Hey ATL...
- Thread starter WVUCOOPER
- Start date
It's nothing to worry about, after all, every day more and more baby boomers are going off Social Security and Medicare and entering the workforce to become net contributors to the system instead of net takers.
The Babylon Bee has covered this topic.
https://babylonbee.com/news/republi...ly-conservative-moment-democrat-takes-office/
It’s the Democrats fault....not divisive politics spewed by Trump, not the GOP in power, not the lack of transparency Trump promised, not the GOP protected true American non-socialist policy makers.....it’s the Democrats.
Some will still claim Trump cares and post nonsense stories about cutting $10 in gov't waste and ignoring the bottom line. It's great.
Yup....that sucks all right Coop. All confirmation in my mind that we need sustained growth in execss of 3% AND deep dramatic cuts in discretionary outlays. Nothing there changes my mind about that formula because we don't have a revenue problem Coop, we have a spending problem.
That article you linked to didn't specifically mention it, but what's happening to revenues under those projections?
Are we running trillion dollar deficits because all of a sudden we have less tax receipts due to the Trump tax cuts? Or are we still running these massive deficits because we are spending every additional dollar that's come in since those tax cuts have created growth in excess of 2.5% real GDP?
I think if you're honest with yourself Coop which is something I know you struggle with, you will agree we are not operating on less revenues coming into the treasury.
So the problem is in controlling our spending. Trump's budget for FY 19 will be out around late summer and early Fall. Lets see where the cuts in discretionary spending are and who supports them as we continue to grow the economy with tax cuts and additional revenues to the treasury?
I'm sure you'll be out in front cheering Trump's budget cuts along.
Hopefully true conservatives realize that this Alt-right WH isn't conservative at all.
When his proposed budget cuts come out later this year, I'm sure you folks on the Left will come up with some other horrible name to hang around his neck.
Trump is already in his 2nd year so he's had time to do a budget already, and with a Congress the same party as him too.
I haven't been following the spending numbers but I know that a large percentage of the budget goes towards Social Security & Medicare (which Trump has said he won't touch), defense (which Trump has increased spending on) and servicing the debt (which we can't reduce). If you think Trump is going to do some kind of big spending reduction I think you're mistaken.
I don't know what he's going to do and I said in my response to Coop the cuts will have to come on the discretionary portions of the budget because of the built in spending you mentioned in your post.
I still insist though that this is not a revenue problem it is a spending problem. And it seems to me that given the fact we are once again approaching deficits in excess of what we collect in revenues, we can find a way to get by spending less as we grow the economy.
I can't see how anyone who is serious about these deficits would advocate more spending even though we are currently bringing in more revenues. But Socialists don't want less spending they want all spending and ever-increasing taxes to fund it.
The point I was making is, if you have a spending problem you can't really solve it if you don't address the things on which you're spending the most, which are defense, Soc Sec/Medicare and debt service. Cutting a couple other programs here and there isn't going to amount to much in the big picture.
It's like if you want to lose weight but you insist on still eating five large pizzas a day but to lose weight you say that you'll go without pepperoni on one of your daily pizzas. In the grand scheme of things it doesn't really make a difference.
Compared to everything else in our junk food diet that is the federal budget, defense spending is a relatively small portion of our overall discretionary outlays.
As I mentioned in the article that Cooper linked to revenues are not decreasing as a result of these tax cuts. So whatever additional defense spending we are authorizing is more than paid for by the growth in the economy due to the tax cuts. We face a hostile world and by the Left's own admission hostile Russians trying to interfere with our ability to lead the Free World.
Defense spending is not sacrosanct and we need to save where we can, but I favor stronger defense budgets to protect the nation. With all of the documented waste, fraud, abuse and needless programs that typically make up the rest of our federal budget and dwarfs our military spending it seems to me we can find a way to make our expenses match our revenues or at least make significant reductions in the amount of money we spend that we don't have.
Then hopefully the legislators and the President will get together and come up with viable alternatives for reforms in entitlement spending where as you correctly point out, the real money is and the real savings can be found.
"The Mid-Session Review (MSR) estimates of receipts are below the 2019 Budget estimates by $18 billion in 2018"
Revenues are up. Revenues are always up when the economy grows. Of course spending is a problem. The GOP controls Congress and he WH. This IS Trump's budget. From the link provided:
In an annual budget review, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) estimated that new legislation enacted since the release of its February budget — alongside new projections on other spending and receipts — would add $101 billion more to the 2019 deficit, pushing it above $1 trillion.
