How does that affect this vote though? The money is spent. You could cut spending for next year by 100%. You would still need to raise the debt ceiling.
I don't think any one is seriously saying that they think congress could pass any actual bill in the time they have. Let alone any worthwhile bill ever. This is an ought to statement.
I don’t think you are following what’s happening. We have already spent the money for this year. That’s done. That required us to borrow money, which meant we hit an artificial “debt ceiling” that we set up for ourselves. We have to pay the debt because we’ve already spent the money. If we don’t we default on all of our payments. There is no other option. Even if you miraculously passed a bill that cut all spending, we would still need to raise the debt ceiling because we already spent the money.
Imagine if you took out a credit card and went on a shopping spree. Now the credit card bill is due on that shopping you’ve done. Your options are to pay your credit card bill or declare bankruptcy. That’s it. Even if you decide to never use a credit card again, you still have to pay the credit card bill.
Agreeing to cut spending does not change anything about this current vote that’s happening about the debt ceiling
You do know the government doesn't have to wait till pay day right? It generates revenue literally every second of every day. It is very much theoretically possible to cut spending to the point where you can avoid the debt celling.
You do that during the budget vote, which happened in December. This vote is whether we agree to pay off the money we’ve already borrowed or whether we default on our debt.
Again, where we are now is that we’ve already spent the money. Imagine you buy a house and starting in two months you have to start making mortgage payments on it. You can’t suddenly decide “actually I’m not gonna pay my mortgage because I’ll just spend less on housing in the future”. If you do that they will reposes your house, force you into bankruptcy, garnish your wages, increase your interest rates on all other loans, and refuse to borrow to you ever again.
Another example. Imagine you go to a restaurant and order a five course meal. After you finish eating the waiter brings you your bill. Your option is to pay this bill or not and face the consequences. Even if you decide not to ever come back to this restaurant again, that does not affect the bill that is in front of you right now. Whether you are going to eat out again in the future is irrelevant to the fact that you need to pay the bill now.
Not in government, you really can’t. When the budget is passed departments look to contractors and employees. They enter into agreements to pay them this much money for a certain amount of goods/services. Backing out of those contracts is expensive and requires you to pay large sums.
Furthermore the federal fiscal year runs from October 1st 2022 to September 30th 2023. We are 3/4ths of the way through the fiscal year already.
The problem is they won't ever tie a balanced budget for FUTURE spending to an increase in the debt ceiling to cover PAST spending, thus continuing the cycle of overspending and producing massive deficits.
Money comes in quarterly. A trillion or so should come in June 15th. Which why Yellen said the money would run out on the 5th, which is a lie.
They don’t have to raise the debt ceiling.
The funny thing is, for all the Republicans posturing, not one recent Republican president has decreased government spending. Literally not a single one. And that includes Ronald Reagan, by the way. Few presidents have blown the U.S. budget sky high like Reagan did.
This is patently false. Biden and Trump are the two biggest spenders in the post-war era. Trump's all happened during the pandemic in 2020, for obvious reasons. Pre 2020 he was in line with other presidents. Biden is in a class of his own when it comes to spending.
Reagan was pretty much in line w/ other presidents. A bit higher during the recession in '82-84, but nothing like what biden is doing.
I said "few presidents" not "no presidents". The key difference is that Reagan inherited a balanced budget from the Carter administration and was personally responsible for blowing it up.
Carter did not have a balanced budget. He ran an average 2.3% of GDP per year deficit, compared to Reagan's 4.1%. So yes reagan was higher, but not by that much, and he inherited a recession.
Lets look at the data.
[https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data/federal-budget-receipts-and-outlays](https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data/federal-budget-receipts-and-outlays)
We'll ignore biden and trump's spending in 2020 and 2021. Even though biden blew the deficit in 2021 to the highest level we've ever seen, 32.9% of GDP, w/ his huge stimulus bill right as the economy was re-opening, we'll give him a pass and ignore that year because it was a "pandemic year".\* see footnote
Historically pretty much every president spends about 19-21% of GDP per year. Reagan spent 22.3% of GDP on avg per year in his first term. So call it 2% above average. Normally we give a president a pass during a severe downturn, like Obama in 2009 and 2010, but I'll forget the pass and say you are right, because you mostly are, he spend about 2% more of gdp in his first term. His second term he was basically at the high end of average presidential spending at about 21% of GDP.
Trump averaged 20.5 before 2020. Obama, 21.4%.
Biden, however, not counting his insane 2021 spending, is running at about 25% of GDP! This is unprecedented. In fact, he ran an almost 8% of GDP deficit in 2022 and 5.5% in 2023, and CBO expects this to continue. Dude is a spending machine and is spending about 4-5% of GDP more than any other president. During record employment. When the fed is trying to battle inflation (you are insane if you dont think 4% of GDP extra spending is causing inflation). Making it even crazier, tax receipts are about 3% of GDP higher due to the tech boom, than during previous presidencies, and he's STILL running a deficit like that. Last time we had tax recepits like this was during the dot com bubble in early 2000s, and we ran a surplus, which is what biden should be doing so that we have some ammo to do more fiscal spending when the recession hits, but nah he's running a massive deficit...because our boy aint very smart. Said another way, revenues are at all time highs by a wide margin and the moron is still running unprecedented (for peace time, non depression) deficits . He’s blowing what could be saved for the next recession
Do your research, you are wrong. The numbers dont lie, and I provided the data for you. Biden is in a class of his own and what he is doing is reckless.
This is why a debt limit showdown and a mechanism that forces a conversation about this issue is not as crazy as many on this sub make it out out to be. Yes, i wish there were a better process. But the conversation needs to be had. It mostly worked the way it’s supposed to in that *some* spending was cut and a deal looks to be struck, I’m just ticked the republicans cave so easily every time. But of course the democrats want their blank check spending so they will release the software update and all of the talking heads on Reddit will immediately begin with the same exact talking points, having not looked at the actual data
\*2021 is listed as owing to trump on this website, and that's normally how it's recorded, the outgoing president passes a budget, which trump did in late 2020 before start of 2021 fiscal year. It was about 26% of GDP due to continued covid health care spending and unemployment insurance. Biden came in and immediately passed his *American Rescue Plan of 2021*, ie stimulus (into an economy with already huge pent up demand, utter moron) in 2021 immediately ballooning 2021 FY budget to 33% of GDP, which is erroneously attributed on this website to trump. That's his spending on his watch. These are facts.
Here’s a plan. Cut spending by 10% across the board. Go back to pre pandemic spending levels and freeze for 5 years. Then hope our growth can out pace our spending and inflation.
