond to economic crises; we just need to stop spending trillions on wars and handing out tax breaks to the wealthy.
Word salad to get past limit: a country is not like a family. A country is an ongoing entity that presumably will continue to grow. There’s good debt and bad debt. There are instances where you might want to go deep into deficit spending.
What if we had this: for every percentage over spending, the budget had to be ratified by a state government?
So if the budget is spending 30% more than revenue, it had to be ratified by 30 states.
Or perhaps states representing 30% of population. Or a mix or something.
The point is there is an escape hatch, but it's not controlled by Congress themselves, but the states. Without the states, the budget has to be balanced.
It needs to be HARD to do deficit spending.
It's time to dump Trump. Democrats reduce deficits and improve the economy. Republicans do the opposite. The feckless Rs in Congress are the most irresponsible legislators in my lifetime. A complete dereliction of duty.
I agree. Kevin Warsh has a plan for financial repression. Looks like heavy increases in inflation and a push to back AI to develop industries to grow GDP. Same plan as after WW2.
That Trump wants to control the Fed and lower rates in an inflationary macro environment that's going to inflate the debt away but also send his and everyone else's USD demoniated assets to go in the shitter. And by that I mean he's only capable of looking one step ahead and no further.
By the way, Mamdani made NYC's deficit go to zero recently without compromising social services. Imagine if the government was comprised of actual competent people like him. The US doesn't have to be in this spectacular debt mess.
Another way of looking at it would be to say that NYC is pursuing paths to apportion their money differently than it had been. Some of what was being sent to the state is now being shifted to be spent internally instead.
In reality, the fact that the money was getting paid to a "higher level of government" is pretty irrelevant if we look at it as an apportionment issue. In fact, the US Federal gov being the "highest" level of gov just makes it even less of a factor, since the Fed wouldn't need "permission" from any "higher" levels of government in order to reapportion their funds.
In other words:
NYC - Move some funds from the "send to NY State" bucket to the "Use for internal purposes" bucket.
US - Move some funds from the "Military Bloat" bucket to the "literally anything else" bucket. (Or whatever reallocation makes the most sense, this is just for illustrative purposes)
This is all oversimplified and imaginary of course, I'm just pointing out that people claiming that the NYC situation is exceptional and can't be duplicated or extrapolated are just grasping at straws in order to try and prevent similar movements from cropping up elsewhere.
Tax billionaires into extinction. Cap net worth at 200 million and anything that adds to your net worth past that goes straight to the treasury. If billionaires don't like that, they can leave and the market will flood with people willing to take their place.
At this point, our best option is to balkanize into select regions and let the red states crumble into dust of their own catastrophic mistakes.
We're being controlled by a large portion of extraordinarily stupid, low-population states that consistently vote against everyone's self interest, even their own. It's time to just cut the chaff away and let them rot. They'll realize fairly quickly how much they need blue state economies. Texas and Florida can't support the ENTIRE southern US lmfao
Maybe we should talk about increasing revenue instead? I can think of a few massive corporate/wealthy tax cuts in recent years that blew a hole in the deficit that we can reverse. Also, defense and DHS spending are out of control and need a top to bottom reset.
Oh no it's totally fine as long as a Democrat isn't in charge. That's why the MAGAs aren't talking about it now. Unless one of them would like to prove me wrong.
When the administration is regularly ignoring the constitution and the courts. When the SCOTUS is rewriting constitutional ammendments on the back of a napkin.
What makes anyone think a constitutional fix to the deficit will do anything when the people clearly have stopped caring that the constitution is upheld?
I'm sure we can't wait to all be told how raising taxes is catastrophic and billionaires will leave if we do so.
Nobody is going to suggest killing the economy but paying as we go and radically rethinking the role of the executive in our society is long, long overdue.
Defective thinking plagues a man on the street we send them to an asylum , when it occurs among the wealthiest among us we lap up every word as if it was mothers milk.
Unless we change that way of thinking we're in trouble.
A few billionaires are moving out of my state and loads of millionaires are moving in. If not, my rent would not be so staggeringly high. $120k salaries are the median in my town and it is not SF, LA, NYC Miami or CHI. Mean home prices for a single family home are now $980k. People just need a 401k to be millionairs now. They also get subsidized by my taxes.
Can we get rid of that tax break? Those motherfuckers already got theirs, they can pay the full mortgage price just fine without me handing them money while I am at it.
Its because the deficit never matters until an adult (Democrat) is in charge. Because our populace is incredibly fucking stupid thanks to decades of Republican fuckery in the education system.
The second best solution is reducing military spending
The third best solution is government ownership of industries that have proven efficiency over private ownership. Universal Healthcare would free up a couple trillion a year.
Warren Buffett's solution is pretty good... "pass a law disqualifying all sitting members of Congress from reelection if the annual deficit exceeds 3% of GDP."
I like the idea but the fact that Congress controls the power to make laws, you can't enforce things like that against congress itself, they all just hike spending anyway and would just exempt themselves or repeal it entirely. You would really need a constitutional amendment. Which I would support. But it's a real long shot.
Won't happen for at least 2 years and 8 months. Because if there is one constant guarantee, its that the deficit and national debt only becomes an urgent, critical issue when a certain party doesn't have control of the White House.
This is exactly it. Literally the party that pushes tax breaks to the wealthy class removing and revenue and then starts wars and insane spending always cry when a democrat is in office.
They're victimhood bully's. Like a kid who punches another kid but crys they were kicked when a adult tries to punish them.
Regulatory capture is out of control. The problem is that the foxes are in charge of the henhouse. Corporations have too much influence and nothing is going to change for the better until they are removed from power with the thoroughness with which a surgeon removes a malignant tumor. Whoever wins an election sponsored by the wealthy and represented by billionaire media, the wealthy will win. They use their wealth to buy influence in order to cut their own taxes, grant themselves contracts, and increase their wealth. It's a runaway chain reaction. We need to work outside of bourgeois elections. Our entire government and constitution are set up for consolidation of power by the wealthy. We need radical change. We have few chances to tax the wealthy, and the wealthy who control the government can easily roll the few taxes that hit them. If we do not educate and organize for radical change, radical change will be made for us as the wealthy class turn to police state fascism in order to maintain control as lawlessness and unemployment rise with the uncontrollable rise in inequality.
I agree that the deficit and debt need to be dealt with but I still think a Constitutional Amendment is a bad idea. It just ties the governments hands and forces them to likely focus on austerity (as they will not raise taxes on the wealthy) which will lead to harming of everyone but those towards the top.
While action should be taken, this would be too extreme.
Our marginal tax rate is historically low. Bush / Trump tax cuts fucked over generations by setting up this mess. The interest alone is going to haunt us.
It’s time to tax the wealthy and corporations at the same rate as we taxed people in the 1950s
I don’t usually agree with Warren Buffet but his proposal that every time the deficit reaches a certain % of GDP that everyone in Congress would be ineligible for reelection would be a fun way to provide some accountability for our so called representatives.
Unless something massive changes, I think the best we can hope for are maybe some incremental tax increases to claw back some of the idiotic Bush and Trump tax cuts while hoping inflation and GDP increases chew down the size of the overall debt. And the reality with the current electorate is that any party passing a tax increase is going to get skewered in the next election.
If you want things to change, start voting socialist. Mainstream Democrats don’t have the spines to do anything that the Republicans won’t immediately undo.
I wonder if Elon regrets helping Trump getting back into office...the latter would have Elon possibly going to jail I guess. Seems Elon is ok with the US burning if it means he's safe, for now.
lol, it's a symptom of a far, far greater problem. As long as Republicans continue to be treated as a political party and not as the terrorist organization that it really is, no new lines of text for them to ignore will matter. No laws can protect against treason when allowed to run rampant like this.
The Constitution doesn't matter when the rest of government doesn't uphold it and do their jobs. There is no fix to this aside from getting rid of the people who aren't doing their jobs and putting in people who WILL.
They see the democrats are poised to take over the house and the power of the purse and now they want to start releasing “control/fix the budget” headlines. Where was this article when the last pile of tax cuts were signed into the law?
POTUS is sinking America in debt to benefits himself and billionaires supporters, in addition he's asking for $1billion ballroom where all of them can dance together . Not to mention he wants to take in $10 Billions and eyeing gold at Forth Knox. He can commit any crime while in office and get away with it; Thanks to a corrupt Supreme Court.
And all those that pushed to have people sit out the 2024 election because of a snit-fit over Gaza... who, themselves, claim they influenced enough Democratic voters to stay home in protest (and toss the election to Trump), are the thrice-damned assholes who caused this mess.
We definitely need an overhaul of legal framework to ensure trump is never happens again. Can someone explain how that would stop it though? Especially since gop has broken so many laws and might never face consequences. I remember how little got don't when Biden was in office
It’s not even clear whether a treason conviction would disqualify someone from running for President. Any other charge unambiguously has no effect on eligibility for President.
Yes, it would be a good idea to start building the political movement in favor of fiscal austerity now, so that it can reach a fever pitch once a Democrat is in office and hamstring their agenda. Then once a Republican is back in office, foreign wars and tax cuts are back on the menu, right?
The constitutional fix is to take every trumpist who has committed a crime and put them in prison.
Then the adults can fix it without interference from the cult of the orange rapist felon.
Unfortunately there is little that can be done that's actually constructive with Trump and the GOP in control of Congress. They might get something created and passed but it will be a hugely biased affair in favor of the corporations and special interests they are completely owned by and beholden to.
Honestly who cares who caused it at this point. The interest payments are like $3 billion a day now. Even if you had the perfect president doing literally everything right the math is just cooked, it's like arguing about who maxed the credit card while the interest is eating you alive.
There is no way to fix the budget without 2 things:
Massive increase in taxation, AND
Massive cuts to military, social security, and medicare/medicaid.
Like, seriously, if you cut the entire budget except these three categories, we would still be over budget.
There is no palatable option. Any attempt to cut the budget without massive tax increases will accomplish nothing. Any attempt to raise taxes without cutting social programs will accomplish nothing.
nationalized health care is the oppositie of this, and will result in long-term growth compared to slinging grandma out of her apartment because her meds and SS got cut.
The point they're making is about the physical allocation of funds. Without touching Healthcare and Military spending you're realistically unable to balance the budget. They're simply that much of the spend.
The real solution for healthcare spending is to decrease the cost of healthcare, which would still be a net decrease in healthcare spending.
That is why cutting those things is not a palatable option.
And we're not getting nationalized health care any time soon. Yes, it would solve problems. But no, it's not happening. Yes, you can be angry about it.
Cutting isn't only "not palatable" it is literally going to exacerbate the problem by creating more emergency care and no resources to handle that, personal debt with no way out.
We're not getting nationalized health care because too many people in the US are financially illiterate and think it's a bargain to spend $10K to save $50.
You're lumping SS and Medicare/Medicaid in with the single LARGEST bloat on our deficit. It's like complaining that a party of three people are weighing down an airplane and causing it to not fly when two of those people weight about 120lbs and the third is 740lbs.
A Federal VAT (just like most other similar economies have) on all but a select number of essential items would solve the problem. Good luck with getting that passed until things are truly dire, though.
This is the answer. Democrats don’t like VATs because they are regressive. Republicans don’t like VATs because they raise lots of revenue without being highly noticeable to most citizens. But a VAT would ultimately be best for our country and could even pave the way for something like universal healthcare.
A balanced budget amendment would be a horrible idea unless it contains provisions that both sides would find equally unappealing, such as automatic tax raises and military reductions alongside any other discretionary or entitlement cuts. The amendment should also include a wealth tax provision (it's currently unclear if one would be constitutional, and with this court any ambiguity would result in a decision favoring the wealthy).
Another budget issue that should be made automatic include continuing resolutions in case a budget isn't passed (plus triggering an election).
Sure states can get no more from the government than their citizens and businesses pay in taxes unless it is for free public transportation or public schools or free public healthcare. They must raise wages and taxes until they reach that point end of conversation. They will also tax all businesses for their externalities.
Repeal TCJA, remove the social security cap, and go back to Obama era defense budgets. That'll take care of the majority of the deficit while barely affecting anyone.
Abolish the Federal Reserve. Have the Treasury issue currency at no cost, other than ink and paper. Avoid colossal interest payments. Not really a constitutional "fix", as this is how it really was supposed to work in the first place.
Maybe, just maybe, purposefully neglecting and hindering the IRS to generate revenue in a modern and effective way has negatively our ability to keep our expenditures in balance.
Here's the problem, though... deficit spending is useful when the economy is in the tank, PROVIDED that you are spending that money to help average Americans get through the downturn.
A Constitutional amendment would take away that useful tool.
Does anyone know how the federal budget is created and approved, anyone? These days conservatives blame Biden post Covid; liberals blame Trump …. well, for everything. 90% of posts blame the president of the other side. The congress writes the budget. Of course, the president signs off on it and has great influence but our representatives are primarily responsible for spending. This means, of course, that we are the morons who are hooked on the goodies and never seem to think they have to be paid for …. unless the other team is in power. And our leaders love that we’re schmucks who will vote them back in as long as they vote us the goodies and blame the other side.
The issue with fixing the budget is that would take cuts. The person that makes cuts will seem like the bad guy and no one wants to be in that position
Most of it can be traced back to high end tax cuts on the wealthy and corporations. We had the same GDP to Debt rate right after WW2 we have today. They solved it by taxing the wealthy and such.
