I was planning to spend $100 on groceries this morning, but then I decided to slash my grocery budget, so the amount I actually spent on groceries plummeted to just $99.97, plus a small eight dollar supplemental on previously deferred grocery needs, bringing the total to a shockingly parsimonious $107.97.
Remember the days of the balanced budget amendment?
Chris, I'd give more credence to Trump's cuts if the Pentagon budget was also being cut. Seven failed audits in a row! Going on eight, I'm sure. We don't need a "Golden Dome," we don't need more expensive nukes, we don't need a lot of platinum-coated weapons systems.
Instead, Trump and the Republicans are shoveling more money at the Pentagon--and, I'm sure, most Democrats will also go along with it, as long as their districts get some of the pork.
As I learned from a major general in the Army, lower budgets would actually force the military to think, to prioritize, and hopefully to make sound decisions. But it never seems to happen, no matter who's the president.
I forget who posted here that Eisenhower, as POTUS, used to go line-by-line through military budget proposals written by generals he'd known, striking them out with a pencil and saying something like, "Well, he always was a featherbedder."
Are you willing to deeply cut the treaty obligations to 69 nations to match your proposed cuts Mr. Astore?
BTW - DOD doesn’t control its spending, Congress does. Every penny. Congress likes it that way, along with enforcing an utterly impenetrable and very difficult procurement process called PPBE. They get the loot, we get the blame and the 🩸consequences.
While we’re at it Social Security didn’t do too well on the scrub it just had, 25 million dead people over 120 years old.
Can we sock it to the Boomers the way it gets socked to us every single year?
Social Security funding is automatic. Perhaps it too should be discretionary? Like DOD?
The long warred - I retired from a National Lab. They were DOD, DOE, and DARPA. Congress people were easily EASILY influenced by the scientists who asked for more weapon money. The Pentagon has never passed an audit. Nor has LANL.
Oh, and if you reply, I am not a boomer. I am a pre-boomer. 1941.
If social security was passing audits with 15 million social security numbers over 120 years old and 25 million total dead people, this tells us about the “audit.” DOD never was audited until Trump BTW, again see Congress.
Glad everyone got their swag, we got 💩 and 🩸.
Now by all means idiots do keep attacking the military. By all means. Steal all your lives then point the finger at the last honest men…
Social security is funded by employee deductions and matched by company's contributions. Why is it that contribution formula stops at $176,100 annual earnings?
Presumably because someone consistently earning more than that a year should be making additional preparations for retirement/old age and shouldn't require the government to hold all of their kitty.
Hmm. So us poorer folks are not able to make preparations for old age on our own? And I haven't checked out the current SS payment schedules, but do folks who stop paying in receive reduced payments (in accord with what they paid in back when they were not consistently earning more?)
Well, that was the rationale behind Social Security in the first place (remember, my comment was my presumption of the reasoning for the $176,100 cap for those who made it).
I believe that once you've paid in a certain amount, you're entitled to the corresponding payment even if you stop paying in.
Ok Boomer - fine. We pay in 🩸, that’s our deduction.
However in the interest of equity- Can we either make Social Security spending discretionary so you can petition your representatives every.single.year for every penny… or perchance… make DOD spending a baseline figure like social security, Medicare, debt servicing and we’ll then figure it out instead of Congress?
BTW no one is shooting at Boomers, yet. Perhaps that would focus priorities.
How odd you should care, SS will be gone in 39 years.
Now may we correct our budgetary imbalances?
Either make DOD under its own control as everything else important in the budget , which would make DOD responsible ~ or perchance for truly accelerated “reform” make all spending discretionary and hold Congress responsible?
Well they have been shooting- and stealing, poisoning, looting, embezzling and lately funding same for some time. The problem isn’t you’re harmless, the problem is you’ve been harming for decades without a response in kind.
As a Boomer, I had it “socked it to me”…I paid plenty into SSI and to the government over the course of my 45 year plus “working” for a salary/wage. That was the purpose of SSI as I recall, you pay into it then to receive it back after 65.