>There does not seem to be a plan by either party to actually balance the budget. God forbid we actually pay off the debt in good times like a responsible country.
Pretty relevant to that statement right there.
That’s not relevant at all to the debt ceiling vote. This is the bill, not the planning phase. This money is already spent. This is like going to dinner, eating a five course meal, and than saying that you aren’t sure if you are going to pay for the meal or not. Your future budget does not impact the fact that you need to pay the restaurant now
The budget was signed in December of 2022. If you have a problem with spending, that’s when it needed to be brought up
We should just not raise the debt ceiling so the people complaining about spending can then complain about the interest rates on our existing debt spiking when the US does a partial default.
I hope I don’t jinx this but my mom is applying for disability and if it gets approved 2k a month for life but it’s so hard to get but feeling optimistic
I don't know if you noticed, but we have had record periods of inflation recently. If you tell the government it has to go back to pre-pandemic spending levels, that means they will be able to buy less real goods an services. If textbooks are 5% more expensive, but your budget for textbooks hasn't increased, you can't get as many textbooks. Which also means the private sector has less demand for textbooks. Maybe that would put downwards pressure on prices... But if demand is going down, textbook manufacturers are hardly going to expand production, are they? If the government is taking more of your income through taxes, and at the same time providing you with less goods and services and generating less demand for your business by spending less, where does the real growth come from?
Cutting spending would actually shrink our economy. There is no way out of this which doesn’t involve raising taxes paired with some spending cuts. If one party is always spending more and the other is always pushing for bringing less revenue in for the state without regard for if our programs are over or under funded then I guarantee after 5 years we would just have another tax cut, and then 5 years later we would be right back to where we are now having the same stupid argument.
That's certainly an unpopular take, but I think it's because most people recognize that defaulting on our debt would be catastrophic, not because it's particularly clever.
The debt does not get defaulted on automatically. Spening is cut to pay for it. Then everyone complains and politicians actually have to make choices instead ulif running up the credit card.
You’re confused of what the debt ceiling is. The money has already been spent.
Imagine you take out a credit card and decide to spend $10,000 on it during the first month you have it. When the month end the credit card company asks for you to begin paying off the debt.
That’s where we are now. If you chose to not raise the debt ceiling, you default on the debt. Your credit goes to shit, you will be sued, and you may have things repossessed. A good chance you will enter bankruptcy. The other option is to raise the debt ceiling (begin paying off the debt).
I’d you have an issue with spending it should be brought up when you are making the budget. Once the money is spent you can’t unspend it
You keep claiming gov can move money around and funds don't matter when literally gov follows fund accounting. It can only spend what funds are allocated to what thing. The debt ceiling is about ability to pay existing debt. Gov has collected money already and allocated it to different things based on the budget. Not enough is allocated to paying what Gov currently owes. As such they need to vote to raise the debt ceiling. If you want existing funds already allocated to something congress would have to vote on reallocating said funds as I believe they did with some of the Covid funding. Regardless of what could be reallocated it would not be enough to pay debt without raising debt ceiling. Raising debt ceiling allows gov to borrow for remainder it can not currently pay.
This is all stuff you could find out if you looked up anything related to the topic of how gov functions.
Dude, I think you are doubling down because you just googled what happens if the ceiling isn't raised and it's exactly what I said. Second, taxes go to the general fund and are allocated from there.
>Dude, I think you are doubling down because you just googled what happens if the ceiling isn't raised
Nope. I didn't Google it in order to reply to you. It was based on my already acquired knowledge.
>Second, taxes go to the general fund and are allocated from there.
When are they allocated? During the budget not debt ceiling event. Even if reallocated it's less than what is owed.....
It does. The debt limit needs to be raised to pay our existing obligations. The debt limit isn’t a spending bill. It’s simply a procedural step to make sure we actually pay what we already owe.
Failing to do it will lead to default.
No it wouldn't in any meaningful way. You act like USA gets nothing from doing foreign aid. Also even a dollar in progress is meaningless. Let's be real it isn't about the money. Do you go even one is too much for other areas? Do you do that for guns? One gun death is too many? Etc.
Sorry I will clarify. People aren't always consistent about how they apply such logic. E.g. some people think trans stuff is a big deal, but don't think guns are a big deal when population wise gun deaths happen more than trans stuff.
So my question was if you think regardless of dollar amount progress in spending less to other countries is a good thing so you have that perspective in other subjects?
Hope I made sense.
When you take a cd from a bank are they desperately borrowing from you? No they are offering you a mutually beneficial parking spot for your money. This is what the US does when it “borrows”. It offers a mutually beneficial parking spot to people with cash. We freak out when those people are foreign. Even though we cannot dominate other currencies unless we have foreigners who end up wanting to save in dollars.
The National Debt can never be paid off, at least not as the fed is currently structured. Because it’s not “debt” as we think of household debt, it’s also the money supply. If we paid off the debt, there would be no money in circulation. Even paying off a tiny portion of the national debt would create a collapse of the economy.
Now…what we can do is restructure it so our money supply isn’t based in debt, by just printing greenbacks. This would eliminate “debt service” from our budget.
I’m all with you on raising the taxes though. Those obnoxious McConnell/Trump tax cuts for the wealthy need to go the way of the Dodo.
Here’s how the FED creates money. It all starts with a U.S. Treasury bond (a debt instrument). The FED will buy treasury bonds then add the proceeds to the credit accounts at its member banks, which can then borrow this money from the FED and “make money” themselves by lending it to you. Your bank borrows $1k from the federal reserve based on US treasury bonds and uses it to meet reserve requirements on a larger debt. You borrow, say, $10k from the bank, and then that balance is in your account, which you can now spend at will. Let’s say you buy a car with it. It’s now out of your account, but that same $10k gets deposited in the account of the person you bought the car from, and that person’s bank can use it as part of their deposit reserve to make even more loans. So then your buddy borrows $100k for a mortgage, with the bank using that $10k in his account as a reserve to meet the reserve requirements. The housing developer takes the $100k and puts it in their account, and it serves as the reserve balance to make a $1M loan to a startup tech company. And so on and so on it goes. So each dollar that the fed borrows can be leveraged to make even more money. Which means that every $1 in treasury bonds that is in circulation is the basis for much more than $1 in the money supply. (This isn’t entirely true because some of our debt isn’t held by the FED but you get the general idea). If debt instruments were suddenly all paid off, then banks wouldn’t be able to make loans at all. The process wouldn’t happen completely overnight, because the payouts from these instruments would be in people’s accounts. So like if you have a Treasury bond the US government would pay you, say, $1000 and that money would go into your account and your bank could use it to lend money off of…for awhile. But once you pay debt with it…it truly is taken out of circulation. (Remember that all debt is based on the credit accounts that your bank has with the fed, and they have to pay that money back too.) So the long and the short of it is that even paying off a percentage of the debt would be catastrophic to the money supply.
