We have a $1.78T deficit. The ducks and the mathematicians will need to take a cut at this point.
The fatal assumptions many people thinking about government spending from the outside make are that
a) money is limited
and
b) money is redistributed (~to a cause of their choice) after funding for something else gets cut
Since money is limited, and we’re spending in a deficit, money shouldn’t be redistributed to another bad cause after something gets cut. Unfortunately, and all too often, it does.
One side cuts taxes to spend on blowing up the world’s energy market, another side raises taxes to buy votes among the people who pay 0 in taxes (or fund a study on if ducks like Mozart). They’re both wrong, and people are too blinded by the sports-team nature of politics to recognize this.
On the question on music and ducks, music seems something that humans universally get, but it is not clear if animals do so. Why we should not research it? What if music is the secret to human consciousness?
The US had a balanced budget as little as 30 years ago. This current state of fiscal profligacy isn’t inevitable, except for the fact that both parties realized they could buy votes with your children’s financial wellbeing.