Again, he proposes small cuts as political talking points, but overall spending is increasing faster than revenues. The bottom line is what counts, no?
Defense spending is around 55% of discretionary spending. That's "relatively small"? Are you sure you know what discretionary spending is?
His $60B increase in DOD spending is the $800 lb gorilla in the room. If you cut EPA by 20%, that's only $1.5B. Not enough federal things to cut to make up for the DOD gain just to break even, let alone reduce the budget. His 2018 budget was 10% bigger than Obama's biggest.
So we're going to quibble over the one thing we do need Government do to and ironically it does well? OK, then fine. Let's look at the entire Federal budget since that deficit you're carping about also includes non-discretionary spending.
Once you include the 60 percent of the budget that is mandatory spending, the military share plunges from 57 percent to 16 percent, (a relatively small portion of the overall budget) and the categories that include Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid collectively account for a majority of federal spending. So how big of a slice and thus how much in real savings can you acquire on a Trillion dollar deficit if you gut our Military which amazingly is the usually first and only thing the Left always looks to cut when budgets come under review.
Hey Coop...I'd cut it ALL...I'd start with a ZERO budget, and fund only those things proscribed Constitutionally. EVERYTHING else would be eliminated...privatized, phased out, unfunded, line item vetoed! I don't make the budgets, I only vote out the bloodsuckers who can't spend less than what we take in!
I think you are disingenuous in your outrage over all of this profligate spending, but I do at least agree with you in principle that we spend too damn much money and we're not serious about making the type of cuts to eliminate these crushing deficits. We have a spending problem, not a revenue problem.
I favor a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. I vote for candidates who also favor that. I want the line item veto, and zero based budgeting and an end to all current services baseline increases. I prefer privatization of all non essential Federal services. I also support elimination of Federal agencies like Education, Agriculture, Commerce, Labor, Interior, and Housing. All of that can be accomplished privately.
I favor the Mack penny plan to cut a penny off off every dollar appropriated that's is not mandatory by Law. I also favor systematic reforms in all entitlement programs, including elimination of Federal personal retirement Insurance, Federal medical Insurance, and Federal Housing and/or Food payments. Finally, I prefer statutory restrictions on the amount of Federal outlays that should never exceed 15% of the lowest amount of GDP generated for the previous FY.
If those measures don't balance the Federal budget, we don't need one.
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I'm breaking my own rule talking budget metters with you but since you asked. Here is a breakdown on Trump's FY'19 budget. See what else you'd cut or what you support in these proposed cuts?
MAJOR SAVINGS AND REFORMS IN THE PRESIDENT’S 2019 BUDGET This volume describes major savings and reform proposals included in the 2019 President’s Budget. It includes both discretionary and mandatory savings proposals that work to bring Federal spending under control, and reduce deficits by $3.6 trillion over the budget window. These proposals encompass an aggressive set of actions to redefine the proper role of the Federal Government and curtail those programs that fail to efficiently and effectively deliver promised outcomes to the American people. In total, this volume highlights 2019 proposed savings of $48.4 billion in discretionary programs, including $25.8 billion in program eliminations and $22.6 billion in reductions. The volume also describes the major mandatory savings proposals summarized in Table S-6 of the Budget volume. Many of the eliminations and reductions in this volume reflect a continuation of policies proposed in the 2018 President’s Budget that have not yet been enacted by the Congress. New savings and reforms proposals focus on the Administration’s efforts to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse in Federal programs.
Full Budget:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/msar-fy2019.pdf
Article:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/politics/trump-budget-2019/?utm_term=.695d4e24675c
excerpt:
Key proposed changes
Reduces funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program by $17.2 billion in 2019 and $213.5 billion over the next 10 years.
Limits eligibility in the crop insurance program and caps premium subsidies.
Cuts the $136 million in funding for conservation programs.
Eliminates the Rural Economic Development Loan and Grant Program.
Discontinues the $166 million Food for Progress aid program.
Saves $300 million by eliminating the Economic Development Administration, which the administration says duplicates programs at the departments of agriculture and transportation.
Saves $125 million by erasing the federal contribution to the Manufacturing Extension Partnership program, which funds state consulting services for small- and medium-sized companies.
Boosts spending on preparations for the 2020 census to $3.8 billion, a $2.3 billion increase.
Adds a modest $3 million to trade enforcement efforts.
Adds $24 billion to modernize the nuclear infrastructure.
To deal with the growing threat from a nuclear-armed North Korea, the budget sets aside money to add 20 ground-based missile interceptors in Alaska, increasing the number to 64.