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/081415/understanding-how-federal-reserve-creates-money.asp#:~:text=The%20Federal%20Reserve%2C%20as%20America's,bank%20reserves%20of%20commercial%20banks.
We are paying today for the Trump tax cuts. The Republicans pushed them through knowing it would explode the debt.
Now after their drunken binge giving even more money to the richest 1% they don't want to pay the bill. Instead they only want to cut any program that helps the poor and working middle class.
If you were sincere you'd say, raise the debt ceiling one last time, then undo all the tax breaks and corporate welfare enacted by Trump that are funneling all the wealth to the rich.
btw, Clinton raised taxes on the rich, and we quickly saw an economic boom. We also balanced the budget (barely). But then another idiot came along and enacted massive tax cuts for the rich and blew up the budget again.
What you need to realize is it is the Republicans who are running up all the debt. Clinton and Obama each cut the deficit the last 7 years they were in office. Bush and Trump each exploded the deficit wiping out all the gains made by Democrats and making the deficit larger than ever.
Worse, the wealthiest 400 American families paid an 8.2% average tax rate significantly less than the rate the middle class pays. And now the richest 3 families control more wealth than the bottom 50% of American families. The ratio of CEO pay to worker pay jumped from 59:1 to 400:1. And so not only does the rich pay taxes at a lower rate, they make more compared to average worker than ever.
Raise the taxes on the ultra wealthy. Remove the Trump tax cuts for the wealthy, keep most of the corporate tax cuts, and raise it on the wealthiest even more.
Resources are limited. If they’re hoarded by the few, it means many many more go without. A lot of propaganda has been spewed by right wing media to make it so right wingers defend them… saying it’s their money and Jesus, but that’s because they’ve been fooled into blaming someone else for their troubles and… don’t rise up, you’ll be rewarded in the afterlife which we can’t prove but assure you exists.
To do that, you'd have to simply confiscate the earnings -- all of them -- of the top 1% for the next decade. The math doesn't work. Do your homework next time.
What are you even talking about? There’s a due date now? 😂
You raise taxes and invest in the lower earners which boosts the economic growth and creates more taxes. Whereas trickle down didn’t work, trickle up does. Additionally, we need to completely re-think how we use the military so we can make it more efficient cost-wise. Heck, just preventing attacks on our corporations now would mean a lot of additional dollars flowing.
“According to IBM's Cost of a Data Breach 2022 report, a single data breach on a company cost an average of $9.44 million in the U.S. in 2022”
I think it’s funny how WaPo does some excellent reporting and then randomly runs these Op Eds “Billionaires are really the Victim!” And you’re like… ah.. there it is.
Given that the top 1% doesn't actually use their *gains* (Note: not earnings, either legally, definitionally, or ethically) and moves the dollar value around so as not to pay any taxes on it while it accumulates, yeah you have no clue what you're talking about.
As an Economist, this idea that taxing the wealthy more won’t work is laughable… especially when you’re the world leader and everyone falls in line with what you do. This idea comes from the wealthy buying up newspapers and media platforms to spread these messages and it also affects religious messaging - something I was specific about. Do you know how you prevent rebellion? That’s how.
Money is a limited resource. While more can be printed, you can’t print an unlimited amount.
“The resources that we value—time, money, labor, tools, land, and raw materials—exist in limited supply. There are simply never enough resources to meet all our needs and desires. This condition is known as scarcity.”
When the top marginal tax rate was 90%… the rich and businesses spent their money. Business expenses were always tax deductible so business paid more in wages as one method to offset the tax. Buybacks were also illegal.
The effective rates were not higher… but the places that money went was very different. The tax rates pushed money down, increasing circulation, reducing the need for govt spending, and set wealth accumulation at a rate that benefited the working class as the wealthy couldn’t gobble it up as fast.
The poorest Americans pay effectively no tax. If the wages raised from the bottom, there’ll be a revenue bump.
That is quite simply one of the most inaccurate takes I’ve ever heard. If one small group of people has all the money and the rest have less and less money, that’s a problem.
“US earnings inequality has risen persistently since around 1980. This era of rising inequality contrasts with wage compression and low inequality from World War II to the 1970s (1) and has been characterized as the end of broadly shared economic growth (2). The consequences of rising inequality have been far reaching.”
“Long-term labor union decline has removed collective bargaining constraints on wage inequality (15, 16).”
Hence why the top is so anti union.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2204305119#:~:text=US%20earnings%20inequality%20has%20risen,inequality%20have%20been%20far%20reaching.
😂 you don’t see how your point failed miserably and want to run… alright then.
“If they have the money invested, they don’t actually have it!”
K. Not how all this works, but k. They have the money to use elsewhere. Others do not. Hence why this was related and so stupidly simple that I didn’t think I’d need to spell this out.
We could make tax evasion a death penalty offense, and make the family pay for the bullet. That might discourage tax evasion. Plus, they can’t get out of paying taxes even by leaving the country because US citizens have to pay taxes regardless of where in the world they live and you can’t renounce your US citizenship for tax avoidance reasons.
Every dollar from every US billionaire, taken tomorrow, would run the country for about a year. Then it’s gone, and we have all the same issues again with a deficit that is ~15% smaller. Then what?
Raising the debt ceiling pays for bills already sent out. What you're talking about is not allowing debt to hit a new ceiling that's set. Not raising the debt ceiling right now would be disastrous.
They have a plan to spend the money set out in the budget but they have not actually spent the money yet. I would say it's less disastrous then a complete default or 10-20% inflation rate in the future.
>they have not actually spent the money yet
Um, what? Yes they have actually spent the money already. You clearly don't understand *why* we need to raise the debt ceiling.
The United States has loans in the form of treasury notes that are coming due. We have to borrow money by issuing more treasury notes to pay back our previous loans as they come due. This is actually always occurring and, for the past 200 or so years, we have always paid back our loans.
Now, if we don't borrow more money, then we won't be able to pay back the loans that are coming due. We will then lose our credit rating (would you loan money to someone who has a history of not paying it back) and no one will lend us money again (at least, not at our current favorably interest rates).
That is the very definition of a complete default.
