I guess it’s time to elect a couple democrats to curb the deficit while solving the impending social collapse.
Unfortunately, I don’t think that will happen this time.
U.S. Debt Hits $40T as America's Borrowing Binge Continues
21–30 of 227 posts
Re: U.S. Debt Hits $40T as America's Borrowing Binge Continues
#22By the time Trump leaves office, the whole federal government will be completely trashed, up to and including the East Wing of the White House being torn down to a hole in the ground. I've never felt so alienated from the leaders of my industry, from my politicians, and from my fellow citizens. Ya'll should have known better. It is the information age, all ignorance is willful ignorance.
The East Wing argument is such a weird hill to die on. Even Obama era staffers admitted it was embarrassing to welcome foreign dignitaries to a muddy patch of grass rather than a fit for purpose room. It's also majority private sector funded, and numerous admins have made substantial changes to the White House. Bush 2 and Obama made substantial renovations to the White House, as did Clinton. Trump has a massive and g…
How embarrassing is it to welcome foreign dignitaries to a building which has been partially torn down? I man, if he actually had replaced it with a ballroom, that would be different.
But that's not what we get from Trump. He can't even maintain a reflecting pool--we're not going to get a ballroom.
No, he's going to leave the White house much worse than he found it. Which is his style.
Re: U.S. Debt Hits $40T as America's Borrowing Binge Continues
#23By the time Trump leaves office, the whole federal government will be completely trashed, up to and including the East Wing of the White House being torn down to a hole in the ground. I've never felt so alienated from the leaders of my industry, from my politicians, and from my fellow citizens. Ya'll should have known better. It is the information age, all ignorance is willful ignorance.
The East Wing argument is such a weird hill to die on. Even Obama era staffers admitted it was embarrassing to welcome foreign dignitaries to a muddy patch of grass rather than a fit for purpose room. It's also majority private sector funded, and numerous admins have made substantial changes to the White House. Bush 2 and Obama made substantial renovations to the White House, as did Clinton. Trump has a massive and g…
Die on? It's absolutely a symbol of the incompetent, corrupt and destructive admin--it's not just the dollars.
We should be very suspicions of the potential corruption caused by companies and individuals giving money to Trump's pet project.
Finally, we can criticize multiple things at the same time.
Re: U.S. Debt Hits $40T as America's Borrowing Binge Continues
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
The East Wing argument is such a weird hill to die on. Even Obama era staffers admitted it was embarrassing to welcome foreign dignitaries to a muddy patch of grass rather than a fit for purpose room. It's also majority private sector funded, and numerous admins have made substantial changes to the White House. Bush 2 and Obama made substantial renovations to the White House, as did Clinton. Trump has a massive and g…
How embarrassing is it to welcome foreign dignitaries to a building which has been partially torn down? I man, if he actually had replaced it with a ballroom, that would be different. But that's not what we get from Trump. He can't even maintain a reflecting pool--we're not going to get a ballroom. No, he's going to leave the White house much worse than he found it. Which is his style.
There's a long history of the reflecting pool having severe algae issues dating back to the early 2000s. Obama spent $30m on repairs that ultimately failed. Is your argument that the pool continuing to fail as it has done under successive governments is exclusively the fault of the admin that has far larger and far more serious points to criticism them on?
Re: U.S. Debt Hits $40T as America's Borrowing Binge Continues
#25By the time Trump leaves office, the whole federal government will be completely trashed, up to and including the East Wing of the White House being torn down to a hole in the ground. I've never felt so alienated from the leaders of my industry, from my politicians, and from my fellow citizens. Ya'll should have known better. It is the information age, all ignorance is willful ignorance.
The East Wing argument is such a weird hill to die on. Even Obama era staffers admitted it was embarrassing to welcome foreign dignitaries to a muddy patch of grass rather than a fit for purpose room. It's also majority private sector funded, and numerous admins have made substantial changes to the White House. Bush 2 and Obama made substantial renovations to the White House, as did Clinton. Trump has a massive and g…
> It's also majority private sector funded
This is mostly a lie.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_House_State_Ballroom#Fun...
Vast majority is to be paid for by taxpayers.
Re: U.S. Debt Hits $40T as America's Borrowing Binge Continues
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
This started long before Trump. Ironically things quite stable under Clinton. 2nd term Bush not so great, 2nd term Obama not great, Trump post covid not great, Biden was terrible, Trump 2.0 terrible. The only real solution is to enforce the actual debt ceiling, the begin lowering it a few hundred billion each year, destroying things we don't need. Require all new spending be funded by the 2.5x destruction of existing…
I loathed the actions of DOGE but believe that "government efficiency" (yeah, lily oxymoronic) should be baked into everything the government does, most importantly, even the programs that one supports. That has been one of many failures of the Dems to both pursue and socialize.
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Re: U.S. Debt Hits $40T as America's Borrowing Binge Continues
#27Unlimited spending will never cease as both parties are heavily incentivized to spend, pork barrel and defer desperately needed reform. Social Security hurtles towards a cliff while it has a 'fix everything easily' button because no large scale reform is possible until it's the very last minute or far too late, then a sloppy and terrible solution is rammed through full of more pork.
This is correct yet also obscures an important point. The popular narrative is that one party is the party of fiscal responsibility and the other is fiscally wasteful. But the data don't really bear that out, and it's arguable that the opposite may be true. I'd contend that yes they both need to be incentivized as such, but also a necessary but not sufficient step is to halt the narrative that one party is the one wh…
The spending floodgate cannot be turned off or reduced, only directed towards the current admin's pet projects and away from the previous admin's pet projects. This is true for both parties.
Re: U.S. Debt Hits $40T as America's Borrowing Binge Continues
#28By the time Trump leaves office, the whole federal government will be completely trashed, up to and including the East Wing of the White House being torn down to a hole in the ground. I've never felt so alienated from the leaders of my industry, from my politicians, and from my fellow citizens. Ya'll should have known better. It is the information age, all ignorance is willful ignorance.
Citizens United ruined the great american experiment. if you have seen the chart of campaign financing since CU, you would understand. Politicians have zero need to represent citizens because they know unlimited funds are available for marketing to keep/earn your seat.
America simply is no longer a democracy or representative democracy.
Re: U.S. Debt Hits $40T as America's Borrowing Binge Continues
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
This started long before Trump. Ironically things quite stable under Clinton. 2nd term Bush not so great, 2nd term Obama not great, Trump post covid not great, Biden was terrible, Trump 2.0 terrible. The only real solution is to enforce the actual debt ceiling, the begin lowering it a few hundred billion each year, destroying things we don't need. Require all new spending be funded by the 2.5x destruction of existing…
I loathed the actions of DOGE but believe that "government efficiency" (yeah, lily oxymoronic) should be baked into everything the government does, most importantly, even the programs that one supports. That has been one of many failures of the Dems to both pursue and socialize.
The federal government is actually quite efficient in what it does. For example, the overhead for Social Security is between 0.5% and 1%. I.E, less than the mutual funds in my 401k charge per yeah for "administrative fees."
When people talk about government waste, what they really are talking about is things the government does which they don't approve of. E.g. ICE--is that wasteful spending? Depends upon whether you like ICE or not. Aide to Israel? Same stuff.
That's why DOGE got nowhere. There is no mythical mammoth waste, fraud, and abuse in the government.
Re: U.S. Debt Hits $40T as America's Borrowing Binge Continues
#30Federal gov deficit = private sector savings.
Only in a closed economy.