Cuts several discretionary grant programs, including the D.C. tuition aid program.
Pell grants would be expanded so they could be used for short-term academic and certificate programs, reflecting the administration's emphasis on career training over four-year colleges and universities.
Slashes 66 percent of the budget for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, which studies advanced transportation, wind and solar energy.
Eliminates the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, a program popular in Congress.
Cuts the department's loan guarantee programs, although the existing portfolio would be maintained.
Terminates construction of a mixed-oxide nuclear fuel fabrication facility in South Carolina that has the support of Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.).
A 17.5 percent boost for the department's National Nuclear Security Administration, which makes up nearly half the department's budget.
The administration is also seeking to sell electric transmission assets of federally-owned utilities in the northwestern United States.
Cuts funding of the subsidies that help more than four in five people with ACA marketplace health plans afford insurance premiums.
“New investments” to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in an initiative begun under the Obama administration called the Global Health Security Agenda to strengthen countries’ abilities to respond to infectious disease outbreaks, whether naturally occurring, accidental or deliberate.
Adds $5 billion over the next five years to combat the opioid epidemic, a fraction of what experts say is needed. (The money is part of $10 billion in government funding for substance abuse and mental health requested in the budget.)
Adds $1 billion in new resources for fiscal 2019, up from $500 million in each of the last two years.
Sets aside $1.6 billion for construction of 65 miles of border wall in South Texas.
Adds $782 million to hire and support 2,750 additional law enforcement officers and agents at U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Adds $2.8 billion to increase immigration detention to 52,000 beds per day.
Adds $71 million for new technology at Transportation Security Admin.
Adds $2.2 billion for Secret Service to hire 450 special agents, officers and professional staff.
Reduces Section 8 federal housing subsidies
Eliminates the $1.9 billion fund for public housing capital repairs
Like last year, zeroes out community development block grants, which play a key role in disaster recovery, as well as grants to states and local governments to increase homeownership for the lowest-income Americans, and funding for neighborhood redevelopment.
The administration plans to unveil legislation to institute work requirements for Americans receiving housing subsidies, on a broad scale.
Slashes $33 million, or 92 percent, of the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which supports land acquisition and restoration efforts using federal revenue from oil and gas drilling off the Outer Continental Shelf.
Takes 50 percent of energy leasing receipts that exceed fiscal 2018 budget projections and are not allocated for other programs and divert those to the infrastructure projects. With Interior trying to expand energy development on federal lands and waters, the document notes, “this initiative has the potential to generate up to $18 billion over 10 years for parks and other public lands infrastructure.”
Eliminates the Community Relations Service, a “peacemaker” office created by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to help ease conflicts and tensions in communities facing conflicts over race, gender, religion and other factors. Duties of the office, which is not an investigative or prosecutorial unit, will be merged with the Civil Rights Division, which does investigate crimes. Jobs will be eliminated when the office is moved.
The Bureau of Prisons will close two regional offices and close two stand-alone minimum security prison camps for a savings of more than $122 million.
Allots an additional $295 million to fighting the opioid epidemic.
Adds $65.9 million for immigration enforcement and border security.
Cut funding for National Dislocated Worker Grants — support for those who lose their jobs in natural disasters or factory closures — from $219.5 million in 2017 to $51 million in 2019.
Shrink funding for Adult Employment and Training Activities, which serve veterans, Native Americans and young people who have dropped out of high school, by nearly half, from $810 million in 2017 to $490.3 million in 2019.
Raise funding for apprenticeships more than double, from $95 million to $200 million.
Eliminate TIGER grants, a major discretionary program. The competitive grants fund a variety of road, rail and transit efforts.
“Wind down” a major source of transit funding, the Capital Investment Grants program, limiting it to those projects that already have funding agreements in place.
The White House is also re-upping its proposal to shift the nation's air traffic control system out of government hands.
Add $8.6 billion for mental health services, 6 percent above 2018, to support standardized suicide screening and risk assessments and expand options for post-traumatic stress disorder treatment.
Provide emergent mental health services to certain former service members with other than honorable administrative discharges.
Provide $381 million to programs “to reduce over-reliance on opioids for pain management.”
Eliminate funding for state radon-detection programs, assistance to fund water system improvements along the U.S.-Mexico border and partnerships to monitor and restore water quality in the Gulf of Mexico, Puget Sound and other large water bodies.
Add $397 million in funding to bolster investment in wastewater and stormwater infrastructure.
The Superfund cleanup program, a priority of EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, would no longer be slashed.