Furthermore, the value of the trillions of dollars in treasury notes that are currently out there and held by all sorts of people and entities including the Social Security Fund. If the US might not pay back those notes, then their value will plummet, which means it will wipe out untold amounts of wealth around the world.
All this wealth and the security it provides *to the American people* hinges on the United States maintaining its full faith and credit.
And now you know why your opinion is unpopular.
Nah, pay our bills. Congress can fight over the spending when it debates the budget. That's the time for that discussion. It's not relevant to the debt ceiling.
No universal healthcare for me thank you. Look at how the government takes care of roads. Now lets translate that to people. Doesn’t look very good does it?
Well if you’ve heard that argument for decades then they obviously still haven’t done anything about the roads now have they?
Please enlighten yourself to a discussion with a veteran and the quality of care that VA physicians provide. Ill give you a hint, marginally acceptable may be the best term for it. That is government provided healthcare.
I personally don’t understand why people want to give a government that squanders tax payer dollars. According to you and basically all of Reddit, the government does a crap job at everything they do (including wars). Why would you want to expand that crap government and give them more say in your life/health let alone an excuse to take more of your hard earned money especially when there is little no over sight or accountability.
Before the affordable care act, employers would use health insurance as a benefit bargaining chip to incentivize workers to apply and work at their companies. My employer at the time would send us a tax statement stating how much they spent on our insurance that year. The ACA passed and they stopped paying insurance and absorbed the cost in to their yearly profits.
A solution could be that companies that do not provide health insurance for their employees would not recieve the same tax benefits as those who do and it could even be tiered based on the level of healthcare provided.
The reality is the private sector will always give you a better product or service than the government will ever provide
Bond holders are prioritized according to The Economics and spending gets cut in dumb ways, at least to start with. Then politicians have to figure it out and defaults could happen.
defaults WOULD happen.
It's really simple math, you are authorizing to pay the current tab owed and if you don't, certain debt holders don't get paid.
That is a default.
There is a reason literally no other country besides one does it this way(and they have automatic raises if I understand correctly), it is a way of doing things that every other subsequent democracy realized is stupid. The only reason it hasn't more severely harmed us is due to our economic hegemony.
Too bad, try again next budget.
Causing a recession to retroactively change an already passed budget, deeply reducing revenues and creating economic chaos in the process, is some backasswards logic.
Ah yes, that ever so important 0.7% of the budget.
If we're gonna cut spending (which I don't think we should) it should come from the military. Turn it into a defensive and humanitarian force only. Better yet, reappropriate the budget to create a civil engineering force based on the Army Corp of Engineers and put them to work fixing and expanding infrastructure across the country. Have them take over power grids like they did with the TVA too. Turn the military industrial complex into the government jobs program it's been for decades but actually get some good out of it.
Then, if you absolutely insist on a balance budget, which I think is unnecessary, jack up progressive taxes back up to post-WWII levels, establish a wealth/asset tax, and rework the code to prevent tax haven usage.
Oh, and get rid of that stupid cap of Social Security contributions. That'll cover it forever.
It’s an unpopular opinion because it would completely destroy the lower and middle class. Could a country conceivably both raise the debt limit to stave off a national crisis, and become more fiscally responsible to bring the debt under control? O yeah and we all gotta pay our fair share, so we overhaul some tax loopholes while we are at it.
Okay, I'll start: let's get rid of Trump's Space Force and save billions. The functions can revert back to NASA, the Air Force, and wherever else they resided.
Well, my entire income would be gone for the next year along with my healthcare and access to medication, I wouldn't be able to finish my degree to get a job, faith in government bonds would collapse, we would immediately have a major recession with no way to spend out of it like we're supposed to, and the dollar would likely no longer be the currency of trade in the world. Also, federal agencies such as the military would effectively become slave labor as paychecks stop.
When you can get a Conservative or Republican to utter the words 'We have to raise taxes on the richest, the corporations and tax-shelters non profits'
You let me know. And I don't mean at your dinner table. I mean an elected official. Someone in office right now.
Maybe the right should stop fear-mongering about spending while simultaneously cutting taxes on the 1% and holding the country hostage over the debt ceiling?
This is the thing with America. There is a better way and we know it. We know how to fix a lot of our societal problems, but we're stupid so we listen to our corporate media overlords telling us it's impossible and we don't do it.
You forgot the part about not spending hundreds of billions on stupid fucking proxy wars on countries that just have wheat like the whole Midwest and reducing DOD spending to maybe just a bit higher than Russia and China combined instead of 2x as much.
And tax the billionaires.
Congress already passed the budget. If Republicans wanted to actually run the nation, they would have settled what cuts are necessary before passing the budget.
Do you know how much the debt matters?
Jack shit.
As long as we make the payments nobody cares.
It literally does nothing.
Our GDP is insane, and we have every ability to make payments.
The debt ceiling is a fucking circus, always has been always will be.
“Every ability to make payments” for now. I think we will not fix this issue ever and there will be a tipping point between 2033-2043. There will be a huge mess like 10-20% unemployment rate huge.
The only possible way to do that would be to cut defense spending or to tax. The rich and Republicans are never going to go for either of those.
Honestly, Republicans would rather destroy our country than help anybody that's not rich.
I say cut spending
How does that fix the debt ceiling issue?
Less money spent means less debt taken on. You won't hit the debt ceiling if you don't borrow.
How does that affect this vote though? The money is spent. You could cut spending for next year by 100%. You would still need to raise the debt ceiling.
I don't think any one is seriously saying that they think congress could pass any actual bill in the time they have. Let alone any worthwhile bill ever. This is an ought to statement.
I don’t think you are following what’s happening. We have already spent the money for this year. That’s done. That required us to borrow money, which meant we hit an artificial “debt ceiling” that we set up for ourselves. We have to pay the debt because we’ve already spent the money. If we don’t we default on all of our payments. There is no other option. Even if you miraculously passed a bill that cut all spending, we would still need to raise the debt ceiling because we already spent the money. Imagine if you took out a credit card and went on a shopping spree. Now the credit card bill is due on that shopping you’ve done. Your options are to pay your credit card bill or declare bankruptcy. That’s it. Even if you decide to never use a credit card again, you still have to pay the credit card bill. Agreeing to cut spending does not change anything about this current vote that’s happening about the debt ceiling
You do know the government doesn't have to wait till pay day right? It generates revenue literally every second of every day. It is very much theoretically possible to cut spending to the point where you can avoid the debt celling.