The problem is that Americans for some reason think they are all going to be millionaires someday and are just temporarily inconvienenced by being poor.
The reality is both need to be done increasing taxes and decrease spending. I totally agree we need to increase corporate tax but the issue is it won’t be enough.
Tax the upper k shape people, putting caps on health care profits for medicare/medicade, getting out of international conflicts aith our military, and closing tax havens would fix everything fast
How long can the Treasury Bill Standard hold? Moving off the dollar would harm everyone else than it would harm the US, but that won't, cant, be the case forever.
Don't worry, we're only two to three years away from the deficit being the single most important thing on the radar (despite the recession we're almost certainly going to be in). And the Republican party will stop at nothing to make sure we fix the deficit in a few years.
It's time for a regime change. This happened because the current regime is actively, deliberately, maliciously sabotaging the economy and looting the country for personal gain.
I'm not sure what year, or period of time, MAGA refers to when they say they want to make America great "again". I assume it was some time in the past. I think America was great in the early 1960's when the tax rate on high income was around 90%. If that's what MAGA means by making America great again, I am all in!
The Republicans and John Fetterman are too busy gargling Trump’s marbles to do their constitutionally mandated jobs and protect OUR SOVEREIGN WEALTH FUND: The United States Treasury.
They way these people are giving up their values and morals you'd think they know the end date for humanity and their just stuffing their pillow cases with cash and linking up to ensure they survive.
We aren't the priority and we should start talking about why.
How about the minute there is a deficit then executive, judiciary, and legislative branches of the government don’t get paid and lose their healthcare? Same thing when they shut the government down for any length of time for any reason. Watch how quickly things would change then.
In order to balance it you have to both raise taxes (Republicans oppose) or cut spending (Democrats oppose). If what had to happen to make that happen actually happened you might be worse off because you're either paying higher taxes or you're getting less social / transportation / education, etc. spending from the gov't.
Eventually the interest on the debt will get so we are using all taxes to pay for it. At this point we are essentially applying for a new credit card to pay off the old credit card and there is no end in sight. It's do that forever debt exponentially rises, like not $36 trillion in 40 years but $36 trillion in a year, or day, we have no way to run the gov't and pay the interest. So you are left with a choice, and that would be default. That's the only choice.
None of these old people care about that though they'll all be dead when that happens.
What happens if we default is a big one. There's theories, people have written papers on it. The next day looks the same as today i'd imagine. The next weeks and months and years are pretty bleak. Our credit rating tanks, governments around the world also default, the biggest global recession ever happens and whoever is alive during that time is going to have a rough go of it. But maybe we need a giant reset and the generation after that one can thrive. Who knows.
The US pays out 1 trillion in interest payments to service the debt every year.
Imagine what could be done with 1 trillion dollars each year.
That's more than enough to fix our public infrastructure (ie: roads, airports, seaports, etc)... or pay for universal publice health care. And those are just 2 examples.
I'm just having a hard time understanding why we don't just do those things already though.
In theory it sounds like money should be treated as something like a natural resource such as water but in reality it's just a number on a screen. It feels like money for an individual and monies for a government entity are world's apart in relation to each other but are believed to be the same thing.
When the government borrows to fund vital programs and investments that will ultimately prove cash-positive over the long term- that is entirely sensible.
When the government borrows for long periods of time just to “keep the lights on”, as it does with many programs like Medicare- that can become unsustainable if debt continues to accumulate.
Right now the U.S. is on track to spend 0.25 of every federal tax dollar just paying the interest on our debt.. a quarter of all spending.
That can quickly escalate to the point of severe economic downturn and/or major cuts to social programs. Getting ahead of this now rather than kicking the can further down the road will mitigate that pain.
The GOP doesn't care, they've never cared about deficits. Right now, they also know there's a good chance Dems take control of the govt within the next 2.5 years, and saddling Dems with massive debt and deficits prevents them from fixing any of the problems the GOP creates.
To pay off debts, you essentially have two options. Have those responsible play for it, and have somebody else pay for it. The problem is that those most responsible for the debt no longer are working, and can’t be taxed (no income).
The only rational solution to make those responsible pay for their own debt is to remove the expensive services they benefit from (social security and Medicare). Otherwise we’re just passing the buck to the next generation
I am fairly certain Trump is going to declare that our debt was from countries taking advantage of us and that we are not going to pay it. He will frame it as America first and will happily send the entire world into a depression.
The debt is now almost certainly impossible to pay off. No political party will be willing to make the drastic changes needed to reverse this. Trump should have been in prison as soon as he left office the first time.
Democrats are too concerned about offending people, Republicans are too busy stealing from people.
This is what the dipshits voted for. Let the country crash and burn, maybe the educated adults can rebuild the country once more from these unscrupulous con men.
tax rates should aim at the last decade average of spending plus 10%. The goal for the next century should be to pay for government services from investment income.
Congress will wait a few more years to do this. Just in time for them to point their greedy lil finger at the new guard rails when asked about social security
what a dumb article. you dont need a constutional fix, you need to eject this waste of human skin into the sun & get this evil pos out of office, is what you need to do.
And in the same vein, congress shout have to live on the minimum wage for their district. Watch how fast the federal minimum would go up if they had to support their families and coke habits on $7.25/ hr
Ahahahahah, no way a Republican President and Congress would go there when in spite of all their talk about government spending, Republican districts depend on income redistribution from a handful of large liberal metro economies to pay for the social welfare subsidies that keep them in the first world.
Balancing the budget is simple. Road to 135B surplus.
Medicare for all & negotiate (like every other country on the planet), say we'll spend as much as the next highest country(Swis), tax the savings. Tell every near peer we'll cut 2 dollars of defense spending for every dollar they cut(aim for half or more). Treat capital gains as income (before nonsense about property/small business there are already exceptions for this, spare me) and close loan/step up basis loopholes.
Tax the fucking rich. It doesn't need to be a Constitutional revision, it needs to be a political revolution. The Republican party, at this point, needs to just go away completely. The Democrats need to be purged of corporate interests. The court needs to be expanded, and citizens united reversed. Rich people need to start getting locked up when the commit crimes.
America would indeed be headed to ruin, if we only had U.S. debt and deficits. However, the U.S. also has assets that "Fortune" never adds into the equation, because they're a rag that sells lies for rich people who want you to believe that the richest country in the world is poor.
Since the government will never function like a business in the sense of creating and selling great goods and services to make money, shouldn't Mr. Brilliant business man at least be able to balance a budget?
Nah, it can wait. The people currently in control cannot and will not ever create any sort of constitutional amendment that is a positive for the people they're supposed to serve.
We will be firmly in the expense category of their floundering and corrupt attempts at correcting it. Their fix will be to rig it in their favor.
Trump is a criminal who is stealing money from the Treasury, he admires Putin who stole the most from his country and has driven Russia to the point of collapse, but he’s the criminal he admires so America is in for pain
The problem with balanced budget laws is how they dictate spending to be controlled. Usually it's on "discretionary" programs. Not the ones that fund the military, social security, or medicare, but the ones that feed the hungry, help those in need find jobs, infrastructure etc. So balance the budget the same way that people have to in real life: If you spend more than you have, you're still expected to pay the bill. If, at the end of the fiscal year the budget is in deficit, impose a tax on all Americans equal to whatever % of wealth necessary to balance the books. All assets included.
They have no intention of reducing the debt. Their plan is to increase the GDP enough with cheap immigrant labor and AI in hopes of “offsetting” the debt.
Ah… this was the plan all along, increase the debt exponentially while raping all assets, impoverishing the people, then preventing any spending to repair it.
The main function of the deficit, is to express to the change in savings desire of all those that are participating in this currency. There are levels to this that a lot of people don't acknowledge, include the fact that that rich do not value the poor at all and don't see them as a way of fulfilling a way that they can spend their money. This is basically a huge symptom of the fact that we have financialized our economy. It's just numbers and who can mess with them the best while winning over political favors...
The first step is an Audit. Not one by a government agency. They're based. It has to be an independent 3rd party.
I want to look at every line item. Especially including the US Military.
What's budgeted.
How much has been spent.
Flag every line item that's spent more than it's budget.
Flag every line item that's running below it's budgeted amount.
Review the overages and underages.
Then ask every department manager with a budget of over a million dollars to present why they need their budget.
Then look at the Total deficit and divide it against all the budgets over a million dollars to determine each department's cuts.
Then ask the managers to decide/choose where to make the cuts
Encourage managers to talk to and make deals with each other in case one manager can cut more to help spare another manager from cutting something important.
Or…. and stay with me for a second…… why not do nothing about it? Just wait until the Democrats take over the Presidency and Congress, and then stonewall or filibuster every effort to fix the problem while complaining bitterly on Fox News about how Democrats can’t fix the budget/deficit. That’s been the Republican game plan since 2010, and they keep getting people elected.
My feeling on fixing the budget is to tie taxes on the ultra rich based on how much debt we have. It'll be fixed very quickly. 0 debt, low tax.
BTW, 94% tax rate on the ultra rich is what we did post WW2 to fix the debt till the 70s. It clearly works, and the economy did extremely well under it.
A balanced budget amendment to the Constitution has been simmering many conservatives have wanted for years. There are just too many democrats and republicans that scoff at the idea and are too addicted to spending other people’s money
5minArgument | 21 hours ago
The problem is a result of cumulative decades of holes blown in the budget. Seems there is an obvious solution. Stop giving tax breaks to hoarded wealth.
Nothing will remove the debt in short order, it will likely take similar decades to reverse.
Jafar_420 | 21 hours ago
I'm 46 years old and I feel like I will not ever see a balanced budget with no deficit in my lifetime which is pretty ridiculous.
sudoku7 | 21 hours ago
There was a brief period of time in your life where there was a balanced budget. Then never again.
Jafar_420 | 21 hours ago
I think it was the Clinton administration and they actually worked with Republicans right?
FluffTruffet | 21 hours ago
Correct there was a budget surplus during Clinton’s time. Then we went to war after 911 and blew up the debt about 40 trillion in the 20 years after
DrTreeMan | 20 hours ago
Bush got rid of the surplus before the war with his tax cut. The GOP message was that the government shouldn't run a surplus- that means that we're collecting too many taxes.
And then we went to war(s) that blew additional multi-trillion dollar holes in the budget.
Doctor_Shotbottom | 19 hours ago
Republicans are drunken sailors
ChickenDelight | 19 hours ago
Historically speaking, the biggest deficit increases outside of huge external events (9/11, 2007 crash, Covid) always occur when there's a Republican President plus a Republican Congress.
Treadwheel | 18 hours ago
This due to two dovetailing political innovations:
"Two Santa Claus Theory" where Republicans, faced with the Democratic "Santa Claus" strategy of delivering popular social spending programs, explicitly stopped balancing tax cuts with spending reduction, effectively becoming the "second Santa Claus" of "free" tax cuts whose real costs don't become apparent until long after they have been passed.
"Starve the Beast", where the eventual crippling consequences of unfunded tax cuts forces a steady degradation in popular government programs, removing the political cost of scrapping them and allowing them to frame the lowered quality of services offered as intrinsic to government itself, rather than an intentional outcome of the first theory.
The two have been shockingly effective together. The emphasis on messaging that the Republicans are the party of cutting programs and cutting spending made massive spending effectively "free" politically until fairly recently, as the actual consequences of that spending would later be attributed to either democratic programs or the vague concept of government malfunction, never the politicians who actually spent the money.
Hoppers-Body-Double | 18 hours ago
Thank you for sharing those two links. I often share the two santa claus theory so people see it's so damn intentional and not just hypocrisy
MrsMiterSaw | 16 hours ago
The time period does not matter. It's policy that matters.
The only significant rising costs we have seen: Medical welfare and War.
The only significant cuts to Revenue: Tax cuts
Bush's 2001 tax cuts were extremely short-sighted. I don't forgive them for refusing to consider that the surpluses of 1999/2000 were temporary.
But forcing Obama to sign off on making them permanent? Trump's pair of cuts in the face of massive debt? Just proves the GOP to be the most fiscally irresponsible group of ghouls in our nation's history.
amootmarmot | 15 hours ago
Yes, because their interest is in meeting the demand of the people who bribe them. And the incredibly wealthy hoarders with mental illness are the ones cutting the bribes.
Cinderhazed15 | 15 hours ago
Honestly, they are NOT drunken sailors… Drunken sailors have to stop when they run out of money….
Fun_Muscle9399 | 13 hours ago
As a former drunken sailor, I object. I stopped spending when I ran out of money.
kinglouie493 | 10 hours ago
Why are you disparaging drunken sailors?
plughplovery2 | 20 hours ago
Yeah, I remember that - Pay down debt (with a surplus)? Hell No, cut taxes!!
collettdd | 19 hours ago
To the wealthy of course
Important-Agent2584 | 19 hours ago
Republicans blow up the deficit for two reasons:
FluffTruffet | 20 hours ago
Gotcha I was on the younger side during the end of the Clinton era into bush so I don’t remember much of the specifics
snrjames | 17 hours ago
Republicans will use any excuse to cut taxes. To quote Obama, a meteor could be hurtling toward the earth and the Republican solution would be to cut taxes.
MACHOmanJITSU | 19 hours ago
Even sent us refund checks lol
jeromevedder | 18 hours ago
I was even a college student and that $300 really felt like a, “wow, really? All that hype for this?”