Terminates the $100 million Office of Education
Cuts development of the WFIRST telescope.
Adds $54.2 million to help develop manufacturing technologies in space.
Those are just some hi-lights. Detailed figures are available in the pdf link I provided.
MAJOR SAVINGS AND REFORMS IN THE PRESIDENT’S 2019 BUDGET This volume describes major savings and reform proposals included in the 2019 President’s Budget. It includes both discretionary and mandatory savings proposals that work to bring Federal spending under control, and reduce deficits by $3.6 trillion over the budget window. These proposals encompass an aggressive set of actions to redefine the proper role of the Federal Government and curtail those programs that fail to efficiently and effectively deliver promised outcomes to the American people. In total, this volume highlights 2019 proposed savings of $48.4 billion in discretionary programs, including $25.8 billion in program eliminations and $22.6 billion in reductions. The volume also describes the major mandatory savings proposals summarized in Table S-6 of the Budget volume. Many of the eliminations and reductions in this volume reflect a continuation of policies proposed in the 2018 President’s Budget that have not yet been enacted by the Congress. New savings and reforms proposals focus on the Administration’s efforts to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse in Federal programs.
Full Budget:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/msar-fy2019.pdf
Article:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/politics/trump-budget-2019/?utm_term=.695d4e24675c
excerpt:
Key proposed changes
Reduces funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program by $17.2 billion in 2019 and $213.5 billion over the next 10 years.
Limits eligibility in the crop insurance program and caps premium subsidies.
Cuts the $136 million in funding for conservation programs.
Eliminates the Rural Economic Development Loan and Grant Program.
Discontinues the $166 million Food for Progress aid program.
Saves $300 million by eliminating the Economic Development Administration, which the administration says duplicates programs at the departments of agriculture and transportation.
Saves $125 million by erasing the federal contribution to the Manufacturing Extension Partnership program, which funds state consulting services for small- and medium-sized companies.
Boosts spending on preparations for the 2020 census to $3.8 billion, a $2.3 billion increase.
Adds a modest $3 million to trade enforcement efforts.
Adds $24 billion to modernize the nuclear infrastructure.
To deal with the growing threat from a nuclear-armed North Korea, the budget sets aside money to add 20 ground-based missile interceptors in Alaska, increasing the number to 64.
Cuts several discretionary grant programs, including the D.C. tuition aid program.
Pell grants would be expanded so they could be used for short-term academic and certificate programs, reflecting the administration's emphasis on career training over four-year colleges and universities.
Slashes 66 percent of the budget for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, which studies advanced transportation, wind and solar energy.
Eliminates the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, a program popular in Congress.
Cuts the department's loan guarantee programs, although the existing portfolio would be maintained.
Terminates construction of a mixed-oxide nuclear fuel fabrication facility in South Carolina that has the support of Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.).
A 17.5 percent boost for the department's National Nuclear Security Administration, which makes up nearly half the department's budget.
The administration is also seeking to sell electric transmission assets of federally-owned utilities in the northwestern United States.
Cuts funding of the subsidies that help more than four in five people with ACA marketplace health plans afford insurance premiums.
“New investments” to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in an initiative begun under the Obama administration called the Global Health Security Agenda to strengthen countries’ abilities to respond to infectious disease outbreaks, whether naturally occurring, accidental or deliberate.
Adds $5 billion over the next five years to combat the opioid epidemic, a fraction of what experts say is needed. (The money is part of $10 billion in government funding for substance abuse and mental health requested in the budget.)
Adds $1 billion in new resources for fiscal 2019, up from $500 million in each of the last two years.
Sets aside $1.6 billion for construction of 65 miles of border wall in South Texas.
Adds $782 million to hire and support 2,750 additional law enforcement officers and agents at U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Adds $2.8 billion to increase immigration detention to 52,000 beds per day.
Adds $71 million for new technology at Transportation Security Admin.
Adds $2.2 billion for Secret Service to hire 450 special agents, officers and professional staff.
Reduces Section 8 federal housing subsidies
Eliminates the $1.9 billion fund for public housing capital repairs
Like last year, zeroes out community development block grants, which play a key role in disaster recovery, as well as grants to states and local governments to increase homeownership for the lowest-income Americans, and funding for neighborhood redevelopment.
The administration plans to unveil legislation to institute work requirements for Americans receiving housing subsidies, on a broad scale.
Slashes $33 million, or 92 percent, of the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which supports land acquisition and restoration efforts using federal revenue from oil and gas drilling off the Outer Continental Shelf.