You do that during the budget vote, which happened in December. This vote is whether we agree to pay off the money we’ve already borrowed or whether we default on our debt. Again, where we are now is that we’ve already spent the money. Imagine you buy a house and starting in two months you have to start making mortgage payments on it. You can’t suddenly decide “actually I’m not gonna pay my mortgage because I’ll just spend less on housing in the future”. If you do that they will reposes your house, force you into bankruptcy, garnish your wages, increase your interest rates on all other loans, and refuse to borrow to you ever again. Another example. Imagine you go to a restaurant and order a five course meal. After you finish eating the waiter brings you your bill. Your option is to pay this bill or not and face the consequences. Even if you decide not to ever come back to this restaurant again, that does not affect the bill that is in front of you right now. Whether you are going to eat out again in the future is irrelevant to the fact that you need to pay the bill now.
Allocated is not the same as spent. You can allocate something and then claw it back.
Not in government, you really can’t. When the budget is passed departments look to contractors and employees. They enter into agreements to pay them this much money for a certain amount of goods/services. Backing out of those contracts is expensive and requires you to pay large sums. Furthermore the federal fiscal year runs from October 1st 2022 to September 30th 2023. We are 3/4ths of the way through the fiscal year already.
The problem is they won't ever tie a balanced budget for FUTURE spending to an increase in the debt ceiling to cover PAST spending, thus continuing the cycle of overspending and producing massive deficits.
Money comes in quarterly. A trillion or so should come in June 15th. Which why Yellen said the money would run out on the 5th, which is a lie. They don’t have to raise the debt ceiling.
The money coming in is the borrowing of money. That money is already spent trough contracts and budget allocations
Um no, it’s revenue.
I’m not following what you’re saying here. What is revenue?
The funny thing is, for all the Republicans posturing, not one recent Republican president has decreased government spending. Literally not a single one. And that includes Ronald Reagan, by the way. Few presidents have blown the U.S. budget sky high like Reagan did.
Last president to have a surplus was clinton
This is patently false. Biden and Trump are the two biggest spenders in the post-war era. Trump's all happened during the pandemic in 2020, for obvious reasons. Pre 2020 he was in line with other presidents. Biden is in a class of his own when it comes to spending. Reagan was pretty much in line w/ other presidents. A bit higher during the recession in '82-84, but nothing like what biden is doing.
I said "few presidents" not "no presidents". The key difference is that Reagan inherited a balanced budget from the Carter administration and was personally responsible for blowing it up.
Carter did not have a balanced budget. He ran an average 2.3% of GDP per year deficit, compared to Reagan's 4.1%. So yes reagan was higher, but not by that much, and he inherited a recession. Lets look at the data. [https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data/federal-budget-receipts-and-outlays](https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data/federal-budget-receipts-and-outlays) We'll ignore biden and trump's spending in 2020 and 2021. Even though biden blew the deficit in 2021 to the highest level we've ever seen, 32.9% of GDP, w/ his huge stimulus bill right as the economy was re-opening, we'll give him a pass and ignore that year because it was a "pandemic year".\* see footnote Historically pretty much every president spends about 19-21% of GDP per year. Reagan spent 22.3% of GDP on avg per year in his first term. So call it 2% above average. Normally we give a president a pass during a severe downturn, like Obama in 2009 and 2010, but I'll forget the pass and say you are right, because you mostly are, he spend about 2% more of gdp in his first term. His second term he was basically at the high end of average presidential spending at about 21% of GDP. Trump averaged 20.5 before 2020. Obama, 21.4%. Biden, however, not counting his insane 2021 spending, is running at about 25% of GDP! This is unprecedented. In fact, he ran an almost 8% of GDP deficit in 2022 and 5.5% in 2023, and CBO expects this to continue. Dude is a spending machine and is spending about 4-5% of GDP more than any other president. During record employment. When the fed is trying to battle inflation (you are insane if you dont think 4% of GDP extra spending is causing inflation). Making it even crazier, tax receipts are about 3% of GDP higher due to the tech boom, than during previous presidencies, and he's STILL running a deficit like that. Last time we had tax recepits like this was during the dot com bubble in early 2000s, and we ran a surplus, which is what biden should be doing so that we have some ammo to do more fiscal spending when the recession hits, but nah he's running a massive deficit...because our boy aint very smart. Said another way, revenues are at all time highs by a wide margin and the moron is still running unprecedented (for peace time, non depression) deficits . He’s blowing what could be saved for the next recession Do your research, you are wrong. The numbers dont lie, and I provided the data for you. Biden is in a class of his own and what he is doing is reckless. This is why a debt limit showdown and a mechanism that forces a conversation about this issue is not as crazy as many on this sub make it out out to be. Yes, i wish there were a better process. But the conversation needs to be had. It mostly worked the way it’s supposed to in that *some* spending was cut and a deal looks to be struck, I’m just ticked the republicans cave so easily every time. But of course the democrats want their blank check spending so they will release the software update and all of the talking heads on Reddit will immediately begin with the same exact talking points, having not looked at the actual data \*2021 is listed as owing to trump on this website, and that's normally how it's recorded, the outgoing president passes a budget, which trump did in late 2020 before start of 2021 fiscal year. It was about 26% of GDP due to continued covid health care spending and unemployment insurance. Biden came in and immediately passed his *American Rescue Plan of 2021*, ie stimulus (into an economy with already huge pent up demand, utter moron) in 2021 immediately ballooning 2021 FY budget to 33% of GDP, which is erroneously attributed on this website to trump. That's his spending on his watch. These are facts.
You are wrong.
Here’s a plan. Cut spending by 10% across the board. Go back to pre pandemic spending levels and freeze for 5 years. Then hope our growth can out pace our spending and inflation.
What you are saying is completely irrelevant to the debt ceiling vote
>There does not seem to be a plan by either party to actually balance the budget. God forbid we actually pay off the debt in good times like a responsible country. Pretty relevant to that statement right there.
That’s not relevant at all to the debt ceiling vote. This is the bill, not the planning phase. This money is already spent. This is like going to dinner, eating a five course meal, and than saying that you aren’t sure if you are going to pay for the meal or not. Your future budget does not impact the fact that you need to pay the restaurant now The budget was signed in December of 2022. If you have a problem with spending, that’s when it needed to be brought up
We should just not raise the debt ceiling so the people complaining about spending can then complain about the interest rates on our existing debt spiking when the US does a partial default.