TheShindiggleWiggle | 10 hours ago
Reminds me of how trump said they needed to cut a bunch of services to save on money, only to go on to then blow the equivalent value of those services on a daily basis in a war with Iran.
Kinda shows that the problem is the Republican party's attitude towards spending, rather than just trump.
keltron | 20 hours ago
Even discounting the war spending, GW's and the Republicans' tax cuts blew up the surplus, adding roughly $1.6 trillion to the national debt over ten years (2001-2011).
Happy_Confection90 | 17 hours ago
Which is less than Trump added last just year...
keltron | 17 hours ago
Republicans do love running up debt.
Jealous_Slice9371 | 20 hours ago
Prior to Clinton we also had the cold war which blew up the budget. The 90s was peaceful and we had an economic boom.
DrowningKrown | 19 hours ago
Make it a point to say "for certain people in the US the 90s were peaceful" lol.
Because that just kinda ignores how much war actually went on in the 90's. I mean, the US was directly involved in the Gulf war, Somalia, and a lot of other regions we were launching bombs.
The 90's was very much so NOT peaceful
Jealous_Slice9371 | 19 hours ago
That's true lol, I guess you forget that and think a little war is peaceful compared to what we've become accustomed to.
kelpyb1 | 13 hours ago
Well thank god we never repeated the mistake of blowing up economic recovery by electing a Republican who goes to war in the Middle East on shaky justification, right?
FluffTruffet | 9 hours ago
Who would be dumb enough to continue to elect the people who do that? No way we continue to vote republicans in all over the country
CalmCommunication640 | 20 hours ago
The surplus was ultimately the result of the 93 budget passed by the Democratic trifecta before they lost control of Congress in the elections the following year, which included tax increases. Those tax increases were necessary to get the budget surpluses by 98. Republicans have spent the last 30 years reversing those and digging a us into an inescapable fiscal hole.
CalebAsimov | 19 hours ago
Yeah, he gave them everything they wanted and they still hated him for it. Newt Gingrich was very big on widening the partisan divide for whatever reason and the legacy sticks with us to this day.
oneWeek2024 | 19 hours ago
clinton (and credit to G Bush sr for beginning the work) did the hard thing of staying the course with military spending draw down. (we were at peace post cold war... was no point to the bloated military spending) we got total DoD spend down to like 300-350 billion. and it was painful, and people hated clinton for base closings. shitty fly over states and nowhere parts of the country with nothing but miltary pork were fighting BRAC commissions hard.
clinton also raised taxes a tiny bit. like 1% to the income tax, and 1-2% on the corporate tax rate. and.... as we now have. 40ish years of proof. broad economic policy... giving breaks to working class. infrastructure investment. ...broadens the overall tax base. (vs bullshit trickle down economics which kills tax revenue and never leads to any meaningful job creation/tax expansion)
we currently are at DoD spend of 1 trillion + total war machine spending is 1.6 ish trillion (DoD, vet affairs, Dept of Energy nuke aspects, NSA/CIA budget. --if you consider DHS/ICE "national security" it pushes us closer to 2 trillion. but... there's also all the slush and bribes and bullshit spending we give israel or whatnot)
Bush jr, Trump 1st term. massive massive tax cuts for corporations, and elimination of certain tax elements for the wealthy. Have left astronomical short falls in revenue.
of the 30+ Trillion in national debt. 25-28 of that is bush/trump tax cuts. 08 financial crash stimulus was a small number of Trillion and Covid stimulus was another small group of Trillions. think 4-6
but if you eliminate crisis spending. republican tax cuts are 90-95% of the debt.
trump has added over 2 trillion... racing toward 3 trillion, in under 2 years. and his big beautiful bill alone is projected to add 8-10 trillion to the debt, and that doesn't account for anything like tariffs (loss to the economy/tax revenue of all the businesses that have died, people laid off) costs to keep Washington DC a shitty national guard occupied area. the ICE gestapo bullshit happened all over the country. Wars in Iran, kidnapping south american leaders. or other dumb fuck policy Trump gets us into.
sudoku7 | 21 hours ago
Yep, budget compromises across the aisle that hit programs that were “pet favorites” of both sides of the aisle. Then subsequent administration came and blew a hole in it to favor one side of the aisles favored programs, instead of building on that balance.
krombough | 20 hours ago
I'm 43, and I was in my mid teens when it happened. That was the end of that.
amootmarmot | 15 hours ago
Democrats always try to get budgets under control. Corrupt grifters and Republicans always blow holes in the budget for the people that cut their bribes. Mamdani had to reorder the budget after a grifter. Clinton had balanced the budget then the idiot Bush went hog wild, then Obama reeled in the excess and was on track to get the budget more and more balanced. Then Trump gave away money to the corrupt people curring bribe checks, the Biden tries to fix it. And now Trump and the republicans are literally destroying everything again in order to shovel more money to the hoarders..
bradatlarge | 20 hours ago
Yeah but a centrist dem did it. So it doesn’t count
Hamster_Toot | 15 hours ago
Was just going to say this. You have already!
totaleffindickhead | 8 hours ago
Budget surplus is not the same as no debt. There was still almost 6 trillion debt under Clinton.
Richandler | 7 hours ago
The economy crashed when that happened. A lot of people never talk about that. It ALWAYS crashes when the budget is balanced, just look up the history. Especially look up when the US had 0 debt. It was always just a depression. Most people don't understand that the money printer doesn't have a budget... that's the whole point of printing money. You decide what you need in your economy.
DataDude00 | 19 hours ago
Clinton and Gore balanced the budget and had a plan to pay off all US national debt over the course of about a decade
George Bush then won the next election, gave huge tax breaks to the rich and started a multi decade war in the Middle East costing trillions
Richandler | 7 hours ago
Clinton and Gore were suckers.
The US debt does not need to be paid off. Republicans have never said they know this, but they act as if they do.
ivbeentheredonethat | 21 hours ago
Clinton did it. Reminisce..
Stormcloud217 | 20 hours ago
35 now. I remember watching a presidential debate in the early 2000s where 12 year old me thought Bush adding more debt was unsustainable 😂
suchalonelyd4y | 20 hours ago
37 and I miss when debates were focused on economic policies and not "immigrants are eating your dogs"
WildSpud | 17 hours ago
Don't forget the cats! They are tasty too!
Soundo0owave | 20 hours ago
There are steps we as a people could take to balance the budget, but it seems most aren’t ready for that yet. It’s clear our government doesn’t seem to care much about its own citizens. We need more safeguards in place, like being able to vote leaders out when their approval ratings drop too low. What’s happening in America is a disgrace to its people, its ancestors, and those who risked and embraced change to build the nation we have today. We’re not living up to what America is supposed to stand for.
Fenris_uy | 19 hours ago
You don't need a balanced budget, you only need your deficit to be lower than your growth rate.
BonkHits4Jesus | 13 hours ago
Well they don't care about that either.
BitingSatyr | 8 hours ago
Not quite, it needs to be lower than the growth rate minus the total interest expense on debt already incurred
JohnSith | 17 hours ago
You did, under Clinton. In fact, there was a surplus.
Far-Archer-6612 | 19 hours ago
That’s why my retirement plan is a bottle of whiskey, a tube, a river and a revolver
IonPv | 17 hours ago
We had one with Clinton.
I think him giving a mouthful under the Resolute Desk isn't that bad in comparison to Trump raping children.
BlackGuysYeah | 17 hours ago
Democrats pulled it off in the 90's. It's not impossible, you just have to actually give a fuck about the national debt.
GB10VE | 15 hours ago
who needs a balanced budget? the US has to take on debt to fix things. it's what you are taking on debt for that matters. tax breaks to the filthy rich aint it boss.
dratseb | 14 hours ago
We had a balanced budget 30 years ago, didn’t we?
BobaLives01925 | 12 hours ago
I think you will because shit will hit the fan around the time you retire
usctzn069 | 11 hours ago
Clinton balanced the budget, actually left office with a surplus.
justdontrespond | 5 hours ago
It's all made up numbers that go away when the world ends. So you'll probably see it sooner than you think
Ok_Net5303 | 20 hours ago
Also, hey! No military conflict of any kind without congressional approvals!
greenroom628 | 17 hours ago
didn't trump already blow through his 60-day window?
it's like there are neither checks nor balances...
SuckMyBandAids | 12 hours ago
Its because Americans are retarted unfortunately. Their test scores are propped up by foreigners and exchange students 🤣😂🤣 that is a big factor why US is the way it is.
Were_all_dead_anyhow | 17 hours ago
But what if you are being extorted by Voldermort to do his bidding like you did 24 years ago the last time he went in front of Congress talking about WMDs in super-dooper secret trucks, so secret we haven't found them yet?
Good-vs-Perfect | 19 hours ago
Yeah - this is the barrier to a balanced budget, right here: There's legitimate debate over the role - and reach - of government. Dems, when elected, pursue their prerogatives by expanding the health and welfare side of gov. There is lots and lots of evidence supporting an ROI, data-based solutions approach to governance. It works!
Republicans, though, don't care about democratic legitimacy. R's follow dems by cutting capital gains taxes and then blame the health and welfare side as "budget busting." And low-info, SM-following people eat up overly-simplistic explanations to complex, collective action problems that taxation and good governance solve. And presto!
A very one-sided debate about how dem programs create deficits while the deficit explodes under R presidents goes completely un-commented upon
klingma | 21 hours ago
The obvious solution is to cut spending...everywhere. Simply raising taxes implies this a solely a revenue issue which is inherently is not.
We're not taxing our way out of this mess, we'll need some hard cuts too if we to actually get the debt down.
PhroneticReflex | 20 hours ago
You are incorrect. We can absolutely use multiple levers. Ideological proclamations like yours are what got us into this mess.
oulipo | 19 hours ago
Exactly.
The proper solution is, on the contrary, to increase taxes in order to get more money, AND THEN invest this in meaningful domains (healthcare, infrastructure, environment). This will compound into huge gains for the future.
On the contrary, cutting spending means not investing in the future, simply for short-term gains, and then spending much more in the future
I_Enjoy_Beer | 21 hours ago
Lets start with the trillion dollar "defense" budget.
oregon_coastal | 20 hours ago
And start taxing corporations and the rich again.
BoyCubPiglet2 | 20 hours ago
"We heard you loud and clear. We're doubling defense spending and cutting taxes to the top brackets so the wealth trickles down to average Americans. Also we cut wasteful programs such as public education and welfare by 90% to further help the American people"
TheScrote1 | 20 hours ago
Cut spending everywhere? Our infrastructure has been neglected for decades though. That’s the most depressing part of our debt to GDP ratio. Sitting at 100% wouldnt be the end of the world if we had just finished a sweeping nation wide infrastructure push but the fact the ratio is that high when the unfunded liabilities are also sky high is a gut punch.
Umutuku | 11 hours ago
What they meant by "cut spending" in the case of infrastructure was:
Donate the infrastructure and the means of maintaining it to private companies owned by the people who lobbied for it.
Allow those private companies to fulfill their fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder profits by inventing new ways to charge the populace for using what used to be freely available.
Bow to those companies' demands to subsidize their costs, bailout their failures, and provide them with even greater tax benefits to thank them for their service.
Ignore the fact that the subsidies, bailouts, and tax savings were spent on dividends and stock buybacks instead of maintaining the infrastructure, and the quality of service is degrading far beyond the original problems they claimed privatization would solve.
Blame the failures on "Big Gubmint", and use some of the profits to push puppets who work for them into government positions where they can divert more control of the nation away from the people and into their own hands where they can sell it for scrap.
Conservatives take the same approach to the nation that a crackhead with a sawzall takes to your catalytic converter.
RipComfortable7989 | 21 hours ago
> Simply raising taxes implies this a solely a revenue issue which is inherently is not.
Why don't we try it as one of the many potential levers that we adjust? Why must it be treated like a black and white issue where you can either raise taxes or reduce spending? Let's start by taxing the top 0.1% and incorporate it as a part of a comprehensive budget balancing plan?
>Edit: hidden post history conservative tries to argue for cutting spending on public assistance programs that keep the poor fed and offers medical support for lower income families. name a more classic duo.
oulipo | 19 hours ago
Indeed it is.
The proper solution is to increase taxes in order to get more money, AND THEN invest this in meaningful domains (healthcare, infrastructure, environment). This will compound into huge gains for the future.
On the contrary, cutting spending means not investing in the future, simply for short-term gains, and then spending much more in the future
5minArgument | 19 hours ago
Agree fully that it’s more complicated than one lever. However would add that creative the original budget hole was a publicly open strategy by conservatives to force cuts to social service spending.
“Starve the beast”, as they called it.
Purplecstacy187 | 21 hours ago
I would be super interested to know what you think needs cut if this isn’t a revenue issue. Cause it most definitely is a revenue issue.
cheweychewchew | 21 hours ago
Then let's not spend a billion on a fucking ballroom. Can we at least start there? How about not outfitting the Qatari bribe jet with another billion? How about the TEN BILLION he's trying to grift from the DOJ as a "settlement" ?
Seriously, Reign in Trumps vanity and corruption and we'll save billions.
bigmt99 | 20 hours ago
I wish we were talking about billions here
Yes the vanity projects are absurd and need to be stopped yesterday, but this is “cut out avocado toast and Netflix” level of fiscal policy
cheweychewchew | 20 hours ago
Clinton balanced the budget. Obama reduced it. And they did it without touching Medicare, Medicaid or SS.