Bingo: "...to think, to prioritize, and hopefully to make sound decisions..." should be the motto, across the board. Individuals, families, corporations, day care operators, lawn mower repair shops, sole proprietor tax preparers par example, do that every single day. Not much to ask, from those of us paying the bills.
I agree with most of what you say, but if you really believe we don’t need a Golden Dome and fortified borders (after the Biden-Harris shitshow) we live in different planets.
Yes ... Trump said something about cutting the military budget in half ... We don't need to be Israel's servant and bomb the whole world. Protect our borders and stop throwing trillions to wars ...
Boomers; pointing the finger at the MIC and the Uniform has stopped working.
See also racism, Nazi, Hitler.
You’re finished.
Audits? DOD wasn’t audited or reformed from Eisenhower on, until Trump 1.0. If your precious social security was passing audits with 25 million dead names on the list … so much for audits.
Treasury of course just publicly admitted under DOGE that all they did was pay… after enough of them got fired. Then we have USAID, and that’s the tip of the Iceberg.
Probably fiscally yes. Honest books are best, we never should have strayed. When
McNamara made our books nearly impossible to understand and Congress didn’t act, the Military Generals should have resigned in protest. This wasn’t an instant process of incomprehensible and untracked loss of accounting, that took decades.
I would do either btw; either a department controls its budget and is accountable for it or Congress is responsible- however unlikely that may be.
I would also end all treaties outside the Western Hemisphere + AU UK NZ , NATO should have ended with the Warsaw pact, 800 overseas bases would be somewhere between 8 ~ 80 etc.
I’d absolutely put bio signatures blockchain accounting into every jot of any bill or regulations- meaning if any person changes anything including a comma etc.
That was the original vision of the blockchain, not crypto cash; legal record like chain of custody.
^ this could not be more anathema and nemesis to our managerial system ^ …
… but it would scare them off.
It is true we have absolutely no need of foreign Empire for any reason. Not strategic depth (safe distance) not resources, not trade (most of our markets internal) not security nor auxiliary troops.
Nothing. All burden and we ruined ourselves for this lunacy.
I've crunched these numbers for my civics classes for 10 years. You could zero out all discretionary spending (incl the active duty military) and you would just barely balance the budget.
Fixing this requires tackling entitlements. And it also requires tax increases (at least temporary). Discretionary tinkering (even at 15-25%) won't cut it. (Pun intended.)
I grew up with the Army. The ultimate federal agency.
I was in schools for some time then a major corporation. My experience is that every organization has just a few who have a clue and when cuts come they will be on the block. They are a threat to the know nothings so they must go.
Unless whatever behavior your taxing is on the back side of the Laffer curve (the only thing that might be right now is cigarettes, but the elasticity of demand is so low for tobacco that I doubt even that one) rates and revenue are positively correlated.
Conservatives love to say that lower tax rates produce more revenue (and in the early 80's, when income was on the back side of the Laffer curve, it did) but it's really not true. Modern examples of this all mostly come down to gimmicks. If you want more revenue, you have to raise rates or remove deductions. And if you want enough revenue to matter, it needs to be on the middle classes. I happen to favor somewhat more progressive taxation of the wealthy as well, but there just aren't enough wealthy to close a $1.7T annual budget hole.
I know. Once you’re in a hole this deep getting out is an impossible dream. On the bright side. At least there would be less people in the government and that means fewer to mess it up.
Have you ever dealt with a federal agency? I have, for decades. There’s usually one person to an office that knows what’s going on, the rest know nothing. That/those, person/s that knows, is now on ERB and come Sept that real sh*t show begins.
We'll do what every other highly indebted imperial power has done: inflate our currency.
What sucks is that when we do it, we will lose our imperial status, but considering what we've been doing with it lately, that may not be such a bad thing for the world. Bottom line, you can't simultaneously be the world's greatest superpower and the world's greatest debtor for long.
Chris, I am really glad you are covering this and paying attention to it with your usual, detailed, facts-and-logic approach. Of course I agree with your view completely. The nation's fiscal and monetary trajectory borders on absurdity. THESE are the issues that ruin a civilization, not stupid-ass arguments over memes or whatever.
I've concluded that no one in DC is serious about reducing the budget, eliminating the annual deficit, and developing a plan to responsibly reduce our national debt.