Takes 50 percent of energy leasing receipts that exceed fiscal 2018 budget projections and are not allocated for other programs and divert those to the infrastructure projects. With Interior trying to expand energy development on federal lands and waters, the document notes, “this initiative has the potential to generate up to $18 billion over 10 years for parks and other public lands infrastructure.”
Eliminates the Community Relations Service, a “peacemaker” office created by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to help ease conflicts and tensions in communities facing conflicts over race, gender, religion and other factors. Duties of the office, which is not an investigative or prosecutorial unit, will be merged with the Civil Rights Division, which does investigate crimes. Jobs will be eliminated when the office is moved.
The Bureau of Prisons will close two regional offices and close two stand-alone minimum security prison camps for a savings of more than $122 million.
Allots an additional $295 million to fighting the opioid epidemic.
Adds $65.9 million for immigration enforcement and border security.
Cut funding for National Dislocated Worker Grants — support for those who lose their jobs in natural disasters or factory closures — from $219.5 million in 2017 to $51 million in 2019.
Shrink funding for Adult Employment and Training Activities, which serve veterans, Native Americans and young people who have dropped out of high school, by nearly half, from $810 million in 2017 to $490.3 million in 2019.
Raise funding for apprenticeships more than double, from $95 million to $200 million.
Eliminate TIGER grants, a major discretionary program. The competitive grants fund a variety of road, rail and transit efforts.
“Wind down” a major source of transit funding, the Capital Investment Grants program, limiting it to those projects that already have funding agreements in place.
The White House is also re-upping its proposal to shift the nation's air traffic control system out of government hands.
Add $8.6 billion for mental health services, 6 percent above 2018, to support standardized suicide screening and risk assessments and expand options for post-traumatic stress disorder treatment.
Provide emergent mental health services to certain former service members with other than honorable administrative discharges.
Provide $381 million to programs “to reduce over-reliance on opioids for pain management.”
Eliminate funding for state radon-detection programs, assistance to fund water system improvements along the U.S.-Mexico border and partnerships to monitor and restore water quality in the Gulf of Mexico, Puget Sound and other large water bodies.
Add $397 million in funding to bolster investment in wastewater and stormwater infrastructure.
The Superfund cleanup program, a priority of EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, would no longer be slashed.
Terminates the $100 million Office of Education
Cuts development of the WFIRST telescope.
Adds $54.2 million to help develop manufacturing technologies in space.
Those are just some hi-lights. Detailed figures are available in the pdf link I provided.
And yet you blindly support a man that has NO desire to do anything near what you want.
You say all of that and yet blindly, enthusiastically support a man who is exponentially exploding the deficit and growing the debt.
lol. You realize what you just posted is the budget my initial link was about. It's a $1 trillion deficit. You're applauding that? I'd go back to not discussing budgets with me.
That's exactly what I'll do. Excellent point Coop!
FYI...you opened the thread by posting me.
He's coming closer to anyone that's on your side. If he doesn't get it done we will simply replace him with someone who will. I guarantee you they will not be from the Left.
Look at the deficit numbers over the last several years. Someone on the left did a better job with a worse economy, whether you like how he did it or not.
I like you Mule, I really do...but some things you say make me think you're just as much of a Left wing loon as the loons and I know that's not true. I probably "like" your posts more than any other Lefty on this board because you do often make a lot of sense.
Obama operated under the constraints of a Republican Congress as well as something called "sequestration" for the better half of the continuing resolutions that he was barely able to get passed. Despite that, the ACA he added with it's new level of entitlement spending did more to explode our debt than any one single piece of legislation since SSI!
I'm getting so tired of hearing this crap that Obama was some sort of deficit Hawk, when most of his spending was nothing but deficit driven debt through monetizing the bills we couldn't afford to pay due to his anemic economic growth I'm going to throw up! He simply printed money instead of paying off the debt, thus further driving our line of credit into oblivion. He left Office hanging a debt tag around this nation's neck that exceeded all of his predecessors COMBINED!!!!!!
You're a smart Dude, and you make a lot of sense when you're not swimming in a pool of Leftist sewage. Climb out of that pool Dude, towel off, and go take a nice long hot shower---then come back to the board and start posting more rational clean thoughts like you usually do. You sound better all cleaned up Mule!