Meanwhile, by the time he's through, Trump will have contributed more to the debt than anyone. And how have past GOP admins done with the budget? Bush Jr? Reagan?
This isn't a structural problem. This is (mostly) a Trump/GOP problem.
For the record I am 1000% in favor of defict reduction and hated how Biden handled his budgets (the man was fucking awful IMO). Both sides need to get real, but please do not talk about cuts that impact the most vulnerable in our society while the GOP is doing what its doing.
El_Polio_Loco | 18 hours ago
Clinton presided over a massive economic bubble as well as the post-cold war reduction in spending, plus bi-partisan spending cuts from the Republican majority congress of his second term.
So you'd need the Republicans to agree to tax rate increases, the economy to fire off at 9% growth for years, and the Democrats to agree to spending reductions on Medicare and Medicaid.
N0b0me | 17 hours ago
A billion here a billion there soon you're talking about real money.
But seriously you aren't going to nickle and dime your way out of the deficit let alone the debt, there will have to be both hard cuts to programs people like, increases in taxes across a wide base, and changes in policy that may upset people to kick start growth to start the economy back up again.
emp-sup-bry | 21 hours ago
But we do need to tax those that benefit the most from society as part of the solution, don’t we?
Of course there isn’t one answer. We are capable of at least average thought and problem solving, aren’t we?
oulipo | 19 hours ago
Absolutely not. The proper solution is, on the contrary, to increase taxes in order to get more money, AND THEN invest this in meaningful domains (healthcare, infrastructure, environment). This will compound into huge gains for the future.
On the contrary, cutting spending means not investing in the future, simply for short-term gains, and then spending much more in the future
kazamm | 18 hours ago
You're wrong. You start with "defense" and subsidies. You then tax the rich and corporations to add to the repayment.
Then you actually use and implement the constitution and ensure attacks to democracy like j6 is persecuted. You do this for 20 years and see what happens.
Dapper_Engineer | 17 hours ago
>The obvious solution is to cut spending...everywhere.
How is that an "obvious solution"? If this was a household budget we would be telling people to reduce their spending and look for additional sources of income.
5minArgument | 20 hours ago
It’s almost comical. Every administration for the past 49+ years has come in with the idea of cutting their way to a balanced budget, and each come out the other side finding minimal to insignificant fat.
DOGE being only the most recent debacle.
Seems like the options are either carry the weight of compounding tax breaks for hoarded wealth, or have a working government without unsustainable debt.
MephistoHamProducts | 19 hours ago
DOGE wasn't an attempt to "cut fat" or "reduce spending". It was a smash and grab for data.
firejuggler74 | 17 hours ago
It was an attempt to defund Democrats.
firejuggler74 | 17 hours ago
It's because tax cuts are way more popular than spending cuts, for obvious reasons.
HowManyMeeses | 20 hours ago
>We're not taxing our way out of this mess
It would be a good start and is certainly worth trying.
oulipo | 19 hours ago
Exactly.
The proper solution is, on the contrary, to increase taxes in order to get more money, AND THEN invest this in meaningful domains (healthcare, infrastructure, environment). This will compound into huge gains for the future.
On the contrary, cutting spending means not investing in the future, simply for short-term gains, and then spending much more in the future
HistoryFast3207 | 19 hours ago
Can't we just come up with a plan to make money as a people so we can fund the stuff we want? I'm not very high up on the ladder so from my perspective that's just how life works. You make money to fund your programs and what not. I can't just borrow a trillion dollars or whatever and then declare bankruptcy because i'd rather not pay.
HaveAKlondike | 11 hours ago
We need to cut spending and raise taxes. Cutting spending alone will kill jobs and the economy.
Previous_Cattle_5545 | an hour ago
Yes, but there will be big economic fallout. I reckon 1 out of 4 jobs is directly related to government spending. That is one reason they don't cut. No one wants to be President when that happens.
xerces555 | 20 hours ago
The solution is even easier than that. Just pass a balanced budget amendment or a law saying that you can't expand the debt limit beyond a certain point. The rest is up to politicians to figure out how to comply with the law/constitution. This is where elections come into play. If the public decides it would rather raise taxes than cut spending, then they can vote for the Dems. If the public decides that taxes are too high and they want to cut spending, they can vote for the GOP. Currently the parties can lie to the public by making the solutions seems easy (just raise taxes on the rich, cut military spending, or just cut spending in general). This is all fiction. Raising taxes on billionaires and multi-millionaires won't fix the budget deficit (if the politicians would even do that do the donor class). Taxes would have to be raised across all income levels to fix the situation (and shore up Social Security etc). Additionally, cutting funding to NPR isn't going to make a dent either. Spending across the board will need to be curbed, especially defense and the large entitlement programs like SS/Medicare.
The best solution I've heard regarding cutting spending is just to freeze spending at current levels for several years.
In the end it will most likely be a combination of both spending cuts and tax increases (with the bulk of it coming from tax revenue increases)
EDIT: Its a giant sh** sandwich and everyone is going to have to take a bite
5minArgument | 19 hours ago
Understand the sentiment, in principle it sounds reasonable. However I don’t think it would ever be workable. Government needs to be nimble enough to adjust to situations.
Also, debt limits technically exist, but dont seem to be working as designed.
Apoxie | 5 hours ago
Why would taxing the rich not solve it? IT would absolutely solve it (or at least go a long way to solving it depending on the taxes imposed) and US even have global taxation, so they cant even leave to country to avoid it.
JitteryJoes1986 | 20 hours ago
A Constitutional fix is not even going to fix anything if either parties cannot come to a consensus. That's a pipe dream.
Just like you said, we have decades of budget malfeasance. Remember in the 90s and early 2000s, the "pork" bills where some random house politican would just insert his/her pork projects into bills and it simply just get approved? Anything from a not needed high school stadium video board to some random ass art project to put in the middle of town. So much excess waste was had back in those days and still is today.
Runfasterbitch | 20 hours ago
Raising taxes is nowhere close to being enough. We would need to hike taxes, significantly reduce government spending, and whittle away at the $42T debt so that interest doesn’t eat us alive.
We’re either going to buckle up and endure a “hard” decade to fix this problem immediately or we will have a century of severe economic hardship
lemonylol | 20 hours ago
> Stop giving tax breaks to hoarded wealth.
Is wealth taxed in general?
RelaxPrime | 18 hours ago
Yes. Everyone pays property taxes in some way. A plain tax on unrealized equity.
okram2k | 20 hours ago
any attempt to stop the rich from hoarding wealth will be undone the moment the next set of politicians roll in. seems like we've been on a cycle for my whole life every decade or so Republicans roll into power, slash taxes for the rich, remove benefits for the poor, spend like drunken sailors with government contracts for their rich pals, and then finally people get sick of it and try democrats who slowly claw back the budget but don't fix everything overnight so we start the cycle again
Nearby-Beautiful3422 | 20 hours ago
The U.S. doesn't have a revenue problem, it has an expenditures problem. However, our debt problem is so bad we are going to have to raise taxes while cutting spending or worse...inflate the debt away, which will crush most of America.
5minArgument | 19 hours ago
Honestly, could probably solve the current situation by enacting universal national healthcare. Going by the numbers we would see the returns within 5-10 yrs.
Though odds likely just above 0%.
RelaxPrime | 18 hours ago
I love people who say we have don't have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem.
Those are two variables in the same equation.
Meanwhile your insistence on cutting spending allows the trifecta to actually occur- higher taxes, higher spending, and higher inflation.
They will inflate the currency until the debt is manageable, while cutting the real entitlements in the name of austerity, and raising taxes on everyone except the uber wealthy because "the debt is so big we all have to help pay it off."
Meanwhile all the intelligent people just want Bezos and Musk to pay 30% tax or whatever a working person pays for actually working.
Jdisgreat17 | 20 hours ago
I was born in 1994 and the debt was around 4.6 trillion. It is now almost 39 trillion. It has gone up nearly 8x in my lifetime.
mshab356 | 19 hours ago
Or just cut costs. Or a combo of both. Just taxing the rich isn’t gonna solve anything really bc then politicians will just keep spending more and more. Gotta do cost cutting as well.
Hates_rollerskates | 19 hours ago
We cut taxes in good economic times and blow our chances to make any money to get ahead and at off the debt. It's like deciding to work part-time when you're healthy and able bodied.
AngryTomJoad | 19 hours ago
we need to figure out a way to explain to the dumber maga gop voters that really rich people need to start being patriotic and paying their share
close the stupid loopholes that let them write off luxuries
end and clawback subsidies we give to OIL COMPANIES WHO HAVE BEEN GIVEN BILLIONS AND BILLIONS IN SUBSIDIES
no cap on SS tax
etc etc
RelaxPrime | 18 hours ago
We have given oil companies over 500 billion in direct subsidies over their existence.
This year they will get 35 billion in direct subsidies.
If you account for the externalities like pollution and climate change, that number explodes to 700 billion this year.
The point is we're talking about trillions of dollars in subsidies to some of the richest companies on the planet.
Cheesefactory8669 | 19 hours ago
directly taxing would cause political issues so realistically it would not work, I think a better solution is to raise taxes while introducing tax breaks for spending money for internal investments
So_HauserAspen | 19 hours ago
To add to this. The debt was $5 trillion when Clinton left office and the only significant spending changes were tax breaks for wealthy reducing tax revenue requiring borrowing, increased defense spending (doubled then tripled), increased police and prison spending.
That's the source of our debt.
Seize the means. It's the only recourse left.
shatterdaymorn | 19 hours ago
I think your guy did it with two doses of massive deficit spending during bear markets.
5minArgument | 17 hours ago
One might argue that infrastructure and public investment is critical. Probably better returns than wars and tax cuts.
MartyScorsaysee | 18 hours ago
America needs 50+ years of Democratic rule like we had from 1932 until 1994 when the US experienced the largest expansion of a middle class in human history. Things started to go down hill with Ronnie Raygun and then Newt Gingrich just steepened the slope.
trackday21 | 18 hours ago
OR, or or or... We cut spending AND increase taxes! How about that?! Medicare, delete it. Social security? Gone. Military? Cut it in half. Increase taxes on everyone. Then in a few short fifteen years or so, we could be at a surplus :-)
Historical_Cause_917 | 18 hours ago
The candidate that promises to “cut my taxes” gets the votes. Started with Reagan and here we are.
Redditanother | 18 hours ago
The problem is Donald Trump.
dinosaurkiller | 18 hours ago
But if we don’t give tax cuts to billionaires, who will trickle on me?
Hawk13424 | 18 hours ago
I’d prefer we stop spending so much.
XBullsOnParadeX | 18 hours ago
Also, stop giving money to foreign countries and stop the fraud
ConfidentPilot1729 | 18 hours ago
Clinton had a pretty detailed plan to reduce the debt. He had a 20 year plan that bush and republicans completely destroyed.
BigBoyYuyuh | 17 hours ago
Stop electing republicans too.
GreyMatterTrasmogrif | 17 hours ago
30-40% of it has been issued during the Trump admins....and another less big chuck under Biden admin. The problem has accelerated along with inflation.
The current admin is having a full scale war with no exit plan while over spending by a trillion a year. Inflation is 6%. Conservatively trump will hit 50% of all issued debt.
The thing you are right about is that there is no will to fix it.
WheresTheSauce | 17 hours ago
That is certainly an obvious solution if you don’t care about actually solving the problem! People who say things like this never seem to actually look at numbers. Seizing the assets of every billionaire in the country wouldn’t pay for a single year of current spending.
BarelyBrooks | 17 hours ago
You say "cumulative decades" like there are not two periods in time where there are massive outlier spending spikes that can be directly traced to a common source.
atreeismissing | 17 hours ago
Also covid relief to try and keep voters afloat in the same lifestyle they were accustomed to and massive amounts of covid-relief grift (some of which was clawed back under Biden).
CalmButOftenEnraged | 17 hours ago
the problem is billiionaires suckle at the teat of government contracts
billionaires own the legislative and judicial processes
no amendment for you.
BlackGuysYeah | 17 hours ago
A networth tax at the highest level, say 50 million and above would solve quite a few budget problems in the US.
An income tax is never going to capture the appropriate level of taxes from the ultra wealthy. They are clearly not paying their share.
nwilz | 16 hours ago
We don't have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem. Amazing how dumb people are
Busterlimes | 16 hours ago
Really? Because for as long as Ive been alive the problem is Republicans. They tank the economy, Dems turn around and fix it. Bush Sr was the last Republican administration that didnt dump our economy in the gutter. Even worse now, as displayed in our visit to China that is currently taking place, the US is now number 2. Even WORSE, we isolated ourselves so much that all of our trade partners and Allies are turning to China. We arent going to recover from this betrayal for generations because the world doesnt trust the American people to elect competent leadership. The US is done, the question is, how far will we fall?
GB10VE | 15 hours ago
> Nothing will remove the debt in short order,
Tax those motherfuckers. simple.
RedK_33 | 15 hours ago
Maybe if we also stopped constantly starting wars in the Middle East. Probably would save us a few trillion.
