Somehow during Dem administrations, we have an improving budget deficit (even sometimes a surplus) while maintaining more of a social safety net.
That should pretty much tell you everything.
That should pretty much tell you everything.
Outside of retirees, much of the social safety net is funded at the State level. There is a wide variance in the benefits and quality of the social safety net across States.
Oof
Then Republicans took over the House in the midterms. They passed the budget (and Clinton signed it) that actually led to surplus for the first time since Andrew Jackson.
So, yes, it happened under a Democratic president. It only happened because of a Republican House, though.
(But let the president also be a Republican, and Republicans in Congress lose all fiscal discipline.)
The closest they ever came to actually caring about government was with Musk who went in and actually started (illegally) ripping shit out. But the things he ripped out were inconsequential things that conservatives didn't like, and he didn't even make a dent in the actual budget. All of the things that Musk got rid of were congressionally appropriated and could have easily been congressionally (i.e. legally) de-appropriated accordingly and it supposedly would be easy for them to do with majority control over the house, senate, executive, and judiciary...but they didn't do it, because they don't actually want to cut the budget.
Eh, I would say its well-known in deficit circles that all politicians (intellectually) desire to balance the budget, but it is basically impossible. Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, and debt servicing are such large pieces of the debt pie that the entirety of discretionary spending makes basically no impact in balancing the budget. These are de-facto untouchable obligations because too many people's lives depend on them and any party that enacts austerity will be swept out of office. Neither party will increase taxes on themselves (the rich) and taxing the middle/poor guarantees you lose the next election. The only path forward in the U.S. is basically kicking the can down the road until it implodes like so many other high debt-load western nations before them.
Neither party has any intention of repaying any of the $38 trillion, or care what it is spent on.
https://www.torched.la/why-this-convention-center-expert-is-...
What are you talking about here? Federal debt is repaid on bond schedules fixed by statute. You can look it all up. You can argue about whether the debt load is too high, too low, whatever. But you can't just pretend they ran away with the money like a thief. People loaned the government that money because they know the government is good for it.
That 38 trillion is 76 thousand dollars per person in the USA for instance. Pay that off? Really?
Federal budget argumentation is just exhausting. Fight about balancing the budget, sure. Fight about unsustainable deficits, sure.
But to claim that very manageable federal debt payments can't be made is just ridiculous. Yes, the US government is going to pay off that debt. Which is why they were able to borrow it in the first place.
There may come a time when the interest on the debt becomes so out of control that it cannot be serviced, likely in conjunction with people dumping bonds and leaving interest rates soaring. Meaning, America's credit goes up in flames. We're obviously not there yet and maybe it will never happen. That said, remember when Trump backed off extreme levels of the "Liberation Day" tariffs? Real fears of bond-dumping seem to have a lot to do with the more measured (relatively-speaking) approach to tariffs we're now seeing. If debt holders dump the 10-year bonds enough, it causes real issues for debt repayment.
No, it doesn't, it impacts future borrowing. Third time, before my blood pressure spikes: that is an argument about future debt. It being true (or not) has zero relevance to the current size of the debt. You could be right (or wrong) if we had zero outstanding debt, or if it was $70T.
Ergo, it's either an incorrect or bad faith analysis of the situation. The current debt (whatever its size happens to be in the fiction being spun) will be paid off at the bills' rates and on the statutory schedules. Period.
The issue I think most people are correctly pointing out is that our current debt is unreasonable -- that it constrains our future policies way too much. Cutting services is effectively impossible in our politics, which leaves only inflation on the table. That's pretty much the same as default. That is where we're headed.
Your blood pressure issues notwithstanding, I don't think you believe that the US can possibly default or renege in any way on its debt, so there may not be a point in going on. History has run this experiment before and sovereign nations absolutely can default and/or renege on debt obligations. I certainly hope we don't see that in the case of the US. But I'm also not irrational enough to believe it's impossible.
The government can always repay by printing currency, but that's not the same. This is sort of a default too, since inflation eats away the artificially repaid debt.
I do not understand though, why Republicans talk about cutting spending, and then blow through the ceiling when they have the power.
The reason for the quotes is because that's an incomplete picture since various things can affect the debt without being noted in the annual deficit. For instance some programs are considered off-budget, there's various accounting restructuring, and so on. If you simply look at the total debt it has increased every year (again since at least 1970) with the only exception being 1999 to 2000 depending on when you measure it. If you look end of year vs end of year (as opposed to fiscal year), it decreased by a few billion dollars, and that was the only time.
https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/natio...
And the graph clearly shows we trend towards less spending under Democrats and then Republicans spend more again.
I don't find the partisan arguments interesting. Bush had a lower deficit (each and every year) invading and occupying two different countries than any president has ever achieved since then. That is not to praise Bush, but to emphasize that we're comparing horrible vs terrible and trying to argue over which is which. They're all miserable failures, and not just in regards to spending.
Running wars is a choice, a pandemic hitting not so much.
> The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) is a $953-billion business loan program established by the United States federal government during the Trump administration in 2020
That's still not twice under George W. Bush, who became President on Jan. 20, 2001, nearly three weeks into calendar year (and nearly four months into federal fiscal year) 2001.