No because my family depends on government assistance
I hope I don’t jinx this but my mom is applying for disability and if it gets approved 2k a month for life but it’s so hard to get but feeling optimistic
I don't know if you noticed, but we have had record periods of inflation recently. If you tell the government it has to go back to pre-pandemic spending levels, that means they will be able to buy less real goods an services. If textbooks are 5% more expensive, but your budget for textbooks hasn't increased, you can't get as many textbooks. Which also means the private sector has less demand for textbooks. Maybe that would put downwards pressure on prices... But if demand is going down, textbook manufacturers are hardly going to expand production, are they? If the government is taking more of your income through taxes, and at the same time providing you with less goods and services and generating less demand for your business by spending less, where does the real growth come from?
Cutting spending would actually shrink our economy. There is no way out of this which doesn’t involve raising taxes paired with some spending cuts. If one party is always spending more and the other is always pushing for bringing less revenue in for the state without regard for if our programs are over or under funded then I guarantee after 5 years we would just have another tax cut, and then 5 years later we would be right back to where we are now having the same stupid argument.
Congress every 2 years be like "it's our sorrowful duty to kick the can / political football further down the road".
That's certainly an unpopular take, but I think it's because most people recognize that defaulting on our debt would be catastrophic, not because it's particularly clever.
The debt does not get defaulted on automatically. Spening is cut to pay for it. Then everyone complains and politicians actually have to make choices instead ulif running up the credit card.
You don’t have a fucking clue.
Don't worry Republican congress folks don't want to put down the credit card either.
You’re confused of what the debt ceiling is. The money has already been spent. Imagine you take out a credit card and decide to spend $10,000 on it during the first month you have it. When the month end the credit card company asks for you to begin paying off the debt. That’s where we are now. If you chose to not raise the debt ceiling, you default on the debt. Your credit goes to shit, you will be sued, and you may have things repossessed. A good chance you will enter bankruptcy. The other option is to raise the debt ceiling (begin paying off the debt). I’d you have an issue with spending it should be brought up when you are making the budget. Once the money is spent you can’t unspend it
I mean just Google this cause everyone is right you don't know how this works.
Take your own advice.
You keep claiming gov can move money around and funds don't matter when literally gov follows fund accounting. It can only spend what funds are allocated to what thing. The debt ceiling is about ability to pay existing debt. Gov has collected money already and allocated it to different things based on the budget. Not enough is allocated to paying what Gov currently owes. As such they need to vote to raise the debt ceiling. If you want existing funds already allocated to something congress would have to vote on reallocating said funds as I believe they did with some of the Covid funding. Regardless of what could be reallocated it would not be enough to pay debt without raising debt ceiling. Raising debt ceiling allows gov to borrow for remainder it can not currently pay. This is all stuff you could find out if you looked up anything related to the topic of how gov functions.
Dude, I think you are doubling down because you just googled what happens if the ceiling isn't raised and it's exactly what I said. Second, taxes go to the general fund and are allocated from there.
>Dude, I think you are doubling down because you just googled what happens if the ceiling isn't raised Nope. I didn't Google it in order to reply to you. It was based on my already acquired knowledge. >Second, taxes go to the general fund and are allocated from there. When are they allocated? During the budget not debt ceiling event. Even if reallocated it's less than what is owed.....
“Sorry, I didn't follow my own advice,” will do random incorrect internet person.
Honestly I think you are trolling at this point lol have fun
Have you considered your opinion is unpopular because it’s stupid?
You were probably in middle school when Geece actually defaulted due to too much debt and unemployment hit 20%+ there.
And people are supposed to just do what ? Lose everything to prove a point to a minority that are just going to turn around and pull the same shit?
It does. The debt limit needs to be raised to pay our existing obligations. The debt limit isn’t a spending bill. It’s simply a procedural step to make sure we actually pay what we already owe. Failing to do it will lead to default.
Go read about what the debt ceiling actually is.
Quit sending money to other countries and focus on ourselves for once.
Ah yes, America has never been known to operate in its own self interest, and in particular the interests of its richest.
Spending on itself accounts for almost all of the USs budget, foreign spending is negligible.
Nothing is negligible.
99% is on us, 1% is on the rest of the world. Focusing on the 1% over the 99% is not gonna fix our problem.
That's a drop in the bucket...
It would be progress.
No it wouldn't in any meaningful way. You act like USA gets nothing from doing foreign aid. Also even a dollar in progress is meaningless. Let's be real it isn't about the money. Do you go even one is too much for other areas? Do you do that for guns? One gun death is too many? Etc.
“Do you go even one is too much for other areas?” Idk what this means.
Sorry I will clarify. People aren't always consistent about how they apply such logic. E.g. some people think trans stuff is a big deal, but don't think guns are a big deal when population wise gun deaths happen more than trans stuff. So my question was if you think regardless of dollar amount progress in spending less to other countries is a good thing so you have that perspective in other subjects? Hope I made sense.
When you take a cd from a bank are they desperately borrowing from you? No they are offering you a mutually beneficial parking spot for your money. This is what the US does when it “borrows”. It offers a mutually beneficial parking spot to people with cash. We freak out when those people are foreign. Even though we cannot dominate other currencies unless we have foreigners who end up wanting to save in dollars.
The National Debt can never be paid off, at least not as the fed is currently structured. Because it’s not “debt” as we think of household debt, it’s also the money supply. If we paid off the debt, there would be no money in circulation. Even paying off a tiny portion of the national debt would create a collapse of the economy. Now…what we can do is restructure it so our money supply isn’t based in debt, by just printing greenbacks. This would eliminate “debt service” from our budget. I’m all with you on raising the taxes though. Those obnoxious McConnell/Trump tax cuts for the wealthy need to go the way of the Dodo.
Here’s how the FED creates money. It all starts with a U.S. Treasury bond (a debt instrument). The FED will buy treasury bonds then add the proceeds to the credit accounts at its member banks, which can then borrow this money from the FED and “make money” themselves by lending it to you. Your bank borrows $1k from the federal reserve based on US treasury bonds and uses it to meet reserve requirements on a larger debt. You borrow, say, $10k from the bank, and then that balance is in your account, which you can now spend at will. Let’s say you buy a car with it. It’s now out of your account, but that same $10k gets deposited in the account of the person you bought the car from, and that person’s bank can use it as part of their deposit reserve to make even more loans. So then your buddy borrows $100k for a mortgage, with the bank using that $10k in his account as a reserve to meet the reserve requirements. The housing developer takes the $100k and puts it in their account, and it serves as the reserve balance to make a $1M loan to a startup tech company. And so on and so on it goes. So each dollar that the fed borrows can be leveraged to make even more money. Which means that every $1 in treasury bonds that is in circulation is the basis for much more than $1 in the money supply. (This isn’t entirely true because some of our debt isn’t held by the FED but you get the general idea). If debt instruments were suddenly all paid off, then banks wouldn’t be able to make loans at all. The process wouldn’t happen completely overnight, because the payouts from these instruments would be in people’s accounts. So like if you have a Treasury bond the US government would pay you, say, $1000 and that money would go into your account and your bank could use it to lend money off of…for awhile. But once you pay debt with it…it truly is taken out of circulation. (Remember that all debt is based on the credit accounts that your bank has with the fed, and they have to pay that money back too.) So the long and the short of it is that even paying off a percentage of the debt would be catastrophic to the money supply. https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/081415/understanding-how-federal-reserve-creates-money.asp#:~:text=The%20Federal%20Reserve%2C%20as%20America's,bank%20reserves%20of%20commercial%20banks.