Iswaterreallywet | 13 hours ago
Capitalism is just communism for the wealthy
Boom9001 | 12 hours ago
And time for some one time back clawing of that money to stop the bleeding imo.
antigop2020 | 12 hours ago
The Republikkklan will drive it up another $10+ trillion over the next 3 years and then theyll scream about it as soon as a Dem president gets back into office.
SuckMyBandAids | 12 hours ago
I think if companies take any form of a hand out from the government or state taxes. They should not be allowed to alter prices for a year and have to retain a high percentage of workers. Also have their finances regularly inspected(they may do this one already though)
Umutuku | 11 hours ago
> Stop giving tax breaks to hoarded wealth.
> Nothing will remove the debt in short order
Freeze 'em, seize 'em, and squeeze 'em.
RandyTheFool | 10 hours ago
Mamdani just balanced New York’s budget by taxing the rich.
Ps11889 | 10 hours ago
The last time Congress actually passed a budget was when Clinton was president. Since then, the pass appropriation bills which just extend the last passed budget.
Congress shouldn’t be allowed to pass any legislation u til after the pass a budget which is their constitutional duty.
Historical-Tough6455 | 9 hours ago
Stop voting republican
YellowZx5 | 9 hours ago
Well it’s Biden and Hussein obamas fault because Trump said so.
In reality, the current administration is on a spending spree for things nobody asked for. Someone is so damn vain and must have their picture all over the place, tear down the east wing with no plan to have the replacement ready, repaint the reflecting pool for more than what was told with no bid contracts, start a war no one needed and then the wasteful defense spending. We have a spending problem with nothing to replace that. All while dropping the amount the oligarchs in America pay into for Taxes and cutting more holes in the tax system.
ISquareThings | 6 hours ago
The problem is the gop and Trump
Konukaame | 21 hours ago
Deficits and debt aren't inherently bad things. That depends on what it's being spent on.
Infrastructure, R&D, providing services, deficit spending during a recession? Sure.
Tax cuts for the already rich, unnecessary wars and hardware because the president is a toddler who likes action movies and wants a battleship, golden statues, grifts, golf, and payouts to cronies? No thank you.
In the terrible household budget analogy, a mortgage is (mostly) fine, but an equivalent amount of debt to go on vacation is guaranteed to be bad.
E: typo
RespectTheAmish | 21 hours ago
It baffles me how the party that now hates NATO, and ran on “no new wars” … needs an annual defense budget of 1.5 trillion.
Either unwind the global order, hand those foreign bases to allies, bring troops/equipment home and cut spending… or don’t…
They want the current status quo while threatening our allies, all while increasing the budget to bankrupt the country….
It’s madness.
Law_Student | 21 hours ago
They're the party of lying constantly, that's really all there is to it.
SituationTurbulent90 | 19 hours ago
Indeed. Once you accept the notion that they don't stand by or believe in anything and will gladly contradict themselves within minutes, "understanding where they're coming from" becomes pretty simple: they only say or do what benefits them, and their wealthy benefactors, most at any given moment with zero regard for consistency.
Law_Student | 19 hours ago
Yep. Treating reality like a high school debate club.
Konukaame | 19 hours ago
Media that pretends that statements by pathological liars are nevertheless worthy of attention, amplification, and of being "balanced" against verifiable truth.
xinorez1 | 2 hours ago
Trump sometimes contradicts himself in the same damn breath
dust4ngel | 17 hours ago
> They're the party of lying constantly
they're the party of bullshit:
> It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it. When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.
PhroneticReflex | 20 hours ago
It's almost like they have no consistent platform and no actual ideals.
TheDonnARK | 18 hours ago
But they do, and it's simpler than you think! It just doesn't sell on political trails very well, so they don't say it.
The consistent platform and actual ideals are: personal and family wealth expansion. And they don't mean families in general, they mean singularly, their family.
wtf_is_karma | 21 hours ago
Politicians don’t want that because Raytheon board members don’t want that
aNewHope_v_ThaEmpire | 17 hours ago
>It baffles me how the party that now hates NATO, and ran on “no new wars” … needs an annual defense budget of 1.5 trillion.
Shouldn't baffle anyone, really. They're already showing us what they're doing with these huge budgets. 1) Grift as much of it out and into the pockets themselves and allies as possible, and 2) build an even bigger military to do reprehensible shit like Venezuela, Cuba and Iran.
They haven't given up on Greenland, mark my words. Or Canada for that matter. (I mean, Musk and Theil's families have been publicly involved in movements to try and make this a thing for decades now.) They just had more pressing threats to their power that popped up in the meantime, and they had to back-burner attacking NATO allies until they finish fumbling Iran and the Epstein stuff.
They know it'll take everything the US has got if they think they're gonna eventually stand against the EU, especially now that it's clear that Russia won't be able to hold down the Eastern European front as strongly as it may have once seemed. >They want the current status quo
What makes you think this? They've very publicly stated over the years that they want the current status quo destroyed, and their current actions show us that they were not lying when they said these things over and over again. They believe that the current world order, both domestically and internationally, is a broken one, and that the age of free democracy and global cooperation needs to die.
This isn't conjecture on my part, I'm just pointing out what the power players driving policy in the White House have been saying publicly for their entire lives. Anyone reading this shouldn't take my word for it - go look up what Elon Musk, Peter Theil, Marc Andreessen, Russle Vought, Stephen Miller, JD Vance, and other main players have said over the years on subjects like democracy, globalism, international cooperation, or macroeconomics. Then consider that these same people have now hollowed out the institutions meant to keep powerful people with insane ideas from being able to enact their nutso plans. Finally, ask yourself what will happen when a much-weakened democratic republic tries to hand their current power over to other elected officials that Americans choose as representatives that will put a stop to what they're doing.
Do we think they'll just bend over and prepare for consequences due to something as silly as a vote? Or do we think they'll rely on their wealth and power to enable them to finally complete their dream of ending free democracy, and try to either prevent or ignore the results of elections going forward? We should all hope for the former and try to make it happen as best we can, but anyone not preparing for the latter is being dangerously naive at best, willfully ignorant at worst.
Icy-Lobster-203 | 18 hours ago
I suspect most of the money is going to go to companies with a Trump on the board of directors, and significant amounts of graft and corruption.
listentomenow | 17 hours ago
>It baffles me how the party that now hates NATO, and ran on “no new wars while Democrats are in office"...needs an annual defense budget of 1.5 trillion.
FTFY. Conservatives are awfully hawkish when Republicans start wars.
Shitty_Paint_Sketch | 17 hours ago
You need a military budget of 1.5 trillion to ensure they'll do what you want when you direct them on your own population. There's no other reason for such a budget.
Illustrious-Lime-878 | 21 hours ago
That's what actually matters in end, is what the government actually does, relative to the cost being either resources consumed that would otherwise be available to others or impact on individual freedom, and distortions in markets that degrade economic planning. The total debt relative to some criteria, if its higher in some sense, just may indicate a higher difficulty in there being additional things left worth doing more than the cost. But there are so many other aspects, like reserve currency share, or velocity of money (like due to just technical aspects - digital vs paper cash), affecting what is or is not a high of debt its kind of pointless to worry about debt vs more directly caring about the bad things we care about debt for, like inflation, wasteful spending, gov overreach, misappropriation. Having some arbitrary statutory limit on debt is such an imprecise, blunt way to do this.
spondgbob | 20 hours ago
Exactly, debt is not a bad thing if that debt is incurred on investment. But giving more money to people who already just hoard it and spend very little, in comparison to the amount that would be spent if that money were more evenly distributed, is the same as printing money and immediately taking it out of supply.
oulipo | 19 hours ago
Exactly.
The proper solution is to increase taxes in order to get more money, AND THEN invest this in meaningful domains (healthcare, infrastructure, environment). This will compound into huge gains for the future.
On the contrary, cutting spending means not investing in the future, simply for short-term gains, and then spending much more in the future
Character-Active2208 | 19 hours ago
Interest payments on the debt taken to cover prior deficits……..
Training-Context-69 | 19 hours ago
Trump is definitely setting new records here when it comes to deficit spending and this new pointless war in the middle east is not helping at all. But it’s kinda disingenuous to think Trump is the sole reason the debt is as high as it is right now. The past few administrations have all added to the national debt and the administration that comes after Trump will add to the national debt. Unfortunately the older generations have collectively come to realization that they’ll be long dead when this debt seriously becomes a problem. So they’ve simply stopped caring. It will be Gen Z, Millennials, and Gen Alpha who will pay the price for that 40 trillion. In the form of inflation and likely increased taxes.
Trump’s decisions this past year have certainly accelerated events such as the end of the petrodollar which will certainly make the national debt an issue much sooner than anticipated. But him leaving office doesn’t mean the problem will begin to resolve itself.
BallsInSufficientSad | 18 hours ago
Not exactly. Deficits and debt are ok UP TO A POINT. ...but when it begins to exceed GDP and is growing faster than the economy is growing, that is an unsustainable red flag.
...and red flags like that impact borrowing capacity. Ultimately, the credit worthiness is impacted, REGARDLESS of what the money is spent on.
So I agree it's generally ok at low levels - but what we have today is not stable. Cuts on entitlements are absolutely coming along with persistently high inflation.
Adjective-Noun-nnnn | 12 hours ago
Austerity isn't the answer. Social Security is underfunded because the US has done little to reduce income inequality or reign in tax avoidance by the rich and corporations. We have a revenue problem rooted in an inequality problem. The richest Americans control vast and unimaginable wealth, but somehow the solution is to gut entitlements (so called because we are fucking entitled to them) after we've been paying to fund our parents' and grandparents' retirements? OK cool; Uncle Sam can cut me a check, with interest, for all the SS taxes I've paid.
leviathan65 | 18 hours ago
I still remember when bush did the tax rebates. Even in middle school I asked my dad why the country would give money back when they owed so much. He said something along the lines of what you said but lemented they should use it for that but they won't.
MetallicGray | 16 hours ago
When interest in your mortgage is quickly approaching the point of overtaking your income, then it absolutely is a problem.
If your mortgage is growing faster than you’re paying it down, that’s a massive problem.
That’s what’s occurring with the national debt. What’s the end game?
Konukaame | 15 hours ago
1: Yes, hence the "(mostly)"
2: Taxes on the billionaires whose net worth is increasing faster than the national deficit and who are getting rich off of tax cuts and loopholes, and stop spending money on stupid things like multi-trillion-dollar military budgets and $10 billion payouts to the president.
Berserker76 | 20 hours ago
I have no idea how Republicans have fooled the American people to believe that they are better for the economy. There is no data over the last 4 decades that substantiates that claim, the data shows exactly the opposite. Democrat administrations are better for the economy and it is not even close, for every key metric, from job creation, GDP, deficit spending.
Hopefully this second Trump administration finally drives that home. Republicans destroy the economy and run huge deficits, because they always give tax cuts to the rich, that never trickle down.
It is absurd, Elon Musk wealth in 2010 was estimated to be $650M, 16 years later it is $800B+. A similar path for Bezos.
Why Americans continue to support a system that allows such a huge transfer of wealth is beyond me.
hourefugee | 20 hours ago
They vilify the right people and they say things that sound true to people that don’t think much beyond “common sense”.
Also, our electoral system is rigged to give rural voters far more power than they deserve. Gerrymandering just makes it worse.
NiewinterNacht | 19 hours ago
Not rural voters, voters in specific states
IcebergSlimFast | 19 hours ago
Those specific states are ones with relatively low populations overall, and a larger percentage of rural voters (e.g., the Dakotas, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, etc.). So yes, rural voters do have disproportionate electoral power in the US, much to our collective detriment, since consistent majorities of those voters neither understand nor share the priorities of citizens living in the large, modern, multi-ethnic and multi-racial urban areas which actually drive our economic growth and global relevance.
hourefugee | 19 hours ago
What kind of states?
artisanrox | 20 hours ago
They're not fooled. I live in a +70 Republican area and they gleefully vote for ethnic cleansing, concentration camps, gender policing and forced birth in lieu of financial solvency. The only reason any of them are slightly upset now is because the austerity they demanded on others is finally coming to roost and hitting themselves.
They're all Small Businesses™ that think they have the same clout as multishore corporations.
Prosperity Gospel nonsense. Obviously Musk and Bezos are geniuses that earned everything they have.
(Bezos I think more than Musk or Trump REALLY HAS, I mean I understand horrible worker policies but he's the smartest out of the whole Presidency or cabinet or entire Admin. He knows how to keep his mouth shut and just enjoy his money.)
These people absolutely knew what they put in office. They WILL do it again if offered. They will burn everything down so some Brown people can get eaten by alligators. They will blow their own two feet off and close all the shoe stores if a Black man has shoes.
Berserker76 | 20 hours ago
I don’t disagree, it is a cult of hate, bigotry, misogyny, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia and they are a lost cause. That is the 30% of Americans who say Trump is doing a great job, the economy is great, who live outside objective reality.
But for the remaining 70%, the independents or others that see themselves as more centrists/moderates and whose votes decide election outcomes, those are really who I am speaking about.
bonerparte1821 | 44 minutes ago
well said.
whatsitcalled4321 | 18 hours ago
Because there's a vicious cycle of GOP getting in office, screwing things up and because many changes take months to years to actually be felt by the public it's a democrat is in office at that moment. Democrat goes in, fixes all the stuff, meanwhile GOP are yelling "the national debt! Fiscal responsibility! They're spending all your tax money on immigrants!" Public get angry and vote a GOP back in to repeat the cycle. Guarantee it's gonna happen after the midterms. Dems could absolutely sweep the GOP but GOP will scream about things being so expensive cause there'll be gas shortages, tariffs, forlorn trade partners, which....is caused from Trump's fuckery.
