Federal interest expenditures vs tax receipts

Fact. There hasn’t been a true fiscal conservative in decades.

Partly why aligning with a party is a complete joke.

Agree. The weak minded always blame the "others" with lazy, uninformed arguments.

I would guess the OP can't name the last president to have a surplus budget.

What hasn't been income taxed, estate taxed, or distributed just yet...

Those charts show tax receipts are up a trillion dollars since 2020. Interest payments up 400 billion. The real problem is too much other spending.

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Fact. There hasn’t been a true fiscal conservative in decades.

Partly why aligning with a party is a complete joke.

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It's one of my key issues. It's incredibly frustration watching Rs and Ds argue over various inconsequential social issues while they both spend us into certain doom.

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No one from either party is serious about cutting spending, much less reducing debt.

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This. The GOP is the lesser of the two evils in this but it's akin to saying having 7 fingers cut off isn't as bad as having 8 cut off.

I've said this for over a decade now but the biggest issue with this is that no one goes to DC to serve only one term. What I mean is that the level of cuts needed would enrage voters from across the spectrum to the point where anyone proposing or voting for such cuts would very likely be ending their political careers.

For example, the FY2022 budget would have had to be cut by 21.9% (this is across the board, everything from legislator salaries to military retirements to electricity bills for government buildings to Section 8, etc) just to break even (higher, if you start blocking off things). Who is going to propose such a budget? Who is going to vote for it?

The answer to those two questions is the same: no one.

For the foreseeable future we have $1T+ projected annual deficits. That debt has interest (and the interest is high, unlike the interest of the last couple of decades), meaning the federal government is going to need more and more just to service the debt. As that servicing amount grows, the likelihood that we'll ever pay the debt down diminishes.

FY2022 receipts were $4.8T, servicing for FY2022 was $.7T ( LINK). Since FY2008 deficits amounts have routinely exceeded servicing payments. When your debt servicing is more than your deficit, you're paying at least some of your debt with revenues. When your deficit is higher than your debt servicing, that marginal amount is how much extra debt you are creating just to service your debt. For a decade and a half we've been creating more debt to service debt and, as such, that marginal amount is growing.

So not only are we creating more debt by Congress spending crazily, we're at a point where even our debt servicing is creating marginal debt.

That's unsustainable. It's not a matter of "if", but "when".

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They don't care. They've got their eye on something that can help.

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That could cause a revolt, especially if they don't age limit it to something like "under 65".

Retirees have lots of spare time to protest.

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The money is already taxed as income when it’s withdrawn.

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Yea people like to ignore that little fact whenever they talk about how the government is going to raid 401ks.

401ks are already taxed at the highest rates. Higher than any other long term investment.

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Fact. There hasn’t been a true fiscal conservative in decades.

Partly why aligning with a party is a complete joke.

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Most "conservatives" now are Left of Clinton.