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You're right! Republicans are the only ones who play brinkmanship games with the debt limit to hurt their political rivals. Imagine gambling with the well-being of the country like that over funds you've already voted to spend.

Takes like this is what let's it keep getting worse.

I have zero issue with one time costs. I have a huge problem with programs that will never go away and cost a fortune forever. Both parties have to be held accountable but the general public also needs to be able to separate the 2 types of expenses.

Military expenses, for example, can be cut back at any time. Handout programs become a dependence and will never be removed once implemented, no matter how poorly they're executed.

Okay but the reality is military expenditures are the largest discretionary budgetary item by a mile, and they are never meaningfully cut back because they are strategically spread amongst electoral areas to exert political pressure on candidates to keep the local jobs and money flowing.

> Military expenses, for example, can be cut back at any time. Handout programs become a dependence and will never be removed once implemented, no matter how poorly they're executed.

Don't embarrass yourself. Military expenses look like they can be cut back, but are functionally impossible to cut back because of how they're gerrymandered.

And once people have a dependence on income from a government program or any type, you believe there's any chance of reforming it? All it takes is "candidate X wants to take away your Y" and it's over, so we end up in this endless growing expense cycle that cannot ever be fixed.

It's one of the primary reasons that I'd support a basic income policy as long as it was contingent on gutting the other programs so hard that they could be removed or reformed without anybody batting an eye.

Military expenses, for example, can be cut back at any time. Handout programs become a dependence and will never be removed once implemented, no matter how poorly they're executed.

What about social security and medicare, massive parts of the budget?

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