$4T Debt Limit Increase Proposal

[JimmySpeaks]

1 hour ago, TylerDurden said:

The link shared this information and broke it out, if you had bothered to look. 

Trump's fiscal year before the COVID funding was the single largest deficit year the US has ever had and his first administration was the largest contributor to the national debt that we've seen in the past 110+ years. His average annual deficit was also the largest - excluding COVID - and was more than Obama's annual average (over double the timeframe) when you included the bailout. So, there's no hypocrisy. In fact, I presented it the most favorable way for your guy. 

The economic circumstances were vastly different at the start of the Obama administration versus the Trump administration. One managed to reduced the annual deficit, the other did not. 

It has nothing to do with what’s in the link. YOU listed the bank bailout as an excuse for why Dems had a high deficit under Obama yet completely ignored the fact that Covid nearly doubled Trumps deficit number.  

[JimmySpeaks]

Obama took our debt from $10 trillion to $20 trillion.  It’s a fact. Right ? 

[Paul158]

On 5/13/2025 at 3:56 PM, TylerDurden said:

Interesting that overwhelming evidence of one party driving up the deficit and the other reducing it doesn't change anything for you.

You can certainly and rightly claim that both sides contribute to the deficit to some extent, depending on the specific legislation, but it's very clear that the Democratic presidential administrations have done a ______-vastly superior job>>>>> of managing the federal balance sheet.  The graph shows it in very simple terms and there is more detail below the graph in various charts. 

I'd also point out the the lag you're seemingly basing the entire crux of your argument on in order to lump both sides into this, isn't some drawn out thing that was caused many years ago. That is a more appropriate argument for the total national debt, but not the budget deficit. We can certainly include that in the discussion, but the same trends exist on that front. 

Vastly superior job. You have got to be joking. No one in Washington has done a vastly Superior Job when it comes to cutting spending and the balancing the budget. 37 trillion dollars in debt. The interest on the debt is 1 trillion dollars a year and growing. During the time i read your post and wrote my post the debt went up 7 million dollars.

Edited 18 hours ago by Paul158
missed a word

[Paul158]

8 hours ago, TylerDurden said:

The President should not have any more power with the budget. We have three branches for a reason, though they're admittedly on shaky ground. 

Presidents have enough power with the veto. 

I'm not sure why you'd support concentrating power. 

"Admittedly on shaky ground" is a really nice way to put it. We may be too far gone under the current structure our federal government is operating under. I really don't see a realistic way to get the ship heading in the right direction under the current structure that is in place.

[mspart]

We like free things.   Congress likes to give free things.   We vote into Congress the people that will give us free things. 

What we fail to remember is that there is no such thing as free things.  It is illusionary until the piper has to be paid.   And the piper always has to be paid, one way or another.  And it will be the poor people that wanted free things that will pay the most in pain and suffering.  

mspart

[red viking]

3 hours ago, mspart said:

To be fair, you have been in favor of cutting military spending since forever.   But to be fair the other direction, you have also been in favor of raising taxes to cut the deficit as your go to since forever. 

How about cuts to:

Treasury

Agriculture

EPA

Military

Interior

Commerce

Education

State

Justice

Labor

HHS

HUD

Transportation

Energy

Veteran's Affairs

Homeland Security.  

Each cabinet post could lose 10% and not be in any worse shape.   Most could lose 20% and cover most of their costs.  Are you willing to do this?   If not, you are not serious about getting this under control.   There may be a need for tax increases but you always cut spending first. 

mspart

Most of those are small programs and many have already been cut a lot in recent years. More bang for buck to go after the big stuff. You'll barely make a dent if you don't go after military (I see you have that) but also ss and medicare. 

[Bigbrog]

13 hours ago, red viking said:

Most of those are small programs and many have already been cut a lot in recent years. More bang for buck to go after the big stuff. You'll barely make a dent if you don't go after military (I see you have that) but also ss and medicare. 

This is getting tiresome...prove this statement..."Most of those are small programs and many have already been cut a lot in recent years"

Not to mention your continual poo poo'ing of "only small cuts to programs"...are you kidding me?!?!  You have shown repeatedly you have no clue on how things work.

[TylerDurden]

15 hours ago, JimmySpeaks said:

It has nothing to do with what’s in the link. YOU listed the bank bailout as an excuse for why Dems had a high deficit under Obama yet completely ignored the fact that Covid nearly doubled Trumps deficit number.  

Again. Read. 

It's not ignored. It's split out and given deferential treatment...and Trump was still the highest average annual average of all time, including the bailout. 

