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Comment by epistasis | Hacker News Reader

For example:

> The Senate on Friday forged ahead with plans to give the military an additional $150 billion in spending even as the Pentagon seeks to make sweeping changes and reductions in its budget. Senators voted 52-48 in favor of a budget resolution that will unlock $340 billion in spending for U.S.-Mexico border security, energy independence, Coast Guard modernization and military investments while mandating cuts elsewhere.

https://www.stripes.com/theaters/us/2025-02-21/senate-milita...

Worrying about small amounts of M while increasing other parts with B makes me wonder how it could be perceived that there's any actual interest in a "balanced budget." The only president to balance the budget was Clinton, and it was an economically terrible idea.

Government budgets are not like a company's budget or a family's budget, and pretending that it is, when we control the reserve currency of the world, is just plain silly and weak.

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The cuts are not about making a dent in spending or waste. As you say, if that was the goal, they'd be going after the billion dollar departments. It's becoming obvious that the purpose of all this chaos is to grief federal employees, kill their morale, and make them miserable/frightened. We shouldn't try to read too much into the actions of this administration. It's not some advanced 4D chess. It's just about cruelty to perceived opponents.

Step 1: Fire people to "save" single digit billions

Step 2: Give 100's of billions in tax cuts to the richest

4 Trillion in tax cuts, actually.

The way tax cuts are reported, it sums up over the lifetime effect of the cut, usually ten years.

So this is hundreds of billions per year, and 4 trillion in total effect on the debt.

Note that Clinton balanced the budget while also funding stuff like the NSF. His term ended with the dot com boom, which was clearly a long term win for the US economy.

While I think the economy was good, I think it could have been even better with a little deficit spending under Clinton.

What we call "national debt" is just additional money supply. Instead of dollars they are bonds, that let us retroactively control the amount of them by merely changing interests rates at the Fed. Which is why they are superior to printing a ton of dollars and spending them directly.

When the world needs additional money supply, and they preferentially choose to use money denominated in dollars, that means that our economy wins out. If we are not deficit spending then we are likely leaving economic gains on the table.

The "additional money supply" is a (hidden) tax on people with fixed incomes and no hard assets.

No it is not. Inflation would reduce their spending power, but additional money supply is a different thing.

Additionally, most "fixed incomes" these days are inflation pegged, so even inflation is not a burden. But it's never a tax.

But since you put it so starkly, it must be pointed out that when we do not deficit spend when we could, it is to the detriment of productive members of society that are producing all the things that those on fixed incomes need.

I doubt Trump is trying to balance the budget. He’s not a traditional economic conservative, definitely wasn’t in his first term. I think they are just trying to find waste and redirect it to other things.

Such as their idea to give $5k cheques to every American with the savings which would cost $1 trillion (+ $1T to pay off debt). https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/20/trump-doge-c...

Why don't you care about nuclear safety, dmix? Is that the waste you're talking about?

Posting multiple replies under my comments, then replying again in other threads is some weird attention seeking behaviour...

But yes I do think it is very wasteful, as the article says it can cause serious inflation issues to dump $1T into the economy like that. Not at all economically conservative nor a useful behaviour of an agency claiming to want to save money, similar to the federal firings I critiqued as non-productive in the other thread you followed me from.

Just because you talk a lot about the same damn topic on different threads does not mean your opinions are atomized and not seen in their totality.

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