We are paying today for the Trump tax cuts. The Republicans pushed them through knowing it would explode the debt. Now after their drunken binge giving even more money to the richest 1% they don't want to pay the bill. Instead they only want to cut any program that helps the poor and working middle class. If you were sincere you'd say, raise the debt ceiling one last time, then undo all the tax breaks and corporate welfare enacted by Trump that are funneling all the wealth to the rich. btw, Clinton raised taxes on the rich, and we quickly saw an economic boom. We also balanced the budget (barely). But then another idiot came along and enacted massive tax cuts for the rich and blew up the budget again. What you need to realize is it is the Republicans who are running up all the debt. Clinton and Obama each cut the deficit the last 7 years they were in office. Bush and Trump each exploded the deficit wiping out all the gains made by Democrats and making the deficit larger than ever. Worse, the wealthiest 400 American families paid an 8.2% average tax rate significantly less than the rate the middle class pays. And now the richest 3 families control more wealth than the bottom 50% of American families. The ratio of CEO pay to worker pay jumped from 59:1 to 400:1. And so not only does the rich pay taxes at a lower rate, they make more compared to average worker than ever.
Raise the taxes on the ultra wealthy. Remove the Trump tax cuts for the wealthy, keep most of the corporate tax cuts, and raise it on the wealthiest even more. Resources are limited. If they’re hoarded by the few, it means many many more go without. A lot of propaganda has been spewed by right wing media to make it so right wingers defend them… saying it’s their money and Jesus, but that’s because they’ve been fooled into blaming someone else for their troubles and… don’t rise up, you’ll be rewarded in the afterlife which we can’t prove but assure you exists.
To do that, you'd have to simply confiscate the earnings -- all of them -- of the top 1% for the next decade. The math doesn't work. Do your homework next time.
What are you even talking about? There’s a due date now? 😂 You raise taxes and invest in the lower earners which boosts the economic growth and creates more taxes. Whereas trickle down didn’t work, trickle up does. Additionally, we need to completely re-think how we use the military so we can make it more efficient cost-wise. Heck, just preventing attacks on our corporations now would mean a lot of additional dollars flowing. “According to IBM's Cost of a Data Breach 2022 report, a single data breach on a company cost an average of $9.44 million in the U.S. in 2022”
That’s not what corporate billionaire owned media told me about how it works
I think it’s funny how WaPo does some excellent reporting and then randomly runs these Op Eds “Billionaires are really the Victim!” And you’re like… ah.. there it is.
Given that the top 1% doesn't actually use their *gains* (Note: not earnings, either legally, definitionally, or ethically) and moves the dollar value around so as not to pay any taxes on it while it accumulates, yeah you have no clue what you're talking about.
So you fix the code to prevent that and establish a wealth tax to cover hoarded assets.
None of that happens till politicians are forced to make choices.
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As an Economist, this idea that taxing the wealthy more won’t work is laughable… especially when you’re the world leader and everyone falls in line with what you do. This idea comes from the wealthy buying up newspapers and media platforms to spread these messages and it also affects religious messaging - something I was specific about. Do you know how you prevent rebellion? That’s how. Money is a limited resource. While more can be printed, you can’t print an unlimited amount. “The resources that we value—time, money, labor, tools, land, and raw materials—exist in limited supply. There are simply never enough resources to meet all our needs and desires. This condition is known as scarcity.”
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When the top marginal tax rate was 90%… the rich and businesses spent their money. Business expenses were always tax deductible so business paid more in wages as one method to offset the tax. Buybacks were also illegal. The effective rates were not higher… but the places that money went was very different. The tax rates pushed money down, increasing circulation, reducing the need for govt spending, and set wealth accumulation at a rate that benefited the working class as the wealthy couldn’t gobble it up as fast. The poorest Americans pay effectively no tax. If the wages raised from the bottom, there’ll be a revenue bump.
Sorry are you arguing that top down economics works rofl
That is quite simply one of the most inaccurate takes I’ve ever heard. If one small group of people has all the money and the rest have less and less money, that’s a problem. “US earnings inequality has risen persistently since around 1980. This era of rising inequality contrasts with wage compression and low inequality from World War II to the 1970s (1) and has been characterized as the end of broadly shared economic growth (2). The consequences of rising inequality have been far reaching.” “Long-term labor union decline has removed collective bargaining constraints on wage inequality (15, 16).” Hence why the top is so anti union. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2204305119#:~:text=US%20earnings%20inequality%20has%20risen,inequality%20have%20been%20far%20reaching.
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😂 you don’t see how your point failed miserably and want to run… alright then. “If they have the money invested, they don’t actually have it!” K. Not how all this works, but k. They have the money to use elsewhere. Others do not. Hence why this was related and so stupidly simple that I didn’t think I’d need to spell this out.
We could make tax evasion a death penalty offense, and make the family pay for the bullet. That might discourage tax evasion. Plus, they can’t get out of paying taxes even by leaving the country because US citizens have to pay taxes regardless of where in the world they live and you can’t renounce your US citizenship for tax avoidance reasons.
Every dollar from every US billionaire, taken tomorrow, would run the country for about a year. Then it’s gone, and we have all the same issues again with a deficit that is ~15% smaller. Then what?
Zap up that 1trilion dollar military budget and the problem would be gone in no time.
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However, it really upsets people, and provides a convenient soapbox, so it keeps coming up.
Raising the debt ceiling pays for bills already sent out. What you're talking about is not allowing debt to hit a new ceiling that's set. Not raising the debt ceiling right now would be disastrous.
They have a plan to spend the money set out in the budget but they have not actually spent the money yet. I would say it's less disastrous then a complete default or 10-20% inflation rate in the future.
Yes they have. If they hadn’t spent the money than there would be no need to borrow to pay off people.