Let's look at three years (debt in billions) 2008 - $10,025, 2017 - $20,245, 2024 - $35,464. Nine years for our debt to double, seven more years for it to increase 75%. A 254% overall increase in just 16 years.
This is not SUSTAINABLE. Does anyone understand this? Does anyone even actually care?
No one with any power to make change understands, or cares. When the Chinese sell Tbills, then maybe someone will wake up. Unless they have already bought their pied a terre in Shanghai. I used to be an average, fairly well-balanced mother (no cats). Now I've become a conspiracy theorist watching the area codes on the "nonprofit" phone calls I get. None of this is coincidental. Deepak Chopra
It’s a racket. The parasite is going to kill the host.
Let’s hope our grandchildren, or their grandchildren, emerging from chaos and freeing themselves from the rule-by-warlord/criminal oligarch that is inevitably going to follow the collapse, understand the lesson.
I must admit I had much higher hopes for DOGE and was surprised by the vehement antipathy and protest against DOGE/Musk. I was naive to believe Musk would find $1 Trillion in waste, fraud, abuse--but maybe it is akin to Epstein/JFK--the corruption is just so thoroughly mixed throughout our entire govt that by exposing would collapse any/all trust remaining in our govt.
I have old colleagues/kinda friends who are now behaving as frenemies. Texts that are laced with invective, but trying to pull it off like we're just having a collegial disagreement. All TDS sufferers.
I have had particular disdain for the Boomers (not all--many on this page in particular are great), but their selfishness may be the primary driver of all that is wrong with our culture. Do whatever feels good 60s/70s/, greed is good, 80s/90s, send our boys to war 2000s, lock up the schools cuz I'm scared and don't touch my fucking SS or Medicare (2020-now). All of these silly ass protests from dirty old hippies for....a measly .3% budget savings?
Ugh. I need SimulationCommander's Pawsitivity Monday today.
I’ve said it before and will say it again, the boomers, of which I am sadly one, are the most destructive generation in American history. Ours will be a record that will be hard to beat.
I gotta pull my punches back a bit. It is pretty hard to expect anything different from a generation of people who were essentially coddled from their births. We adapt to our environments, and if comfort and plenty are the norms--anything less feels like subjugation. Still...COVID turned my dislike into white-hot disdain. As a nation, we chose to sacrifice children at the altar of protecting the fat, weak, cowardly, ill Boomers. It was gross. Randi Weingarten is a caricature of who I mean.
But it is the Boomers who are mindlessly shitting their pants about losing it, when the truth is DOGE/Trump are trying to salvage/keep it. The Boomers sustain legacy media, suffer the highest TDS, and are responsible for the anti-Trump narrative. In short, they suck. Move over, GenX is now in charge.
I think your ire should be aimed at the Elites. Mostly college indoctrinated, I mean educated; and happen to be white and female. Boomers went to Vietnam.
Well said Libgurl...and you're likely correct, I'd say educated/indoctrinated more than Elite. 2/3 of the Boomer adults I had contact with in my life--school teachers, coaches, many bosses--were turds. Very few of them were 'Elite' like I think (maybe I'm putting too much economic weight into the term...)
It is not the Boomers who fought (most likely) that are entitled today. Likely a 90% or higher entitlement from the Boomers who maneuvered out of draft/serving.
Good thinking either way. I appreciate the pushback/correction.
I read elsewhere today that DOGE savings year over year will add up. The elephant in the budget is mandatory spending on entitlements, which make up well over half of the budget. When people express shock and dismay at the defense budget, I ask if they can tell me what its percentage of the federal budget is. Few have a clue.
I hope you're right. Nonetheless, I still expected to see more in outright waste/fraud/abuse--could be that $5 Trillion was spent without any codes/receipts.
Very few know the facts, and many who know facts confound facts with truth (all media for example). I'm a retired soldier and know without a doubt that at least 10% of this budget is waste/fraud/abuse. If you stopped all payments (besides utilities, monthly payments) on 1 August- then you'd have a closer idea of the true budget. We blew it out every 4th quarter just to ensure we spent everything.
