Federal debt

Just fix wasted spending like Trump is already doing. Get people who have gotten generational benefits back to work.

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When do you think it finally goes bust and what do you think that looks like?

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You’re seeing it right now. If someone isn’t paying attention they won’t know the difference. All the checks will clear. The purchasing power of those checks will be how the problem is remedied.

At the very least over the next 20 or 30 years we're going to learn a lot about how realistic MMT actually is.

Just fix wasted spending like Trump is already doing.
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You are on the wrong board. Lol. Dumbest comment I have read today.

The big beautiful bill adds more to national debt than any other legislation in the history of our country.

Def. Early next decade.

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When do you think it finally goes bust and what do you think that looks like?

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When a Treasury Auction or two fail.

The fact that reducing the *increase* in Medicaid spending from 5% to 3% caused a political meltdown, low hanging fruit cuts to pbs, npr, and foreign aid likewise caused a meltdown, is not a good sign that there will be much political will to reduce debt in the 2030s.

Tax increases won’t come close to addressing the federal debt.

It’s 3 items driving it: Medicaid, Medicare, and ss

Ss trust fund runs out in 2034. Dems will want to “fix” this by lifting the cap on payroll taxes, that’s a huge political headache.

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Just fix wasted spending like Trump is already doing.
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but is he?
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The guy you are responding to is clueless. Anyone that thinks he is fixing wasted spending is just a kool-aid drinker not interested in the truth. It is fact that he is adding more to our debt than any president in our history. It is sad that the concept of DOGE could have been significant if done correctly.

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Could have been much easier politically to let the tax cuts expire instead we extended them forever

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Letting the TCJA expire would have amounted to the largest single tax increase on Americans in the history of the United States. It would have been political suicide. Even if dems had power right now, they would maybe have only let it expire for the top earners, and that extra tax revenue would have been spent on new goodies rather than pay down the debt.

There is nothing fiscally conservative about raising taxes and not cutting spending.

I am not against tax increases per se to address the debt, but tax revenue as a % of gdp right now is about where it has been on average since the 1960s. Even if you raise taxes to only address half the issue, that would push taxes as a % of gdp to highest on record.

The elephant in the room is the explosion in entitlement spending. We had a golden opportunity in 2005 to fix some of the issues by passing W’s plan to invest social security funds, and unfortunately it did not pass.

Here is how bad the situation is: lifting the tax cap on ss would only buy ss an extra 4 years of solvency.


What makes matters worse is that we have vast swaths of elderly Americans who chose to just live on ss payments rather than develop a nest egg in their working years. Reforming ss would be a lot easier if grandma did the right thing and saved money. But alas

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Congress voted to reduce a slew of federal employee benefits and increase contributions only to be killed by RINOs in Senate.

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I'm not sure the federal employee benefits amount to much. During all these supposed cuts to the federal workforce in the last few months, which btw has not been a large % of the workforce at this time. And I'm not sure Congress has the appetite to keep cutting

Actual federal employee benefits apparently overhauled in the 1980s, their current benefits system is not as expensive or lucrative as I thought

Not sure they are making much of a dent in the spending by cutting there compared to the big ticket items... The big 3 and defense