Doesn't matter though cause the American public has the memory of a goldfish and will proceed to blame the Dems that just came into power at that point. Also guarantee there'll be a lot of "Why haven't the Dems absolutely fixed everything" 6 months in despite having maybe a slim majority in Congress and the two other branches of government working against them. Change at the scale we need, which is full systemic change, will take time and consistency, neither of which things Americans are good at. Like, it'll be great if Congress is flipped. Gonna need that same energy in 2028 though in order to ennact any of the sweeping changes many are hoping for.
Dry-Interaction-1246 | 19 hours ago
25th Amendment is the first constitutional act that is needed.
Wellontheotherhand1 | 19 hours ago
I'll tell you exactly how they do it: they claim that it takes multiple years for economic changes to have meaningful effects.
This conveniently allows them to take credit for all the gains under Democratic administrations, and push all blame for the failures under Republican administration, onto the Democrats.
And they are dead serious about this, and absolutely refuse to even consider analysis showing that this is not the case.
So_HauserAspen | 19 hours ago
The GOP is a confidence scheme and takes advantage of lesser informed or lesser educated population.
A moment's review of facts should be enough to dissuade people from voting GOP.
NW7l2335 | 18 hours ago
Because most people are stupid and have a sheep like mentality cultivated through decades of underfunding of the education system as well as daily propaganda from the media.
bagbcyss | 18 hours ago
do you have a good source that shows how democrats are better for the economy across all of these metrics? like maybe in one place? i do not disagree at all, i just want something easy to send to my boomer relatives
Uhhh_what555476384 | 16 hours ago
Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._economic_performance_by_presidential_party
mallclerks | 12 hours ago
Ten of the eleven U.S. recessions between 1953 and 2020 began under Republican presidents.
What more need to know
silchasr | 5 hours ago
The current Republican President of the United States has stated the economy always does better under Democratic administrations. Under his complete control he is proving himself to be 100% correct.
ReachParticular5409 | 17 hours ago
I know why, because of half a century of propaganda SAYING the dems are the worst thing ever for the economy
And a half century of crippled public education to make it easy for the sisterfuckers to fall to lies
BlackGuysYeah | 16 hours ago
Republicans and specifically MAGtards have a very abusive relationship with "truth". They do not value truth. You cannot convince them with the truth.
Kershiser22 | 16 hours ago
> I have no idea how Republicans have fooled the American people to believe that they are better for the economy.
They don't care about the deficit. They just care about lower taxes.
Richandler | 7 hours ago
I hope the opposite. Republicans suck, but the economy doens't have problems because of too much government spending; it has problems because of what that spending is focused on.
Fenris_uy | 20 hours ago
No need for constitutional fix. You need spending to be flexible to be able to handle extreme situations (Covid, Great Recession)
What the US needs is to stop voting politicians that want to cut taxes and increase spending.
NerdyReligionProf | 18 hours ago
This is the basic issue: GOP and esp Trump-GOP (which just is GOP now) have driven down taxes on the wealthy and corporations while also siphoning public money to those same people. Like, that’s it … that’s the story with the One Trillion growth in the deficit over the last year. Trump has accelerated the fuck out ‘spending’, but not on the public. It’s money all going to corporations, Trump, Trump’s family, and Trump’s bullshit vanity projects too. The fix here is simple and it’s not one that can be weaponized to cut actual spending in public programs in the future: Raise taxes on the wealthy and stop transferring public money to the same. Literally none of this can happen though as long as the GOP remains in power.
BreeezyP | 19 hours ago
100%
Cappyc00l | 19 hours ago
Money buys votes. The average voter can’t even explain the difference between debt and deficit.
OpenSourcePenguin | 14 hours ago
Right after the pig flight lessons
OhGodItBurns0069 | 21 hours ago
Writing a budget break into the Constitution is not a good idea. It only works as long as the economy grows and there are no sudden emergencies. Example: Germany. The break was brought in by the conservative government as basically a form of austerity that drove severe underfunding in public investments, which was covered up by a booming export economy. Now successive governments need to contort themselves into loop holes to secure the debt they need to find badly needed infrastructure and arms reinvestment. It wasted legislative time and can then be challenged or overturned by the supreme court.
dust4ngel | 16 hours ago
> Writing a budget break into the Constitution is not a good idea
it bears mentioning that the party currently running up the debt like it's a competition has no interest in the constitution whatsoever.
sloppy_rodney | 21 hours ago
These jags have just rebranded the (objectively terrible) idea of a balanced budget amendment to a “fiscal responsibility” amendment.
They also want to go the constitutional convention route which, in the current political climate, sort of feels like shooting yourself in the dick to stop your foot from bleeding. It’s not a perfect metaphor.
AMCorBUST2021 | 22 hours ago
Two things that American politicians take for fact.. 1) can’t raise taxes 2) can’t cut spending. Aside from the cold civil war there is no environment for political bipartisanship. Will take a major economic catastrophe to force change à la Great Depression. Those buying 30 year bonds are betting 5% is worth it on the eventual winner of the struggle for identity of America.
A constitutional fix is a nice idea, but totally ignores current reality. The Federal reserve was the latest institution captured by MAGA, the most corrupt American regime ever to exist. I can only imagine investors in US Treasuries literally have no better option.
Illustrious_Lie_954 | 21 hours ago
Fair point on the political gridlock deficits usually aren’t about economics alone, they’re about what voters will tolerate.But I’d be careful with the no better option take on Treasuries global capital still tends to run to U.S. debt during uncertainty, which says confidence in the system isn’t gone, even with all the political noise.
Agreeable-Two-4998 | 19 hours ago
No. Republicans love to drive up the deficit with tax cuts for the wealthy and war spending then use the same deficit to attack any kind of spending on the common good like education, housing, and health care. We don't need a constitutional fix that would constrain our ability to respond to economic crises; we just need to stop spending trillions on wars and handing out tax breaks to the wealthy.
Kalorama_Master | 18 hours ago
A Balanced Budget Amendment would be a tragedy
Word salad to get past limit: a country is not like a family. A country is an ongoing entity that presumably will continue to grow. There’s good debt and bad debt. There are instances where you might want to go deep into deficit spending.
Skyler827 | 9 hours ago
What if we had this: for every percentage over spending, the budget had to be ratified by a state government?
So if the budget is spending 30% more than revenue, it had to be ratified by 30 states. Or perhaps states representing 30% of population. Or a mix or something. The point is there is an escape hatch, but it's not controlled by Congress themselves, but the states. Without the states, the budget has to be balanced.
It needs to be HARD to do deficit spending.
GreenerMark | 21 hours ago
It's time to dump Trump. Democrats reduce deficits and improve the economy. Republicans do the opposite. The feckless Rs in Congress are the most irresponsible legislators in my lifetime. A complete dereliction of duty.
LiquidityCompass | 22 hours ago
A $955B deficit in 7 months isn't just a debt story. It's a future liquidity story too.
Governments eventually have only a few paths: cut spending, raise taxes, borrow more, or let inflation gradually reduce the debt burden.
Markets care less about politics and more about which path gets chosen. What's your take?
ontha-comeup | 21 hours ago
All signs point to borrow more and have inflation reduce the debt burden.
matow07 | 21 hours ago
I agree. Kevin Warsh has a plan for financial repression. Looks like heavy increases in inflation and a push to back AI to develop industries to grow GDP. Same plan as after WW2.
S1gorJabjong | 21 hours ago
That Trump wants to control the Fed and lower rates in an inflationary macro environment that's going to inflate the debt away but also send his and everyone else's USD demoniated assets to go in the shitter. And by that I mean he's only capable of looking one step ahead and no further.
By the way, Mamdani made NYC's deficit go to zero recently without compromising social services. Imagine if the government was comprised of actual competent people like him. The US doesn't have to be in this spectacular debt mess.
Ragepower529 | 21 hours ago
He made it go to 0 by getting New York to send him a more fair share of the money NYC gets… how is that a solution for the federal government
echino_derm | 17 hours ago
The federal government can ask the next higher level of government to give us back our money, Israel.
aNewHope_v_ThaEmpire | 17 hours ago
Another way of looking at it would be to say that NYC is pursuing paths to apportion their money differently than it had been. Some of what was being sent to the state is now being shifted to be spent internally instead.
In reality, the fact that the money was getting paid to a "higher level of government" is pretty irrelevant if we look at it as an apportionment issue. In fact, the US Federal gov being the "highest" level of gov just makes it even less of a factor, since the Fed wouldn't need "permission" from any "higher" levels of government in order to reapportion their funds.
In other words:
This is all oversimplified and imaginary of course, I'm just pointing out that people claiming that the NYC situation is exceptional and can't be duplicated or extrapolated are just grasping at straws in order to try and prevent similar movements from cropping up elsewhere.
Apoxie | 5 hours ago
Get the rich to pay more tax? That seems like a similar solution.
bigmt99 | 19 hours ago
What higher authority can the federal government go to for the money to bridge the gap?
BlackGuysYeah | 16 hours ago
Tax billionaires into extinction. Cap net worth at 200 million and anything that adds to your net worth past that goes straight to the treasury. If billionaires don't like that, they can leave and the market will flood with people willing to take their place.
There, I solved it. The whole fucking thing.
Deep-Minimum7837 | 13 hours ago
At this point, our best option is to balkanize into select regions and let the red states crumble into dust of their own catastrophic mistakes.
We're being controlled by a large portion of extraordinarily stupid, low-population states that consistently vote against everyone's self interest, even their own. It's time to just cut the chaff away and let them rot. They'll realize fairly quickly how much they need blue state economies. Texas and Florida can't support the ENTIRE southern US lmfao
JimPranksDwight | 21 hours ago
Maybe we should talk about increasing revenue instead? I can think of a few massive corporate/wealthy tax cuts in recent years that blew a hole in the deficit that we can reverse. Also, defense and DHS spending are out of control and need a top to bottom reset.
HSIOT55 | 19 hours ago
Oh no it's totally fine as long as a Democrat isn't in charge. That's why the MAGAs aren't talking about it now. Unless one of them would like to prove me wrong.
Xtj8805 | 19 hours ago
When the administration is regularly ignoring the constitution and the courts. When the SCOTUS is rewriting constitutional ammendments on the back of a napkin.
What makes anyone think a constitutional fix to the deficit will do anything when the people clearly have stopped caring that the constitution is upheld?
markth_wi | 19 hours ago
I'm sure we can't wait to all be told how raising taxes is catastrophic and billionaires will leave if we do so.
Nobody is going to suggest killing the economy but paying as we go and radically rethinking the role of the executive in our society is long, long overdue.
Defective thinking plagues a man on the street we send them to an asylum , when it occurs among the wealthiest among us we lap up every word as if it was mothers milk.
Unless we change that way of thinking we're in trouble.
calm-phil | 15 hours ago
A few billionaires are moving out of my state and loads of millionaires are moving in. If not, my rent would not be so staggeringly high. $120k salaries are the median in my town and it is not SF, LA, NYC Miami or CHI. Mean home prices for a single family home are now $980k. People just need a 401k to be millionairs now. They also get subsidized by my taxes.
Can we get rid of that tax break? Those motherfuckers already got theirs, they can pay the full mortgage price just fine without me handing them money while I am at it.
Apoxie | 5 hours ago
US has global taxation, so leaving doesn't really help.
Osirus1156 | 18 hours ago
Its because the deficit never matters until an adult (Democrat) is in charge. Because our populace is incredibly fucking stupid thanks to decades of Republican fuckery in the education system.
Femboy_Harem_Janitor | 17 hours ago
The best solution is wealth tax.
The second best solution is reducing military spending
The third best solution is government ownership of industries that have proven efficiency over private ownership. Universal Healthcare would free up a couple trillion a year.
0o0o0o0o0o0z | 17 hours ago
Warren Buffett's solution is pretty good... "pass a law disqualifying all sitting members of Congress from reelection if the annual deficit exceeds 3% of GDP."
Skyler827 | 9 hours ago
I like the idea but the fact that Congress controls the power to make laws, you can't enforce things like that against congress itself, they all just hike spending anyway and would just exempt themselves or repeal it entirely. You would really need a constitutional amendment. Which I would support. But it's a real long shot.
I_Enjoy_Beer | 21 hours ago
Won't happen for at least 2 years and 8 months. Because if there is one constant guarantee, its that the deficit and national debt only becomes an urgent, critical issue when a certain party doesn't have control of the White House.
Dry_Combination4070 | 19 hours ago
This is exactly it. Literally the party that pushes tax breaks to the wealthy class removing and revenue and then starts wars and insane spending always cry when a democrat is in office.
They're victimhood bully's. Like a kid who punches another kid but crys they were kicked when a adult tries to punish them.
Doomdoomkittydoom | 18 hours ago
Hell no. Yeah, we need all sorts of Constitutional fixes, but see California for why you don't want a Constitutional fix to something volatile.
