[cemerick]

> Surely we all agree on medication and life-saving care for children.

That is absolutely not a given. The currently in-power minority earnestly believe that people are only due the level of healthcare they can personally fund and afford, period.

> These are real questions that Americans are trying to answer right now.

Which Americans? There's no grand debate happening right now, just a table-flipping tantrum.

It's a fun exercise to do the chin-stroking thing of asking about efficiency and tax rates and so on, but it's so disconnected from the reality of the federal budget that it's hard to believe it's anything other than a cynical tactic.

Military spending is the overwhelming majority of non-discretionary spending, and there are effectively no limits to it. Meanwhile, extremely high-leverage foreign aid (like the HIV-related treatments that have been mentioned) are always first on the chopping block, along with things like school lunches and early childhood education that have been demonstrated to be effectively free in terms of how much spending on remediating bad outcomes later in peoples' lives.

[ahmeneeroe-v2]

The "grand debate" happened, Americans voted, and now the guy who won is delivering on his campaign promises. Whether you agree with Trump or not, this should not be a surprising outcome. He told us he was going to do this.

>Military spending is the overwhelming majority of non-discretionary spending

This is so wildly wrong and easily disproven that I really can't take the rest of what you say seriously.

[UncleMeat]

But he isn't. This isn't framed as a "we need to bring down costs and stop paying for things and that's just going to be hard" initiative. This is framed as a mechanism of eliminating DEI programs.

In the US spending is controlled by Congress. The Congress was voted on by the people. The idea that Trump throwing bombs into the federal budget is democracy but following Congress' passed budget isn't is ridiculous.

[cemerick]

>> Military spending is the overwhelming majority of non-discretionary spending > > This is so wildly wrong and easily disproven that I really can't take the rest of what you say seriously.

sigh

https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59729

Defense accounted for $805B out of a total discretionary budget of $1.7T. The next largest category (using the CBO's classifications, not mine) are veteran's benefits @ $131B, and it goes down from there. If you want to quibble with what "overwhelming majority" means, I guess you can do that, but I doubt that's interesting to anyone.

I'll wait for you to 'disprove' the above.

tbc, I am not surprised by any of this (as you say, he was very clear about his intentions), but let's not pretend that there is any policy-specific valence to the outcome of any vote in the current electoral system. People vote as they do for their own (usually terrible, and usually unrelated to policy) reasons, and the people that win get to do what they will with the power bestowed upon them. Insofar as Trump's and Republicans' actions make life for the bottom ~80% harder, don't be surprised as buyers' remorse sets in pretty heavily. And so goes the "debate".