re: Senate Republican: ‘We can’t afford’ $2,000 tariff checks

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Wonder when Trump starts to primary against this assclown conservative?

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If you can't be loyal to a person who's not loyal to anybody what use are you?

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But, he's a hypocrite.

There's been no movement to decrease the deficit.

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He’s trying to do it as we post.

Reducing the deficit is now a bad thing because it goes against Trump or something

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They can afford billions to israel

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And Ukraine
And a host of other foreign countries


Past time to face the fact that our government does not and does not care to represent the citizens of the US. They are all owned by lobbies and foreign governments. They just use us to stay in power and we are stupid enough to keep falling for it.

When did any POS in DC really give one frick about the deficit?

Send me my $2000 check

And make the democrats vote against it!!!!!!!

They will continue to implode

And frick any republicans that are against it

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You simply don't understand the math

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One of us doesn't, but it's not me.

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When the denominator explodes due to total expenditures ballooning, at some point it no longer makes sense to look at defense spending only in terms of total expenditures

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But total expenditures aren't exploding, corrected for inflation. Two expenditures are. SS/Medicare/Medicaid and the interest on the debt.

Right?

Yes, that makes the "total expenditures" line go up, but your implication is that we're increasing spending by an equal amount across the board on all expenditures, and that's nothing but a lie.

Interest plus SS/Medicare/Medicaid is your 100 lbs of extra fat we talked about in the analogy earlier.

And instead of addressing the actual problem, you want to do the equivalent of cutting down your weekly screen time. And I quote, "because it's easier."

There's no misunderstanding here.

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The interest payments on the debt have reached critical mass where using % of total expenditures as a baseline is pure dumb frickery

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Only if you are a moron.

Because as I keep pointing out, if your argument is that one or two (sometimes you say it's one, sometimes you include SS/M/M in your smoke and mirrors) line items has increased the total expenditures to the point that other line items appear artificially low, IT HAS HAD THE SAME EFFECT ON EVERY LINE ITEM.

Just so you can't keep claiming "you don't understand the math," let's do some, and we'll keep it simple.

Here's a monthly budget for a small business:

Legal/accounting: $350 2%
Supplies: $1,250 6%
Raw Materials: $3,000 15%
Salaries/Payroll: $11,000 56%
Marketing: $400 2%
Maintenance/cleaning: $300 1.5%
Insurance: $500 3%
Rent: $2500 13%

Total Expenditures: $19,300

Each line item's percentage of total budget is represented above. It adds up to 98.5% instead of 100% due to rounding.

Now as pertains to our federal budget, the analogous line item to SS/M/M is salaries/payroll, at 56%.

The analogous line item to defense would be rent at 13%.

The analogous line item to interest on debt would be raw materials at 15%.

So let's say we experience a disproportionate growth in two of these line items over a 15 year period (and the others increase, but more or less proportionately).

That's what has happened with the federal budget. Medicare spending doubled between 2008 and 2023, Medicaid spending tripled, and SS increased by 170% (nearly tripled). The national debt almost quadrupled during that time frame (a factor of 3.89).

Military spending rose from $820 billion in 2008 to $916 billion in 2023, which means that adjusted for inflation, it went down. It didn't even keep up with inflation, which is (ready for this...it's pretty unbelievable...wait for it...wait for it...the total inflation from 2008 to 2023 was 42%).

So just to keep up with inflation the military budget would have to have been 1.16 trillion to be the same as it was in 2008. As it is, it increased by a factor of roughly 1.1, not the 1.42 that would have been dictated by inflation.

I'm not going to go over every line item in the budget, but unless you know something I don't, military spending is typical of the other line items in the budget not mentioned. I know that SNAP is roughly the same, for example.

*All of those SS/M/M and defense numbers are actual numbers, not percentages.

So let's see what happens when we plug those proportions into our analogy.

Legal/accounting: $385 .9%
Supplies: $1,375 3%
Raw Materials: $11,670 26%
Salaries/Payroll: $27,500 61%
Marketing: $440 1%
Maintenance/cleaning: $330 .7%
Insurance: $550 1%
Rent: $2,750 6%

Total Expenditures: $45,000

So is rent now artificially deflated as a percentage of the budget? Sure. So is everything else, except the two line items that are driving everything up.

Can you say that one shouldn't look at percentages? I guess, but that doesn't change anything given that we're essentially only talking about two line items that are causing the budget to increase from $19,300 to $45,000.

Now here's the important part. This is after you keep telling ME that I don't understand the math:

You are looking at the above budget and telling me that it's really, really, vitally important that we cut our rent expenditure. You're not worried about salaries and raw materials. It's rent that has to come down.

Who is it that doesn't understand here?

And that's just applying real factors...what's actually happened in the US federal budget for the 15 years between 2008 and 2023.

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It's like brainwashing.

The article literally says:

"President Trump had deficits about $800 billion. Obama, in his last four years, $550 billion a year."

$800 billion (R) > $550 billion (D)

But you can't even see it due to your bias. Remarkable.

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Did you take into account the inflationary aspect of the spending between the two presidents?

Inflation rate from 2014 to now 2025 is 36.55%. Let's take Obama's debt and adjust it. $751B. Pretty close to Trump's debt of $800B isn't it? You think Obama did a great job with the debt didn't you? Is that your bias at work? Remarkable.

If we want to discuss this stuff. Let's really break it all down and figure it out and talk about every aspect of it. Let's compare apples to apples.

All presidents have failed at the debt. Don't act like Obama did well with it. Was hoping Trump would reduce it, but he's also added to it with policy.


Biden in just 4 years:

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Over the four years of President Biden’s term – from January 2021 through January 2025 – we estimate that he approved $4.7 trillion in new ten-year debt through legislation and executive actions.

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How well did Biden do?

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Did you take into account the inflationary aspect of the spending between the two presidents?

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COVID spending in 2020 and 2021 caused the massive inflation. Both Trump and Biden are to blame.