Winter_Persimmon_110 | 18 hours ago
Regulatory capture is out of control. The problem is that the foxes are in charge of the henhouse. Corporations have too much influence and nothing is going to change for the better until they are removed from power with the thoroughness with which a surgeon removes a malignant tumor. Whoever wins an election sponsored by the wealthy and represented by billionaire media, the wealthy will win. They use their wealth to buy influence in order to cut their own taxes, grant themselves contracts, and increase their wealth. It's a runaway chain reaction. We need to work outside of bourgeois elections. Our entire government and constitution are set up for consolidation of power by the wealthy. We need radical change. We have few chances to tax the wealthy, and the wealthy who control the government can easily roll the few taxes that hit them. If we do not educate and organize for radical change, radical change will be made for us as the wealthy class turn to police state fascism in order to maintain control as lawlessness and unemployment rise with the uncontrollable rise in inequality.
TheDonnARK | 18 hours ago
The solution is simple. Stop counting the deficit. It can't go up if you aren't watching it!
For those of you that didn't get it, that was a joke.
bd2999 | 14 hours ago
I agree that the deficit and debt need to be dealt with but I still think a Constitutional Amendment is a bad idea. It just ties the governments hands and forces them to likely focus on austerity (as they will not raise taxes on the wealthy) which will lead to harming of everyone but those towards the top.
While action should be taken, this would be too extreme.
thisbechris | 9 hours ago
Well the constitution is a meaningless piece of old paper at the moment, so an amendment would be toothless.
Charming_Oven | 10 hours ago
Our marginal tax rate is historically low. Bush / Trump tax cuts fucked over generations by setting up this mess. The interest alone is going to haunt us.
It’s time to tax the wealthy and corporations at the same rate as we taxed people in the 1950s
hyperion_99 | 3 hours ago
I don’t usually agree with Warren Buffet but his proposal that every time the deficit reaches a certain % of GDP that everyone in Congress would be ineligible for reelection would be a fun way to provide some accountability for our so called representatives.
No_Sense_6171 | 21 hours ago
LOL. The chances of passing a constitutional amendment for anything is extremely slim to none.
When was the last time a constitutional amendment was passed? At least 50 years ago.
Besides, they would just try to game it, or get the SC to rule against it. This administration has no regard for the constitution whatsoever.
hourefugee | 20 hours ago
Unless something massive changes, I think the best we can hope for are maybe some incremental tax increases to claw back some of the idiotic Bush and Trump tax cuts while hoping inflation and GDP increases chew down the size of the overall debt. And the reality with the current electorate is that any party passing a tax increase is going to get skewered in the next election.
If you want things to change, start voting socialist. Mainstream Democrats don’t have the spines to do anything that the Republicans won’t immediately undo.
EpsteinandTrump | 19 hours ago
I wonder if Elon regrets helping Trump getting back into office...the latter would have Elon possibly going to jail I guess. Seems Elon is ok with the US burning if it means he's safe, for now.
Memitim | 19 hours ago
lol, it's a symptom of a far, far greater problem. As long as Republicans continue to be treated as a political party and not as the terrorist organization that it really is, no new lines of text for them to ignore will matter. No laws can protect against treason when allowed to run rampant like this.
Zooshooter | 18 hours ago
The Constitution doesn't matter when the rest of government doesn't uphold it and do their jobs. There is no fix to this aside from getting rid of the people who aren't doing their jobs and putting in people who WILL.
suspect_toothpaste | 18 hours ago
They see the democrats are poised to take over the house and the power of the purse and now they want to start releasing “control/fix the budget” headlines. Where was this article when the last pile of tax cuts were signed into the law?
Part_Tricky | 17 hours ago
POTUS is sinking America in debt to benefits himself and billionaires supporters, in addition he's asking for $1billion ballroom where all of them can dance together . Not to mention he wants to take in $10 Billions and eyeing gold at Forth Knox. He can commit any crime while in office and get away with it; Thanks to a corrupt Supreme Court.
Happy_Feet333 | 16 hours ago
More like... thanks to the American voter.
Who gave him the Presidency and a GOP Congress.
And all those that pushed to have people sit out the 2024 election because of a snit-fit over Gaza... who, themselves, claim they influenced enough Democratic voters to stay home in protest (and toss the election to Trump), are the thrice-damned assholes who caused this mess.
OliviaMandell | 15 hours ago
We definitely need an overhaul of legal framework to ensure trump is never happens again. Can someone explain how that would stop it though? Especially since gop has broken so many laws and might never face consequences. I remember how little got don't when Biden was in office
Buckets-of-Gold | 13 hours ago
Legally? Probably not much that is possible.
It’s not even clear whether a treason conviction would disqualify someone from running for President. Any other charge unambiguously has no effect on eligibility for President.
sleeps_in_bryophytes | 15 hours ago
Yes, it would be a good idea to start building the political movement in favor of fiscal austerity now, so that it can reach a fever pitch once a Democrat is in office and hamstring their agenda. Then once a Republican is back in office, foreign wars and tax cuts are back on the menu, right?
catchy_phrase76 | 14 hours ago
Fun this will be dead on arrival.
Can we start getting actual ideas that have a shot at passing?
Everyone has these lofty goals that will never fly, need to go back to compromising ideas.
DogblackMichigan | 14 hours ago
The constitutional fix is to take every trumpist who has committed a crime and put them in prison. Then the adults can fix it without interference from the cult of the orange rapist felon.
Red-Sun-Cinema | 12 hours ago
Unfortunately there is little that can be done that's actually constructive with Trump and the GOP in control of Congress. They might get something created and passed but it will be a hugely biased affair in favor of the corporations and special interests they are completely owned by and beholden to.
MoralMoneyTime | 10 hours ago
I have a fix for you:
Relevant-Can1656 | an hour ago
Honestly who cares who caused it at this point. The interest payments are like $3 billion a day now. Even if you had the perfect president doing literally everything right the math is just cooked, it's like arguing about who maxed the credit card while the interest is eating you alive.
NameLips | 20 hours ago
There is no way to fix the budget without 2 things:
Massive increase in taxation, AND
Massive cuts to military, social security, and medicare/medicaid.
Like, seriously, if you cut the entire budget except these three categories, we would still be over budget.
There is no palatable option. Any attempt to cut the budget without massive tax increases will accomplish nothing. Any attempt to raise taxes without cutting social programs will accomplish nothing.
artisanrox | 20 hours ago
> social security, and medicare/medicaid.
no.
do you want homeless people lining the streets?
then, no.
nationalized health care is the oppositie of this, and will result in long-term growth compared to slinging grandma out of her apartment because her meds and SS got cut.
Ivan_Whackinov | 19 hours ago
> do you want homeless people lining the streets?
Conservates would never allow this. They'd have them killed, deported, or moved into internment camps. Can't have them visible.
artisanrox | 19 hours ago
oh my goodness yes 💯
pewpewmcpistol | 19 hours ago
The point they're making is about the physical allocation of funds. Without touching Healthcare and Military spending you're realistically unable to balance the budget. They're simply that much of the spend.
The real solution for healthcare spending is to decrease the cost of healthcare, which would still be a net decrease in healthcare spending.
NameLips | 16 hours ago
That is why cutting those things is not a palatable option.
And we're not getting nationalized health care any time soon. Yes, it would solve problems. But no, it's not happening. Yes, you can be angry about it.
artisanrox | 14 hours ago
Cutting isn't only "not palatable" it is literally going to exacerbate the problem by creating more emergency care and no resources to handle that, personal debt with no way out.
We're not getting nationalized health care because too many people in the US are financially illiterate and think it's a bargain to spend $10K to save $50.
Deep-Minimum7837 | 13 hours ago
You're lumping SS and Medicare/Medicaid in with the single LARGEST bloat on our deficit. It's like complaining that a party of three people are weighing down an airplane and causing it to not fly when two of those people weight about 120lbs and the third is 740lbs.
LouderGyrations | 39 minutes ago
Defense is $1.1T, Medicare is $918B, Social Security is $862B. They are all in the same ballpark.
dillanthumous | 20 hours ago
A Federal VAT (just like most other similar economies have) on all but a select number of essential items would solve the problem. Good luck with getting that passed until things are truly dire, though.
Top_Acanthaceae3612 | 18 hours ago
This is the answer. Democrats don’t like VATs because they are regressive. Republicans don’t like VATs because they raise lots of revenue without being highly noticeable to most citizens. But a VAT would ultimately be best for our country and could even pave the way for something like universal healthcare.
Noselessmonk | 19 hours ago
Didn't Elon somewhat recently become a trillionaire?
After this whole mess gets sorted out, perhaps some of his ill gotten assets could be reclaimed.
ThatsAllFolksAgain | 19 hours ago
Yep, anyone over $1 billion worth should be required to give back their ill gotten wealth
ecrane2018 | 19 hours ago
No he wants to be a trillionaire he’s not there yet
Mewchu94 | 12 hours ago
Last I heard was 800 million. On track for world first trillionaire sometime in 2027 I think.
rollem | 21 hours ago
A balanced budget amendment would be a horrible idea unless it contains provisions that both sides would find equally unappealing, such as automatic tax raises and military reductions alongside any other discretionary or entitlement cuts. The amendment should also include a wealth tax provision (it's currently unclear if one would be constitutional, and with this court any ambiguity would result in a decision favoring the wealthy).
Another budget issue that should be made automatic include continuing resolutions in case a budget isn't passed (plus triggering an election).
EagleBigMac | 21 hours ago
Sure states can get no more from the government than their citizens and businesses pay in taxes unless it is for free public transportation or public schools or free public healthcare. They must raise wages and taxes until they reach that point end of conversation. They will also tax all businesses for their externalities.
mkt853 | 20 hours ago
Repeal TCJA, remove the social security cap, and go back to Obama era defense budgets. That'll take care of the majority of the deficit while barely affecting anyone.
AdministrativeBar877 | 20 hours ago
Abolish the Federal Reserve. Have the Treasury issue currency at no cost, other than ink and paper. Avoid colossal interest payments. Not really a constitutional "fix", as this is how it really was supposed to work in the first place.
baithammer | 18 hours ago
Federal Reserve is what keeps things going, it doesn't need to be abolished, the idiots who keep ignoring the warnings from them are the problem.
The treasury isn't the problem either, it's the morons driving up the debt and incurring debt ratings.
wilsont18 | 19 hours ago
Maybe, just maybe, purposefully neglecting and hindering the IRS to generate revenue in a modern and effective way has negatively our ability to keep our expenditures in balance.
kurtteej | 18 hours ago
the problem is that the people that would be required to put a bill together and pass it are the ones that are okaying the money that's being spent.
HaiKarate | 18 hours ago
Here's the problem, though... deficit spending is useful when the economy is in the tank, PROVIDED that you are spending that money to help average Americans get through the downturn.
A Constitutional amendment would take away that useful tool.
seacat8586 | 18 hours ago
Does anyone know how the federal budget is created and approved, anyone? These days conservatives blame Biden post Covid; liberals blame Trump …. well, for everything. 90% of posts blame the president of the other side. The congress writes the budget. Of course, the president signs off on it and has great influence but our representatives are primarily responsible for spending. This means, of course, that we are the morons who are hooked on the goodies and never seem to think they have to be paid for …. unless the other team is in power. And our leaders love that we’re schmucks who will vote them back in as long as they vote us the goodies and blame the other side.
Holiday_Sandwich3738 | 18 hours ago
The issue with fixing the budget is that would take cuts. The person that makes cuts will seem like the bad guy and no one wants to be in that position
Rufustb | 18 hours ago
Most of it can be traced back to high end tax cuts on the wealthy and corporations. We had the same GDP to Debt rate right after WW2 we have today. They solved it by taxing the wealthy and such.
The problem is that Americans for some reason think they are all going to be millionaires someday and are just temporarily inconvienenced by being poor.
Holiday_Sandwich3738 | 17 hours ago
The reality is both need to be done increasing taxes and decrease spending. I totally agree we need to increase corporate tax but the issue is it won’t be enough.
Ihaveasmallwang | 18 hours ago
The issue with fixing the budget is that it would require not cutting the amount of money the federal government takes in.
“I can’t afford to pay all my bills. I bet asking my boss for a pay decrease will totally solve this problem”
jbjhill | 18 hours ago
What budget? Can somebody show me a budget that was passed by Congress this decade? Century?
Oh yeah, the last time the U.S. Congress passed a full budget was 1997!
No1Statistician | 18 hours ago
Tax the upper k shape people, putting caps on health care profits for medicare/medicade, getting out of international conflicts aith our military, and closing tax havens would fix everything fast
ThePromise110 | 17 hours ago
How long can the Treasury Bill Standard hold? Moving off the dollar would harm everyone else than it would harm the US, but that won't, cant, be the case forever.
IlliterateJedi | 17 hours ago
Don't worry, we're only two to three years away from the deficit being the single most important thing on the radar (despite the recession we're almost certainly going to be in). And the Republican party will stop at nothing to make sure we fix the deficit in a few years.
BenAdaephonDelat | 17 hours ago
It's time for a regime change. This happened because the current regime is actively, deliberately, maliciously sabotaging the economy and looting the country for personal gain.
Econmajorhere | 17 hours ago
When every incoming administration just has to survive 4 years and then maybe a re-election, there will be little worry for what happens afterwards.
Under democrats we see greater funding for projects that are mostly beneficial for the world but also have some fraud (naturally).
Under reps we see tax cuts, wars and vanity projects like we have now.