Brian, I experienced the same thing in over 30 years in County government. When I would ask why we needed five captains for 300 DA investigators, I was always told if those captain positions were cut, the County would remove the equivalent funding from the DA Investigators budget, and there’s no way the upper echelon would allow that.
That would be most of entire military budget in fraud and waste. It was never going to be achieved like that. Still, it has to be done anyway. If you try to fit entitlements without doing that then people get mad because they did up obvious waste and bullshit, leading to and endless stream of “why do you care more about X than pensioners” type stories. The UK has been having that problem.
My immediate response is a bit defensive--take some issue with 'most' as we essentially financed the liberal world order post WWII with our defense of Europe and made the world safe for shipping with the US Navy.
Was the Cold War just propaganda? I don't think we'll ever truly know. Maybe? If it was, then yes most of the budget is waste. We are three years in and the big bad Russians cannot take a country 1/10th their size, so maybe all the Cold War bluster was a huge 'operation mockingbird' on our entire nation to make the defense industry rich--but then again, they did seem to be on the march in other areas of the globe.
I'm old enough to remember the same arguments about defense spending vs education--I was in high school during the Reagan Admins--and our teachers were always clamoring about how expensive a tank vs a text book. Same hollow argument.
Everyone circles the wagons when their own cheese is moved.
I wondered what Kilmar was thinking in that picture. I mean, here's this gang banger from Central America who snuck into the country, apparently smuggled illegal immigrants around for his construction foreman, beat up his wife, and after 10 years, finally got sent back to El Salvador... and now a US Senator is having tea with him in prison and calling him a political prisoner?
I would love to know what he thinks of the whole charade.
Since Trump’s campaign promises to spend money at home, it’s appalling that the bloated unaudited Pentagon budget continues funding beyond their wildest dreams, for god knows what horrific new ways they have of killing people, mostly civilians, (reminder, that is a war crime.) Meanwhile, our bridges collapse, our transportation systems are the laughingstock of the world, our educational level is in the dumper, we have grossly unbalanced taxation, and medical care is still bankrupting families.
Disclaimer: This scorn is aimed at the entire political class for the last century.
"Politics is the art of making your selfish desires seem like the national interest." — Thomas Sowell
Remember the days of the balanced budget amendment?
Chris, I'd give more credence to Trump's cuts if the Pentagon budget was also being cut. Seven failed audits in a row! Going on eight, I'm sure. We don't need a "Golden Dome," we don't need more expensive nukes, we don't need a lot of platinum-coated weapons systems.
Instead, Trump and the Republicans are shoveling more money at the Pentagon--and, I'm sure, most Democrats will also go along with it, as long as their districts get some of the pork.
As I learned from a major general in the Army, lower budgets would actually force the military to think, to prioritize, and hopefully to make sound decisions. But it never seems to happen, no matter who's the president.
I forget who posted here that Eisenhower, as POTUS, used to go line-by-line through military budget proposals written by generals he'd known, striking them out with a pencil and saying something like, "Well, he always was a featherbedder."
I can't recall who said it, but several years ago someone said, "Ike was our last sane President".
I concur.
I pretty much agree with that statement.
Line-by-line expense meetings. A Utopian dream. ♥️
Like!
Are you willing to deeply cut the treaty obligations to 69 nations to match your proposed cuts Mr. Astore?
BTW - DOD doesn’t control its spending, Congress does. Every penny. Congress likes it that way, along with enforcing an utterly impenetrable and very difficult procurement process called PPBE. They get the loot, we get the blame and the 🩸consequences.
While we’re at it Social Security didn’t do too well on the scrub it just had, 25 million dead people over 120 years old.
Can we sock it to the Boomers the way it gets socked to us every single year?
Social Security funding is automatic. Perhaps it too should be discretionary? Like DOD?
Is that OK, Boomer?
The long warred - I retired from a National Lab. They were DOD, DOE, and DARPA. Congress people were easily EASILY influenced by the scientists who asked for more weapon money. The Pentagon has never passed an audit. Nor has LANL.
Oh, and if you reply, I am not a boomer. I am a pre-boomer. 1941.
That’s nice. Glad you’re set.
