I've heard the Drain the Swamp bullshit since Reagan's Grace Commission in 1982, when federal outlays were $745 billion.
If you're not changing the tax code, you're simply extending current policy—you are not increasing the deficit. The bottom line here is that it's a $4.3 trillion tax increase, not a $4.3 trillion deficit increase.
-- Mike Crapo
Most of the tax cuts passed by Republicans during President Donald Trump’s first term, in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA), which raised deficits by $1.7tn, are set to expire at the end of 2025. ... Without new legislation, current law requires tax rates to return to their pre-TCJA levels. Maintaining the current policy would cost nearly $5tn in lost revenue over the next 10 years.
-- Oren Cass
Passing economic legislation through the US Senate can by-pass the 60-vote rule if the legislation does not increase deficits beyond 10 years.
The total public debt has ballooned by over $16 trillion under the Trump tax cuts.
Not even $1 billion a year. Whoopdeedoo. Don't spend it all in one place, boys.
Social Security Administration says it’s identified $800M+ in savings
The Social Security Administration (SSA) said in a release that it has identified more than $800 million in savings or “cost avoidance” for fiscal 2025 among information technology, grants, property and payroll. ...
... Some Republicans already see signs that the backlash to the Trump administration's "efficiency" efforts is spilling over into opposition to their legislative plans. ... Republicans have been barraged the last week and a half by angry constituents at town halls and protests outside their district offices complaining about DOGE's layoffs and cuts to federal programs. ...
The lone GOP truth-teller is Thomas Massie, who voted against the budget bill because it puts America at least $56 trillion in debt in 10 years, even with the spending cuts.
America needs spending cuts and tax increases, but Republicans are virtually incapable in their DNA of raising taxes.
Honest to God, these people are clowns.
Republicans consider major budget change to obscure deficit impact of extending Trump’s tax cuts
... Extending the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which Trump signed into law in 2017, would cost $4.6 trillion over a decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the official nonpartisan scorekeeper.
That’s under the “current law” metric that has traditionally been used, as the tax cuts are slated to expire at the end of this year. But Senate Republicans want to use a different scoring method called the “current policy” baseline, which would assume that extending tax cuts costs $0 because they’re already law.
The chair of the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee, Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, endorsed the “current policy” approach, telling reporters that it “recognizes that extending current law does not change the tax policy, does not reduce tax revenue.”
Congressional GOP aides say the idea could have a huge impact on what they’re able to pass in the budget bill. If they use the current accounting process, they have no chance of making the 2017 tax cuts permanent, because that would require paying for it. And this process would also be key to unlocking Trump’s other tax proposals, like slashing taxes on tips and overtime pay. ...
Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., said it would set a “terrible” precedent if Republicans adopt that budgeting approach.
He said it would be a backdoor way to nuke the filibuster and take an anything-goes approach to the reconciliation process, which Congress can use once per fiscal year to evade the 60-vote rule in the Senate for changes to spending and taxes. The process imposes significant constraints, like needing to pay for long-term laws that add to the U.S. debt.
“My advice is: If they adopt that policy, we should advise the American people to forget about their credit card debt,” Neal said. “You wouldn’t have to analyze revenue and expenditure.” ...
The budget framework passed this week by the GOP House is guaranteed to raise the national debt by $19 trillion in 10 years, which means we'll be $60 trillion in the hole by 2035.
All the shenanigans and pretending and make believe used over the years to get us to the current point of $36 trillion in debt, trotted out yet one more time aren't going to stop us from a date with $60 trillion in debt.
WE ARE NOT A SERIOUS COUNTRY.
Three months and counting.
The federal government is expected to blow through $7.266 trillion in fiscal 2025.
That's $20 billion EVERY DAY.
The deficit is projected to be $1.781 trillion in fiscal 2025.
That's overspending of nearly $5 billion EVERY DAY.
We need a 25% spending cut, or a 25% tax increase, or some combination of the two.
But Republicans plan to cut taxes by $4.5 trillion and increase spending on the military, on the border, on deportations, and on energy deregulation (ha ha ha, they have to spend money to make money).
This is not a serious country.
 |
| https://taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/federal-receipt-and-outlay-summary |
For all of Trump’s and Musk’s talk of efficiency, their policies will likely slow down the government. The state needs capacity to perform core tasks, such as collecting revenue, taking care of veterans, tracking weather, and ensuring that travel, medicine, food, and workplaces are safe. But Trump seems intent on pushing more employees to leave and making the civil service more political and an even less inviting job option. He bullies federal employees, labeling them as “crooked” and likening their removal to “getting rid of all the cancer.” A smaller, terrified, and politicized public workforce will not be an effective one.