None of you (on the Left) not one of you phony charlatans complaining about how much Trump is spending is offering any support to this long list of cuts he's proposing nor are you offering any suggestions on what else we need to cut to reduce these deficits? You want to cut Defense 80 billion dollars? Great. We have a trillion dollar deficit, so what else are you Leftists prepared to see axed? Raise taxes? Those tax cuts are funding the additional spending you all are complaining about! Just imagine those deficits if all that extra money wasn't coming in?
You all are so full of it, you're not even worth the amounts of it you carry around!
Trump has made a down payment on these deficits by reducing as much as he can politically muster cuts in non entitlement spending for FY'19. But you all are correct about one thing, it's still not near enough. Next step is to get a Republican veto proof majority in Congress so we can attack entitlements with some much needed reforms and without intransigent "DOA" resistance from the likes of Chuck Schumer.
Then we need elimination of whole agencies instead of just reductions in the amounts of increase they still get to spend. We also need to pass a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.
I know you Leftists so concerned about deficit spending will support Trump and the Republicans with all of that.[eyeroll]
So who controls both houses of the legislative branch right now? The major differences between 2018 and 2015 are the resident of the White House and an improved economy. Oh yeah, the 2018 deficit is more than twice the 2015 deficit ... with "conservatives" in control.
True. They have no more excuses for this debt. Agreed. So, let's say Trump proposes elimination of both the departments of Commerce and Education.(he actually wants to eliminate both) Could he get that passed as the Congress is currently set up with less than a fillibuster proof House and only a 3 to 4 seat advantage (less than 2/3rd) in the Senate? Or let's say he proposes strategic restructuring and reforms in entitlements where more than half of this deficit is located. Would this current Congress support him?
If you're honest the answer to both scenarios is "No". Thus the problem despite his majorities in both houses. He needs more Republican support to get these initiatives passed. Guaranteed resistence from the Left to all of it, including the current cuts we both acknowledge aren't enough to close these stifling deficits.
You are smart and you know politics, you know Democrats will block all of Trump's efforts to wind down bloated Government. They voted unanimously against the tax cuts, and I've already pointed out the tax cuts are not causing us to live with less revenue. The economy is booming as a result of the tax cuts, the economy is expanding, and revenues to the treasury are increasing. We do not have a revnue problem Mule, we have a spending problem.
If Trump gets enough help to overpower resistant deficit loving Democrats, Republicans will shut down agencies, eliminate wasteful spending, reform entitlements, make the tax cuts permanent, pass a balanced budget amendment and finally balance our budget so we can continue to grow our economy and use our budget surpluses from an expanding economy to pay down this debt. You will of course vote this Fall for Republicans running on that agenda right Mule?
Republicans will absolutely run on the proposition of cutting spending. They dod that the last umpteen election cycles. Where are those cuts? They need a super majority to get anything accomplished? That's not effective government. I don't blame the right exclusively. The left has a hand in this too. Mo one is crossing the aisle, at least not on a regular basis.
Are we sure cutting departments actually saves us much money? Name the department, and there will be things that all of us support in those departments. Changing the structure to support what we want or need is just moving that overhead somewhere else.
With respect to entitlement reform, I think we should look at it. We need to take into consideration what it looks like in a down economy too though. I could save a ton of money there in a good economy, but those policies might break me in a bad one.
So you claim revenues are currently at or above the level in 2015. So where did an extra $400 billion go in spending under a conservative president and congress? So either your assertion about revenue is wrong or your assertion about the conservative desire to cut spending is wrong.
This is not an easy problem to fix, and it's complicated by politicians. We need people who aren't afraid to sit down and do hard work. I know there is fat to be trimmed in pretty much every part of the budget. The issue is that voters don't support people who do the fat trimming. They support people who talk about grand ideas with no follow through.
A lot of what you said here is true. No doubt there are Republicans and Conservatives who talk a lot of sh*t but when it comes time to bring out the budget ax they can't seem to find it.
No argument with you there.
So what is the solution? You and me. We have to hold these rascals accountable to us. No excuses for deficit spending, not with me anyway. You don't vote to cut spending and taxes, you don't get my vote. You oppose a balanced budget ammenemdent and entitlement reforms, you are part of the problem.
They need good people like you and me Mule to insist they respect our wishes to end their deficit spending and be accountable to the funds we entrust them to stewart. Will you join us in that battle?
Allow Americans to keep more of what they earn. Spend no more than we take in. Spend only what we need according to the Constitution, prioritize service on our debt, devolve power out of Washington, end wasteful or needless pork barrel spending, trust citizens who pay the bills instead of bureaucrats who create them with no respect for who pays them.
C'mon Mule...we need you to help us hold these bloodsuckers in BOTH parties accountable!