WildSpud | 17 hours ago
I'm not sure what year, or period of time, MAGA refers to when they say they want to make America great "again". I assume it was some time in the past. I think America was great in the early 1960's when the tax rate on high income was around 90%. If that's what MAGA means by making America great again, I am all in!
Chance_Contest1969 | 17 hours ago
Before the big reveal: We’re dangerously delusional about American exceptionalism.
Chance_Contest1969 | 17 hours ago
The Republicans and John Fetterman are too busy gargling Trump’s marbles to do their constitutionally mandated jobs and protect OUR SOVEREIGN WEALTH FUND: The United States Treasury.
Worth-Ad9939 | 17 hours ago
They way these people are giving up their values and morals you'd think they know the end date for humanity and their just stuffing their pillow cases with cash and linking up to ensure they survive.
We aren't the priority and we should start talking about why.
RueTabegga | 17 hours ago
How about the minute there is a deficit then executive, judiciary, and legislative branches of the government don’t get paid and lose their healthcare? Same thing when they shut the government down for any length of time for any reason. Watch how quickly things would change then.
alphex | 17 hours ago
I have the answer.
Go look at the economic figures for every R and D president for the last ? 40 years.
You’ll notice a trend.
The gop ramps up the deficit and tanks the economy and then the dems straighten things out.
Maybe we stop electing “conservatives”.
Happy_Feet333 | 16 hours ago
The average voter:
But da Republicans are so GOOD with the "ecomony"!
Brought to you by Karl's Jr.
Illustrious_Focus314 | 17 hours ago
Could someone explain to me how the day to day lives of the American people would differ under a balanced budget or even in the black?
What would be the benefits other than a desirable looking spreadsheet be?
Also what happens if we continue down this path and it just increases forever?
bunglesnacks | 16 hours ago
In order to balance it you have to both raise taxes (Republicans oppose) or cut spending (Democrats oppose). If what had to happen to make that happen actually happened you might be worse off because you're either paying higher taxes or you're getting less social / transportation / education, etc. spending from the gov't.
Eventually the interest on the debt will get so we are using all taxes to pay for it. At this point we are essentially applying for a new credit card to pay off the old credit card and there is no end in sight. It's do that forever debt exponentially rises, like not $36 trillion in 40 years but $36 trillion in a year, or day, we have no way to run the gov't and pay the interest. So you are left with a choice, and that would be default. That's the only choice.
None of these old people care about that though they'll all be dead when that happens.
Illustrious_Focus314 | 16 hours ago
Thank you for the answer I was always curious.
One more question and it is probably a dumb one. What if the govt approved the spending and just says no we are not raising taxes?
What would be the repercussions?
And also what happens if we default? What does the next day look like?
Thanks.
Happy_Feet333 | 15 hours ago
>"One more question and it is probably a dumb one. What if the govt approved the spending and just says no we are not raising taxes?"
It's what you're seeing right now.
bunglesnacks | 14 hours ago
What happens if we default is a big one. There's theories, people have written papers on it. The next day looks the same as today i'd imagine. The next weeks and months and years are pretty bleak. Our credit rating tanks, governments around the world also default, the biggest global recession ever happens and whoever is alive during that time is going to have a rough go of it. But maybe we need a giant reset and the generation after that one can thrive. Who knows.
Happy_Feet333 | 16 hours ago
The US pays out 1 trillion in interest payments to service the debt every year.
Imagine what could be done with 1 trillion dollars each year.
That's more than enough to fix our public infrastructure (ie: roads, airports, seaports, etc)... or pay for universal publice health care. And those are just 2 examples.
Illustrious_Focus314 | 16 hours ago
I'm just having a hard time understanding why we don't just do those things already though.
In theory it sounds like money should be treated as something like a natural resource such as water but in reality it's just a number on a screen. It feels like money for an individual and monies for a government entity are world's apart in relation to each other but are believed to be the same thing.
It all feels like a scam to me at times.
Thank you for your answer. Good food for thought.
Buckets-of-Gold | 15 hours ago
When the government borrows to fund vital programs and investments that will ultimately prove cash-positive over the long term- that is entirely sensible.
When the government borrows for long periods of time just to “keep the lights on”, as it does with many programs like Medicare- that can become unsustainable if debt continues to accumulate.
Right now the U.S. is on track to spend 0.25 of every federal tax dollar just paying the interest on our debt.. a quarter of all spending.
That can quickly escalate to the point of severe economic downturn and/or major cuts to social programs. Getting ahead of this now rather than kicking the can further down the road will mitigate that pain.
atreeismissing | 17 hours ago
The GOP doesn't care, they've never cared about deficits. Right now, they also know there's a good chance Dems take control of the govt within the next 2.5 years, and saddling Dems with massive debt and deficits prevents them from fixing any of the problems the GOP creates.
cjgozdor | 17 hours ago
To pay off debts, you essentially have two options. Have those responsible play for it, and have somebody else pay for it. The problem is that those most responsible for the debt no longer are working, and can’t be taxed (no income).
The only rational solution to make those responsible pay for their own debt is to remove the expensive services they benefit from (social security and Medicare). Otherwise we’re just passing the buck to the next generation
nfactor | 16 hours ago
I am fairly certain Trump is going to declare that our debt was from countries taking advantage of us and that we are not going to pay it. He will frame it as America first and will happily send the entire world into a depression.
The debt is now almost certainly impossible to pay off. No political party will be willing to make the drastic changes needed to reverse this. Trump should have been in prison as soon as he left office the first time.
Democrats are too concerned about offending people, Republicans are too busy stealing from people.
occaisionallyimqwert | 16 hours ago
This is what the dipshits voted for. Let the country crash and burn, maybe the educated adults can rebuild the country once more from these unscrupulous con men.
Ecstatic_Ad_8994 | 16 hours ago
tax rates should aim at the last decade average of spending plus 10%. The goal for the next century should be to pay for government services from investment income.
BatMiserable9061 | 16 hours ago
Congress will wait a few more years to do this. Just in time for them to point their greedy lil finger at the new guard rails when asked about social security
BaronessVonKush | 16 hours ago
what a dumb article. you dont need a constutional fix, you need to eject this waste of human skin into the sun & get this evil pos out of office, is what you need to do.
AyeMatey | 15 hours ago
Warren Buffet had the answer - make a law: if the budget isn’t balanced , the Congressional pay and benefits have to be suspended.
You will magically get a balanced budget.
Loonewoolf | 15 hours ago
This is the solution
Ketaskooter | 15 hours ago
It’s a dumb suggestion now that money can flow freely to politicians.
screenmasher | 15 hours ago
And in the same vein, congress shout have to live on the minimum wage for their district. Watch how fast the federal minimum would go up if they had to support their families and coke habits on $7.25/ hr
unl1988 | 15 hours ago
Well, let me know what the party of fiscal responsibility has to say about that.
We will of course have to wait until the democrats are in charge so they can complain about it.
OhighOent | 15 hours ago
This is just good business. You buy in cheap, sell off all the assets and declare bankruptcy. Too bad it's our fucking country not Trump Steaks.
suboptimus_maximus | 15 hours ago
Repeal the 16th Amendment!
Ahahahahah, no way a Republican President and Congress would go there when in spite of all their talk about government spending, Republican districts depend on income redistribution from a handful of large liberal metro economies to pay for the social welfare subsidies that keep them in the first world.
cybercuzco | 14 hours ago
I see and if the constitution says that the budget has to be balanced, who determines what sections of a non-balanced budget are unconstitutional?
RociBuldidi | 14 hours ago
Remember when Trump said he would not only balance the budget, but eliminate the debt his first term? lol…
Instead, he has been President for 2% of the life of the United States but is responsible for 23% of its debt (not including Covid spending).
Muh golden age of America!!
DelphiTsar | 13 hours ago
Balancing the budget is simple. Road to 135B surplus.
Medicare for all & negotiate (like every other country on the planet), say we'll spend as much as the next highest country(Swis), tax the savings. Tell every near peer we'll cut 2 dollars of defense spending for every dollar they cut(aim for half or more). Treat capital gains as income (before nonsense about property/small business there are already exceptions for this, spare me) and close loan/step up basis loopholes.
OLPopsAdelphia | 13 hours ago
Put liens on the assets and properties of every elected official who let this abuse happen.
This wasn’t casual spending on necessities. This was flagrant mismanagement and theft of our wealth.
Those who did this and let this happen need to pay.
ganjaccount | 12 hours ago
Tax the fucking rich. It doesn't need to be a Constitutional revision, it needs to be a political revolution. The Republican party, at this point, needs to just go away completely. The Democrats need to be purged of corporate interests. The court needs to be expanded, and citizens united reversed. Rich people need to start getting locked up when the commit crimes.
StormyPassages | 12 hours ago
America would indeed be headed to ruin, if we only had U.S. debt and deficits. However, the U.S. also has assets that "Fortune" never adds into the equation, because they're a rag that sells lies for rich people who want you to believe that the richest country in the world is poor.
Drak_is_Right | 12 hours ago
If we can get the deficit down to about 3T a decade it would be good. That is a manageable rate we can outgrow.
Capping at 3% would be a good start, but getting balanced by 2030 isnt happening.
Amusing how these articles tend to only come out when Republicans are facing issues on elections.
ThepalehorseRiderr | 11 hours ago
Since the government will never function like a business in the sense of creating and selling great goods and services to make money, shouldn't Mr. Brilliant business man at least be able to balance a budget?
PossiblyATurd | 11 hours ago
Nah, it can wait. The people currently in control cannot and will not ever create any sort of constitutional amendment that is a positive for the people they're supposed to serve.
We will be firmly in the expense category of their floundering and corrupt attempts at correcting it. Their fix will be to rig it in their favor.
Lopsided_Weird_3293 | 10 hours ago
Trump is a criminal who is stealing money from the Treasury, he admires Putin who stole the most from his country and has driven Russia to the point of collapse, but he’s the criminal he admires so America is in for pain
froznwind | 10 hours ago
The problem with balanced budget laws is how they dictate spending to be controlled. Usually it's on "discretionary" programs. Not the ones that fund the military, social security, or medicare, but the ones that feed the hungry, help those in need find jobs, infrastructure etc. So balance the budget the same way that people have to in real life: If you spend more than you have, you're still expected to pay the bill. If, at the end of the fiscal year the budget is in deficit, impose a tax on all Americans equal to whatever % of wealth necessary to balance the books. All assets included.
CertainlyRobotic | 10 hours ago
It's cute that you think the Constitution means anything anymore.
The game is clearly interpretation of the Constitution and stacking the room with people who will interpret it your way.
It will never change. It was always just a stupid piece of paper.
CaddyDaddy26 | 10 hours ago
They have no intention of reducing the debt. Their plan is to increase the GDP enough with cheap immigrant labor and AI in hopes of “offsetting” the debt.
CertainlyRobotic | 10 hours ago
You'll never see a surplus.
A surplus would leave the question "What do we do with that money"
And they're already doing whatever they fuck they want with unlimited money.
They wouldn't be able to say, "We don't have the money" in response to the things you want and need.
Exodus180 | 9 hours ago
The constitutional fix WAS supposed to be congress, but republicans abdicated their duties and bowed down to a pedo.
Also all voters (non-voters, 3rd party and republican) did not perform their civic duty to vote responsibly.
Difficult-Second3519 | 8 hours ago
Ah… this was the plan all along, increase the debt exponentially while raping all assets, impoverishing the people, then preventing any spending to repair it.
Richandler | 7 hours ago
No, it isn't.
The main function of the deficit, is to express to the change in savings desire of all those that are participating in this currency. There are levels to this that a lot of people don't acknowledge, include the fact that that rich do not value the poor at all and don't see them as a way of fulfilling a way that they can spend their money. This is basically a huge symptom of the fact that we have financialized our economy. It's just numbers and who can mess with them the best while winning over political favors...
DiscoLego | 6 hours ago
The first step is an Audit. Not one by a government agency. They're based. It has to be an independent 3rd party.
I want to look at every line item. Especially including the US Military.
What's budgeted. How much has been spent.
Flag every line item that's spent more than it's budget.
Flag every line item that's running below it's budgeted amount.
Review the overages and underages.
Then ask every department manager with a budget of over a million dollars to present why they need their budget.
Then look at the Total deficit and divide it against all the budgets over a million dollars to determine each department's cuts.
Then ask the managers to decide/choose where to make the cuts
Encourage managers to talk to and make deals with each other in case one manager can cut more to help spare another manager from cutting something important.
Consistent_Pitch782 | 6 hours ago
Or…. and stay with me for a second…… why not do nothing about it? Just wait until the Democrats take over the Presidency and Congress, and then stonewall or filibuster every effort to fix the problem while complaining bitterly on Fox News about how Democrats can’t fix the budget/deficit. That’s been the Republican game plan since 2010, and they keep getting people elected.
golgol12 | 5 hours ago
My feeling on fixing the budget is to tie taxes on the ultra rich based on how much debt we have. It'll be fixed very quickly. 0 debt, low tax.
BTW, 94% tax rate on the ultra rich is what we did post WW2 to fix the debt till the 70s. It clearly works, and the economy did extremely well under it.
Frost033 | 39 minutes ago
A balanced budget amendment to the Constitution has been simmering many conservatives have wanted for years. There are just too many democrats and republicans that scoff at the idea and are too addicted to spending other people’s money