To start, let’s dispense with the notion that the government is too big. It is not. As a share of the workforce, federal employment has declined in the past several decades. Civilian employees represent about 1.5 percent of the population and account for less than 7 percent of total government spending. According to the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service, seven out of 10 civilian employees work in organizations that deal with national security, including departments—such as Veterans Affairs and Homeland Security—that the public supports.
The reality is that the federal government has long faced a human-capital crisis. ...
More.
The country is $36 trillion in debt because it is not taxing enough, and hasn't been taxing enough since Ronald Reagan. We pretend we can borrow to infinity for what we want, but we can't afford it all anymore. That is why they're surrendering to Putin, and taking a meat cleaver to DC.
This is not a serious country, otherwise a South African wouldn't be running it.
Trump faces growing DOGE revolt from GOP lawmakers
... "We all want efficiencies, there is a way to do it, and the way these people have been treated has been awful in many cases. Awful." ... some are quietly fuming that their Constitutional role in controlling federal funds could be steamrolled in the process. The House Republican who spoke anonymously warned that many conservatives are "very constitutionalist" and may be inclined to protect Congress' power if forced to do so. "Even though it's our guy in the White House, if there's a lot of executive overreach, we want to protect the institution of Congress," they said. ...
Musk exercises nonexistent dictatorial line-item-veto powers over spending and personnel as a "super cabinet" official who was never confirmed by the US Senate like the other cabinet members he now tells what's what.
The whole scheme is illegal and unconstitutional, which is why Trump is now all of a sudden denying that Musk is head of the so-called DOGE, just like Trump hastily made Musk a special government employee after lawsuits were filed on February 3 questioning Musk's authority.
It's an end run around the constitution no less serious than the National Popular Vote Compact, which seeks to neuter the Electoral College.
Trump has been making this bullshit up as he goes and has been since Musk endorsed Trump after the July assassination attempt and then became part of Trump's circle of intimates in August.
The tech oligarchy got front row seats at the inauguration for a reason.
Congress closing in on shutdown deadline with no clear plan
“We cannot come to a deal where you hammer out gains, losses, but you come to a conclusion and you come to a meeting of the minds,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro (Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, told reporters. “That should not be subject to some third party deciding that that’s not what they want.”
“We had a deal last year, all of us and so forth, and then there was an interloper with no authority, no legitimacy, nonelected, who said, ‘Don’t vote for it,’” DeLauro said, as Democrats have continued to zero in on tech billionaire Elon Musk, the head of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
The word "tax" appears nowhere in this story.
Ray Dalio is worth $19 billion.
It's complete madness. It's Donald Trump: "Everything will cost more but I'm cutting your taxes!"
Wolfgang Munchau, here:
Economically, his tariff war will act like a tax on US consumers. The increased costs are inevitably borne by the consumers. But, as a form of rebalancing, it will raise a lot of revenue for the US treasury and together with the shrinking of the federal government, may well end up lowering the budget deficit and strengthening the US current account balance. Of course, there will be repercussions that could push in the other direction: the dollar might rise; the world might plunge into recession. But the truth is we have no experience of what happens when the largest economy on earth, with the dominating global reserve currency, imposes massive tariffs on its trading partners.
Munchau thinks Trump will win his tariff war. I do not. Munchau overestimates Trump's political support at home, and underestimates the fickleness of the US electorate. Continued inflation will throw sand into the gears of this gambit and sow discontent.
Control of the US House is everything, and Trump barely has it. He has two years and is already blowing it.
Interpreted politically one could say yields for notes and bonds reversed their slide starting in October as Harris' lead evaporated at the end of September and bond markets started to bet on a Trump win, bringing with it higher deficits because of his proposed tariffs and tax cuts.
“If every country is looking equally irresponsible, then the chances of [a US budget crisis] happening are slim, certainly on a sustainable basis. But when all the countries are experiencing high debt ratios and high deficits, then it′s less likely because in effect there is nowhere to run, with the possible exception of physical assets like gold.” ...
“It would take another country, another region like the euro area supplanting the U.S. with regard to fiscal responsibility. That’s tough to see happening,” he added.
More.
Yeah, let's put the HOG feeding at the government trough and getting filthy stinking rich off electric car subsidies and tax credits, and government rocket contracts, in charge of government efficiency.
Trump announces Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy to lead new ‘Department of Government Efficiency’
What a bunch of phony baloney plastic banana good time rock 'n rollas.
"Government efficiency" is one of those oxymorons that is more equal than other oxymorons.
She's the very picture of Joe Biden's Schadenfreude.