Nice career. Mine was dirty.
I mean mud, not $$$ oh wait science.
We agree Congress is the problem.
If social security was passing audits with 15 million social security numbers over 120 years old and 25 million total dead people, this tells us about the “audit.” DOD never was audited until Trump BTW, again see Congress.
Glad everyone got their swag, we got 💩 and 🩸.
Now by all means idiots do keep attacking the military. By all means. Steal all your lives then point the finger at the last honest men…
Please never change
💀
Social security is funded by employee deductions and matched by company's contributions. Why is it that contribution formula stops at $176,100 annual earnings?
Presumably because someone consistently earning more than that a year should be making additional preparations for retirement/old age and shouldn't require the government to hold all of their kitty.
Hmm. So us poorer folks are not able to make preparations for old age on our own? And I haven't checked out the current SS payment schedules, but do folks who stop paying in receive reduced payments (in accord with what they paid in back when they were not consistently earning more?)
Well, that was the rationale behind Social Security in the first place (remember, my comment was my presumption of the reasoning for the $176,100 cap for those who made it).
I believe that once you've paid in a certain amount, you're entitled to the corresponding payment even if you stop paying in.
I agree. This is something that should’ve changed years ago.
They readjust it periodically so it keeps going up.
Ok Boomer - fine. We pay in 🩸, that’s our deduction.
However in the interest of equity- Can we either make Social Security spending discretionary so you can petition your representatives every.single.year for every penny… or perchance… make DOD spending a baseline figure like social security, Medicare, debt servicing and we’ll then figure it out instead of Congress?
BTW no one is shooting at Boomers, yet. Perhaps that would focus priorities.
Not a boomer. I identify as 23.
Pardon, I accept the correction.
How odd you should care, SS will be gone in 39 years.
Now may we correct our budgetary imbalances?
Either make DOD under its own control as everything else important in the budget , which would make DOD responsible ~ or perchance for truly accelerated “reform” make all spending discretionary and hold Congress responsible?
Oh, and about the treaties…
Which necessitate the money….
???
The US has a history of treaty violations. So, what the heck?
What is it with your boomer crap?
💀
Some "boomers" shoot back.
Well they have been shooting- and stealing, poisoning, looting, embezzling and lately funding same for some time. The problem isn’t you’re harmless, the problem is you’ve been harming for decades without a response in kind.
F off.
The long warred- knock it off with the ‘ok boomer’ bullshit. Be civil, or leave.
As a Boomer, I had it “socked it to me”…I paid plenty into SSI and to the government over the course of my 45 year plus “working” for a salary/wage. That was the purpose of SSI as I recall, you pay into it then to receive it back after 65.
Congress does not control all the black ops funds. The DoD probably doesn't either but that's where a lot of money goes as it filters thru them.
That’s a trifling sum. ~ black ops?
Like 25 million dead social security numbers ?
That’s not trifling.
I’m sure they passed all audits, because it’s easy when you don’t check. As they admitted.
There were no audits until Trump.
The other departments audits were fraud until DOGE.
In the real military as is documented property and money is accounted for to the penny and wrench to an OCD degree up to the installation level.
Then … it vanishes.
This means above installation level the system can’t count.
It can’t, because DOD has a computer system from 1958 called MOACS. Yes. Congress of course knows.
Not that Treasury or State was being honest until DOGE.
Now it’s over. You’ve lost,
Pointing the finger at the one group of people conducting an honest audit… ? Lol.
We didn’t pass the audit because DOD told the truth.
You and your scams passed audit because you lied.
Goodbye 👋🏻
💀
No one will cut the military. We live under a junta. They're just quiet about it.
Bingo: "...to think, to prioritize, and hopefully to make sound decisions..." should be the motto, across the board. Individuals, families, corporations, day care operators, lawn mower repair shops, sole proprietor tax preparers par example, do that every single day. Not much to ask, from those of us paying the bills.
I agree with most of what you say, but if you really believe we don’t need a Golden Dome and fortified borders (after the Biden-Harris shitshow) we live in different planets.
Yes ... Trump said something about cutting the military budget in half ... We don't need to be Israel's servant and bomb the whole world. Protect our borders and stop throwing trillions to wars ...
