[hallway_monitor]

What would you cut? I don’t know what I would, but I do know that the United States is heading for a financial apocalypse unless drastic measures are taken now.

I know there’s a lot of hysteria around this, but I’m still at the place where I can be optimistic that the US will come out ahead. At least they’re doing something besides spending more money and acting like everything‘s OK. From a long-term financial stability standpoint it’s really not.

[dragonwriter]

> What would you cut?

Were I concerned about fiscal balance, I wouldn't view cutting as the best way to solve the problem, I would raise high-end taxes.

> I do know that the United States is heading for a financial apocalypse unless drastic measures are taken now.

Insofar as that’s true, it is a direct result of the actions taking thus far this administration, not something they are correcting—and not through fiscal imbalance causing wider problems but by a broad economic collapse directly (which, because the broad economy drives revenue, has fiscal balance problems as a second order impact.)

[bruce511]

It's worth noting that this "financial crisis" (which I disagree with) has been brought on by Republican governments. Bill Clinton left a budget surplus which is the easiest way to pay down the debt.

Secondly, if I had to cut something, the obvious target is the military. (Oh boy, ring on the downvotes there...) But hear me out.

Firstly, the adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq cost more than the current debt. With pretty much zero achieved. Focusing less on projecting power, and more on self-defense might deliver better returns.

Of course the military budget can't (and wont) be cut because it's not about the military. It's a carefully controlled jobs program that moves money from the federal piggy bank to pretty much every district in the nation. So it becomes a game of "cut x, but not y, because y is made in my district. It's easier to cut less-specific programs (like Medicare) because that isn't district specific.

Then again maybe the tide has turned, and they could cut military spending. The CHIPS act funneled tons of money to Florida and yet Floridians hated it.

[righthand]

> but I do know that the United States is heading for a financial apocalypse unless drastic measures are taken now.

Do you have proof of this? Otherwise you are spreading propaganda and lies. “We need to cut stuff because the party I support says so” isn’t proof of a financial apocalypse and is only fear, uncertainty, and doubt. It’s the very hysteria lying in which you refer.

[adamtaylor_13]

Do they have proof that 33+ trillion dollars in debt will begin snowballing larger than any country can actually service?

Do we need specific evidence about how debt interest works?

Sorry for how snarky this sounds but your response sounds like you don’t believe that the interest on over 33 trillion dollars is a big deal (and it’s growing…)

Please educate me if that’s not how interest or debt works (again I am dead serious here) but it seems disingenuous to claim that some sort of proof is required to point at the debt and say “Ah that’s not a problem unless you PROVE it’s a problem”

[stevenbedrick]

First of all, I don’t accept the a priori premise that cutting is needed. But if I did want to cut, I would want to have an actual plan for how to figure out what could be cut and what tradeoffs were involved, and then to execute that plan in way that balanced as many equities as possible and was done in a way that followed some sane and transparent process (as well as relevant laws).

Part of that might involve being able to show some kind of financial analysis about what was being cut, to justify it and to get buy-in from congress and other relevant stakeholders, and to do the cuts in a way that minimized their impacts, gave everybody who was going to be affected adequate time to be part of the process, and to plan for how to manage their side of the situation.

Needless to say, what we are seeing now is… none of those things.

A good example of what a saner process might look like would be the federal workforce reductions that followed a big analysis on government efficiency that Al Gore and his team led during the first Clinton presidency; look up the Federal Workforce Restructuring Act of 1994 to see how it all went down. They spent six months making a plan, then got it through congress to fund buyouts (it passed with major bipartisan support).

[acdha]

> I do know that the United States is heading for a financial apocalypse unless drastic measures are taken now.

The people you get your news from are lying to you, trying to get you to sell out your future to their profit.

The economic issues we’re facing right now were created by the current administration installing heavy taxes on imports while simultaneously creating a nationwide shock with federal spending. This is like declaring that you should save money and doing so by not paying your rent, skipping the doctor, and pushing your car into the sea.

If we rolled back to January 19th, when the economy had been growing steadily and all signs projected that trend to continue, the long-term problems still weren’t catastrophic. The primary problem was that Republicans broke our balanced turn of the century budget when they cut tax rates and started a couple of recreational wars, setting a pattern which has continued where we’re told that we have to give up things the public benefit from because the alternative of rich people paying taxes a few points higher is too miserable to even consider. That debt is a concern, but not as a fraction of the massive American economy – it’s like the difference in medical concern between noticing that you’re gaining 10 pounds a year versus 10 pounds in the last week.

The reason the lying about the crisis has ramped lately is that some of the tax cuts which racked up trillions of additional debt in Trump’s first term expire this year and others in 2028, but the Republicans want to cut taxes even further. It’s mathematically impossible to do that without unpopular cuts to things people like, such as Medicaid or children’s health insurance (CHIP), which is why they’re trying to distract with gross exaggerations of the currently-negative DOGE savings and trying to manufacture this air of impending disaster so people don’t think there’s a choice. While the choice is no longer as easy going back to Biden’s economic growth, it could simply be letting tax rise to the levels we had 20-30 years ago when the economy was thriving.

[p_j_w]

> I do know that the United States is heading for a financial apocalypse unless drastic measures are taken now.

Asserted without evidence, dismissed without evidence.

[sanderjd]

If your plan doesn't include passing bills through Congress that increase tax revenue and cut popular social entitlement programs, it is not targeting this problem.

A few dudes firing a bunch of people entirely through executive action has absolutely nothing to do with the financial problem you're worried about. The federal payroll is not a significant cost, and the executive branch doesn't control the budget.

It is no different than a magician doing misdirection. It's up to you whether you want to buy the act.

[telephone4]

I don't think you understand how money works. Federal debt doesn't matter beyond its relationship to taxes and inflation. The US needs to raise taxes and address inequality through greater investment in public services and infrastructure, as well as stronger regulations on consumer goods pricing, not less.

[tbrownaw]

> Federal debt doesn't matter beyond its relationship to taxes and inflation

Much like household debt doesn't matter beyond it's relationship to household income?

[abootstrapper]

> What would you cut?

Nothing. Tax the billionaires.

[throwaway2037]

It wouldn't raise enough money. Probably better to say: "Tax the multi-millionaires", or even people who earn more than 1M USD per year.

What if we change the tax code such that passive income (capital gains, dividends, coupon payments, etc.) is taxed at a higher rate than active (employment) income?

[mrguyorama]

>but I do know that the United States is heading for a financial apocalypse unless drastic measures are taken now.

No you don't know that, because it is outright wrong.

We could hold this level of debt for decades and safely reduce it over a long time frame. Plenty of other countries have done that plenty of other times. Christ, most of Europe only just got done paying us off for WW2!

Indeed, we had almost no debt at the turn of the millennium, after Congress during Clinton's admin cut a bunch of stuff after significant PUBLIC DEBATE, but Bush got us into multiple outright false wars to drop bombs in the desert for two decades and now all of a sudden the republicans are concerned about fiscal responsibility?

Fuck right off.

> At least they’re doing something besides spending more money and acting like everything‘s OK

That's literally what they are doing. The proposed budget is just more tax cuts for billionaires. Stop being so goddamned gullible.