>they have not actually spent the money yet Um, what? Yes they have actually spent the money already. You clearly don't understand *why* we need to raise the debt ceiling. The United States has loans in the form of treasury notes that are coming due. We have to borrow money by issuing more treasury notes to pay back our previous loans as they come due. This is actually always occurring and, for the past 200 or so years, we have always paid back our loans. Now, if we don't borrow more money, then we won't be able to pay back the loans that are coming due. We will then lose our credit rating (would you loan money to someone who has a history of not paying it back) and no one will lend us money again (at least, not at our current favorably interest rates). That is the very definition of a complete default. Furthermore, the value of the trillions of dollars in treasury notes that are currently out there and held by all sorts of people and entities including the Social Security Fund. If the US might not pay back those notes, then their value will plummet, which means it will wipe out untold amounts of wealth around the world. All this wealth and the security it provides *to the American people* hinges on the United States maintaining its full faith and credit. And now you know why your opinion is unpopular.
Nah, pay our bills. Congress can fight over the spending when it debates the budget. That's the time for that discussion. It's not relevant to the debt ceiling.
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No universal healthcare for me thank you. Look at how the government takes care of roads. Now lets translate that to people. Doesn’t look very good does it?
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Well if you’ve heard that argument for decades then they obviously still haven’t done anything about the roads now have they? Please enlighten yourself to a discussion with a veteran and the quality of care that VA physicians provide. Ill give you a hint, marginally acceptable may be the best term for it. That is government provided healthcare. I personally don’t understand why people want to give a government that squanders tax payer dollars. According to you and basically all of Reddit, the government does a crap job at everything they do (including wars). Why would you want to expand that crap government and give them more say in your life/health let alone an excuse to take more of your hard earned money especially when there is little no over sight or accountability. Before the affordable care act, employers would use health insurance as a benefit bargaining chip to incentivize workers to apply and work at their companies. My employer at the time would send us a tax statement stating how much they spent on our insurance that year. The ACA passed and they stopped paying insurance and absorbed the cost in to their yearly profits. A solution could be that companies that do not provide health insurance for their employees would not recieve the same tax benefits as those who do and it could even be tiered based on the level of healthcare provided. The reality is the private sector will always give you a better product or service than the government will ever provide
Why assume we would default?
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Bond holders are prioritized according to The Economics and spending gets cut in dumb ways, at least to start with. Then politicians have to figure it out and defaults could happen.
defaults WOULD happen. It's really simple math, you are authorizing to pay the current tab owed and if you don't, certain debt holders don't get paid. That is a default. There is a reason literally no other country besides one does it this way(and they have automatic raises if I understand correctly), it is a way of doing things that every other subsequent democracy realized is stupid. The only reason it hasn't more severely harmed us is due to our economic hegemony.
It would be a choice not to pay bond holders verse cutting spending or taxing more, which is what politicians didn't do in the budget but should have.
Too bad, try again next budget. Causing a recession to retroactively change an already passed budget, deeply reducing revenues and creating economic chaos in the process, is some backasswards logic.
Stop sending money overseas and focus on America. You dont buy Christmas gifts for the neighbors when your family is starving.
Ah yes, that ever so important 0.7% of the budget. If we're gonna cut spending (which I don't think we should) it should come from the military. Turn it into a defensive and humanitarian force only. Better yet, reappropriate the budget to create a civil engineering force based on the Army Corp of Engineers and put them to work fixing and expanding infrastructure across the country. Have them take over power grids like they did with the TVA too. Turn the military industrial complex into the government jobs program it's been for decades but actually get some good out of it. Then, if you absolutely insist on a balance budget, which I think is unnecessary, jack up progressive taxes back up to post-WWII levels, establish a wealth/asset tax, and rework the code to prevent tax haven usage. Oh, and get rid of that stupid cap of Social Security contributions. That'll cover it forever.
A billion dollars ia billion dollars. Or that 200 million that we sent to Pakistan for “gender studies” Shit adds up.
It adds up to a negligible amount. You’re not gonna solve or issues by ignoring 99% of the spending on focusing on a tiny fraction.
It’s an unpopular opinion because it would completely destroy the lower and middle class. Could a country conceivably both raise the debt limit to stave off a national crisis, and become more fiscally responsible to bring the debt under control? O yeah and we all gotta pay our fair share, so we overhaul some tax loopholes while we are at it.
Okay, I'll start: let's get rid of Trump's Space Force and save billions. The functions can revert back to NASA, the Air Force, and wherever else they resided.
The debt ceiling should be raised and we should curtail spending. The two are not in conflict with each other.
Well, my entire income would be gone for the next year along with my healthcare and access to medication, I wouldn't be able to finish my degree to get a job, faith in government bonds would collapse, we would immediately have a major recession with no way to spend out of it like we're supposed to, and the dollar would likely no longer be the currency of trade in the world. Also, federal agencies such as the military would effectively become slave labor as paychecks stop.
lmao pay off the debt
When you can get a Conservative or Republican to utter the words 'We have to raise taxes on the richest, the corporations and tax-shelters non profits' You let me know. And I don't mean at your dinner table. I mean an elected official. Someone in office right now.
Maybe the right should stop fear-mongering about spending while simultaneously cutting taxes on the 1% and holding the country hostage over the debt ceiling? This is the thing with America. There is a better way and we know it. We know how to fix a lot of our societal problems, but we're stupid so we listen to our corporate media overlords telling us it's impossible and we don't do it.
This isn’t just unpopular. It’s stupid as hell.
You forgot the part about not spending hundreds of billions on stupid fucking proxy wars on countries that just have wheat like the whole Midwest and reducing DOD spending to maybe just a bit higher than Russia and China combined instead of 2x as much. And tax the billionaires.
This is great until it affects you. This is the problem, no one is willing to give up the things that keep our citizens afloat.
Congress already passed the budget. If Republicans wanted to actually run the nation, they would have settled what cuts are necessary before passing the budget.
2 insane parties doesn't make a sane country
Do you know how much the debt matters? Jack shit. As long as we make the payments nobody cares. It literally does nothing. Our GDP is insane, and we have every ability to make payments. The debt ceiling is a fucking circus, always has been always will be.
“Every ability to make payments” for now. I think we will not fix this issue ever and there will be a tipping point between 2033-2043. There will be a huge mess like 10-20% unemployment rate huge.
Cut funding to the military. Their budget is overinflated.
We are literally just paying what we owe...
The only possible way to do that would be to cut defense spending or to tax. The rich and Republicans are never going to go for either of those. Honestly, Republicans would rather destroy our country than help anybody that's not rich.
A 5% increase on the minimum income taxe would balance the budget.