Boomers; pointing the finger at the MIC and the Uniform has stopped working.
See also racism, Nazi, Hitler.
You’re finished.
Audits? DOD wasn’t audited or reformed from Eisenhower on, until Trump 1.0. If your precious social security was passing audits with 25 million dead names on the list … so much for audits.
Treasury of course just publicly admitted under DOGE that all they did was pay… after enough of them got fired. Then we have USAID, and that’s the tip of the Iceberg.
It’s over and bye, the great looting is finished.
💀
Odd. I think we’re on the same page…fiscally.
Probably fiscally yes. Honest books are best, we never should have strayed. When
McNamara made our books nearly impossible to understand and Congress didn’t act, the Military Generals should have resigned in protest. This wasn’t an instant process of incomprehensible and untracked loss of accounting, that took decades.
I would do either btw; either a department controls its budget and is accountable for it or Congress is responsible- however unlikely that may be.
I would also end all treaties outside the Western Hemisphere + AU UK NZ , NATO should have ended with the Warsaw pact, 800 overseas bases would be somewhere between 8 ~ 80 etc.
I’d absolutely put bio signatures blockchain accounting into every jot of any bill or regulations- meaning if any person changes anything including a comma etc.
That was the original vision of the blockchain, not crypto cash; legal record like chain of custody.
^ this could not be more anathema and nemesis to our managerial system ^ …
… but it would scare them off.
It is true we have absolutely no need of foreign Empire for any reason. Not strategic depth (safe distance) not resources, not trade (most of our markets internal) not security nor auxiliary troops.
Nothing. All burden and we ruined ourselves for this lunacy.
Why do you have such a “hard on” for the Boomers. What age are you?
Well if the budget buster was approximately $8 it wasn’t bourbon. Hopefully it was ice cream 🍨
Maybe an asspocket bottle of Old Grandad on sale at Walgreen's could be had for $8.
This was pithily summarized in Idiocracy as:
I like money.
Government Speak: massive spending cuts
Plain English: not raising the budget by as much as we want
Haha That sounds about right.
This drives me nuts, no matter who is in charge. Here’s how you reduce the deficit.
To every department of the government.
Please present spending needs to reflect a minimum 15% cut from the last budget. Departments not complying with this will have a 25% cut.
To congress. I will veto any budget bill that does not reflect our 15% reduction. If it means a government shutdown, that’s on you.
And this includes the DOD. cut out 2/3 of the generals and their staff and you’ll make it.
No. You won't make it.
https://usafacts.org/articles/this-chart-tells-you-everything-you-want-to-know-about-government-spending/
I've crunched these numbers for my civics classes for 10 years. You could zero out all discretionary spending (incl the active duty military) and you would just barely balance the budget.
Fixing this requires tackling entitlements. And it also requires tax increases (at least temporary). Discretionary tinkering (even at 15-25%) won't cut it. (Pun intended.)
As long as by tax increases you mean increased tax revenue, not increased tax rates. The two often move in opposite directions.
I grew up with the Army. The ultimate federal agency.
I was in schools for some time then a major corporation. My experience is that every organization has just a few who have a clue and when cuts come they will be on the block. They are a threat to the know nothings so they must go.
Unless whatever behavior your taxing is on the back side of the Laffer curve (the only thing that might be right now is cigarettes, but the elasticity of demand is so low for tobacco that I doubt even that one) rates and revenue are positively correlated.
Conservatives love to say that lower tax rates produce more revenue (and in the early 80's, when income was on the back side of the Laffer curve, it did) but it's really not true. Modern examples of this all mostly come down to gimmicks. If you want more revenue, you have to raise rates or remove deductions. And if you want enough revenue to matter, it needs to be on the middle classes. I happen to favor somewhat more progressive taxation of the wealthy as well, but there just aren't enough wealthy to close a $1.7T annual budget hole.
I know. Once you’re in a hole this deep getting out is an impossible dream. On the bright side. At least there would be less people in the government and that means fewer to mess it up.
Have you ever dealt with a federal agency? I have, for decades. There’s usually one person to an office that knows what’s going on, the rest know nothing. That/those, person/s that knows, is now on ERB and come Sept that real sh*t show begins.
We'll do what every other highly indebted imperial power has done: inflate our currency.
What sucks is that when we do it, we will lose our imperial status, but considering what we've been doing with it lately, that may not be such a bad thing for the world. Bottom line, you can't simultaneously be the world's greatest superpower and the world's greatest debtor for long.
I shared this with Susan Collins. I doubt she'll read it. But it felt good doing it.
I'm a fan of scorched-earth AND buzzsaws in terms of reducing spending of stolen money.
Chris, I am really glad you are covering this and paying attention to it with your usual, detailed, facts-and-logic approach. Of course I agree with your view completely. The nation's fiscal and monetary trajectory borders on absurdity. THESE are the issues that ruin a civilization, not stupid-ass arguments over memes or whatever.
I've concluded that no one in DC is serious about reducing the budget, eliminating the annual deficit, and developing a plan to responsibly reduce our national debt.
Let's look at three years (debt in billions) 2008 - $10,025, 2017 - $20,245, 2024 - $35,464. Nine years for our debt to double, seven more years for it to increase 75%. A 254% overall increase in just 16 years.
This is not SUSTAINABLE. Does anyone understand this? Does anyone even actually care?
No one with any power to make change understands, or cares. When the Chinese sell Tbills, then maybe someone will wake up. Unless they have already bought their pied a terre in Shanghai. I used to be an average, fairly well-balanced mother (no cats). Now I've become a conspiracy theorist watching the area codes on the "nonprofit" phone calls I get. None of this is coincidental. Deepak Chopra
I agree with Valoree
It is OK to be a conspiracy theorist. I am, too. History has, and will, show us correct.
Strangely, the last few years have seen many of those so-called "conspiracy theories" mentioned at the tale end of newscasts - as fact.
Good thing I kept my tinfoil Stetson!
Our Congress critters all have the middle name of Ponzi.
It’s a racket. The parasite is going to kill the host.
Let’s hope our grandchildren, or their grandchildren, emerging from chaos and freeing themselves from the rule-by-warlord/criminal oligarch that is inevitably going to follow the collapse, understand the lesson.
don't worry about unfunded deficits, they quickly get converted into inflation which Socialists love.
I must admit I had much higher hopes for DOGE and was surprised by the vehement antipathy and protest against DOGE/Musk. I was naive to believe Musk would find $1 Trillion in waste, fraud, abuse--but maybe it is akin to Epstein/JFK--the corruption is just so thoroughly mixed throughout our entire govt that by exposing would collapse any/all trust remaining in our govt.
I have old colleagues/kinda friends who are now behaving as frenemies. Texts that are laced with invective, but trying to pull it off like we're just having a collegial disagreement. All TDS sufferers.
I have had particular disdain for the Boomers (not all--many on this page in particular are great), but their selfishness may be the primary driver of all that is wrong with our culture. Do whatever feels good 60s/70s/, greed is good, 80s/90s, send our boys to war 2000s, lock up the schools cuz I'm scared and don't touch my fucking SS or Medicare (2020-now). All of these silly ass protests from dirty old hippies for....a measly .3% budget savings?
Ugh. I need SimulationCommander's Pawsitivity Monday today.
bsn
I’ve said it before and will say it again, the boomers, of which I am sadly one, are the most destructive generation in American history. Ours will be a record that will be hard to beat.
Randy,
I gotta pull my punches back a bit. It is pretty hard to expect anything different from a generation of people who were essentially coddled from their births. We adapt to our environments, and if comfort and plenty are the norms--anything less feels like subjugation. Still...COVID turned my dislike into white-hot disdain. As a nation, we chose to sacrifice children at the altar of protecting the fat, weak, cowardly, ill Boomers. It was gross. Randi Weingarten is a caricature of who I mean.
bsn
I think you mean Randi Whine-garten.
Social security started way before boomers. Medicare/medicaid was not a construct of the boomers either. That was the "greatest generation".
But it is the Boomers who are mindlessly shitting their pants about losing it, when the truth is DOGE/Trump are trying to salvage/keep it. The Boomers sustain legacy media, suffer the highest TDS, and are responsible for the anti-Trump narrative. In short, they suck. Move over, GenX is now in charge.
I think your ire should be aimed at the Elites. Mostly college indoctrinated, I mean educated; and happen to be white and female. Boomers went to Vietnam.
Well said Libgurl...and you're likely correct, I'd say educated/indoctrinated more than Elite. 2/3 of the Boomer adults I had contact with in my life--school teachers, coaches, many bosses--were turds. Very few of them were 'Elite' like I think (maybe I'm putting too much economic weight into the term...)
It is not the Boomers who fought (most likely) that are entitled today. Likely a 90% or higher entitlement from the Boomers who maneuvered out of draft/serving.
Good thinking either way. I appreciate the pushback/correction.
bsn
You are welcome.
Lord, help us.
I read elsewhere today that DOGE savings year over year will add up. The elephant in the budget is mandatory spending on entitlements, which make up well over half of the budget. When people express shock and dismay at the defense budget, I ask if they can tell me what its percentage of the federal budget is. Few have a clue.
I hope you're right. Nonetheless, I still expected to see more in outright waste/fraud/abuse--could be that $5 Trillion was spent without any codes/receipts.
Very few know the facts, and many who know facts confound facts with truth (all media for example). I'm a retired soldier and know without a doubt that at least 10% of this budget is waste/fraud/abuse. If you stopped all payments (besides utilities, monthly payments) on 1 August- then you'd have a closer idea of the true budget. We blew it out every 4th quarter just to ensure we spent everything.
bsn
All the departments in the National Lab did the same thing. Spend everything in the 4th quarter.
I was complicit in it as well. When you’re inside the system it is easy to tell yourself this is ‘for the good of the organization…’
bsn
Yep.
Brian, I experienced the same thing in over 30 years in County government. When I would ask why we needed five captains for 300 DA investigators, I was always told if those captain positions were cut, the County would remove the equivalent funding from the DA Investigators budget, and there’s no way the upper echelon would allow that.
That would be most of entire military budget in fraud and waste. It was never going to be achieved like that. Still, it has to be done anyway. If you try to fit entitlements without doing that then people get mad because they did up obvious waste and bullshit, leading to and endless stream of “why do you care more about X than pensioners” type stories. The UK has been having that problem.
My immediate response is a bit defensive--take some issue with 'most' as we essentially financed the liberal world order post WWII with our defense of Europe and made the world safe for shipping with the US Navy.
Was the Cold War just propaganda? I don't think we'll ever truly know. Maybe? If it was, then yes most of the budget is waste. We are three years in and the big bad Russians cannot take a country 1/10th their size, so maybe all the Cold War bluster was a huge 'operation mockingbird' on our entire nation to make the defense industry rich--but then again, they did seem to be on the march in other areas of the globe.
I'm old enough to remember the same arguments about defense spending vs education--I was in high school during the Reagan Admins--and our teachers were always clamoring about how expensive a tank vs a text book. Same hollow argument.
Everyone circles the wagons when their own cheese is moved.
bsn
Our Greek economy grows ever closer.
Where was that picture between the Senator and the Kilmar taken? Are they in a Marriott breakfast room?
Right outside the conjugal trailer
ouch!
I wondered what Kilmar was thinking in that picture. I mean, here's this gang banger from Central America who snuck into the country, apparently smuggled illegal immigrants around for his construction foreman, beat up his wife, and after 10 years, finally got sent back to El Salvador... and now a US Senator is having tea with him in prison and calling him a political prisoner?
I would love to know what he thinks of the whole charade.
Gay Gaucho Lounge
Since Trump’s campaign promises to spend money at home, it’s appalling that the bloated unaudited Pentagon budget continues funding beyond their wildest dreams, for god knows what horrific new ways they have of killing people, mostly civilians, (reminder, that is a war crime.) Meanwhile, our bridges collapse, our transportation systems are the laughingstock of the world, our educational level is in the dumper, we have grossly unbalanced taxation, and medical care is still bankrupting families.
Disclaimer: This scorn is aimed at the entire political class for the last century.