[TylerDurden]

14 hours ago, Paul158 said:

Vastly superior job. You have got to be joking. No one in Washington has done a vastly Superior Job when it comes to cutting spending and the balancing the budget. 37 trillion dollars in debt. The interest on the debt is 1 trillion dollars a year and growing. During the time i read your post and wrote my post the debt went up 7 million dollars.

No, I'm not joking. But you're also introducing a strawman. 

We can have a conversation about what we think the appropriate amount of debt is and the impact and effectiveness of the debt ceiling, but there's no denying that the management of the federal budget has been vastly superior under Democratic presidents, especially in that last 3-4 decades. 

Trump has been an absolute nightmare if you care about such things and the second edition is likely going to be far worse than the first. 

 

 

[Offthemat]

7 minutes ago, TylerDurden said:

the second edition is likely going to be far worse than the first. 

 

There’s a budget bill being debated right now.  How much of it is Trump writing?  How closely does it adhere to his proposal?  How much responsibility do you attribute to the President for its final result?  Should he veto the entire bill if he disagrees with part of it?  

[Bigbrog]

35 minutes ago, TylerDurden said:

No, I'm not joking. But you're also introducing a strawman. 

We can have a conversation about what we think the appropriate amount of debt is and the impact and effectiveness of the debt ceiling, but there's no denying that the management of the federal budget has been vastly superior under Democratic presidents, especially in that last 3-4 decades. 

Trump has been an absolute nightmare if you care about such things and the second edition is likely going to be far worse than the first. 

 

 

What do you mean the budget has been better??  What info/data/facts are you using to make that argument?  Or do you mean deficit?

[Scouts Honor]

appropriate spending

education

military

law enforcement

border 

Edited 2 hours ago by Scouts Honor

[Scouts Honor]

federal spending

and education is a question mark

[TylerDurden]

1 hour ago, Bigbrog said:

What do you mean the budget has been better??  What info/data/facts are you using to make that argument?  Or do you mean deficit?

It's in the thread. 

[Bigbrog]

15 minutes ago, TylerDurden said:

It's in the thread. 

Not trying to play semantics here but this one in particular is important I believe, but your links were about the deficit, not the budget.  The budget is a piece of the pie in regard to the deficit.

I'd love to see some data around the deficit that takes into account some of the other factors I believe should be taken into account...and I say this not because I don't like what the data says but I think there may be some things hidden in the lagging indicator that were left out in some of the calculations (I could be wrong).  It would be cool to see a breakdown of how much of a lagging indicator it is and what are ALL the things that have significant impact on the deficit.  

Good conversation, outside of the partisan stuff.

[Paul158]

25 minutes ago, TylerDurden said:

It's in the thread. 

You have the OMB. You have the GAO. You have the Department of Treasury. You have congress. Right now, I'm not concerned which party was in control in the White House at time of this fiscal meltdown and incompetence. You see at no time is the president in complete control of spending or monitoring budget and the deficit.  Just tell me how this gets fixed. Usually, the party that is not in control obstructs and fights tooth and nail to block any decent legislation to fix this mess. How do propose we really fix this mess. Right now, we are spending 2 trillion more than we bring in. The interest on the national debt is over 1 trillion dollars every year. Whatever plan that gets put in place will probably take 20 years to fix this mess. 

Edited 1 hour ago by Paul158

[jross]

17 hours ago, TylerDurden said:

The link shared this information and broke it out, if you had bothered to look. 

Trump's fiscal year before the COVID funding was the single largest deficit year the US has ever had 

FALSE

• COVID was during FY 2020, October 1, 2019–September 30, 2020.
• The Fiscal year before was FY 2019, October 1, 2018–September 30, 2019.
• The FY 2019 deficit in 1983 dollars was $325,262M.  It was NOT the single largest deficit year the US has ever had.

https://goliards.us/adelphi/deficits/

Let's make a new point and explore it.  Let's make the claim that Trump was going to have the largest deficit year in FY2020 if there never was COVID.

Stephen Bloch calls out FY 2020 Quarter One (Oct-Dec 2019) separately to identify pre-Covid impact.  He takes the first quarter and multiplies it by four to predict an annualized amount.  This annualized amount for FY2020 (pre Covid) was $720,624M.  That is a large number but is representative?  No it is not.  Q1 is when the budget is first available and the heaviest spending occurs.  Significantly less spending occurs throughout the mid quarters of which Bloch doesn't account for.  This is an inflated number.  Had Bloch done the same thing with FY 2019 Q1, the annualized deficient would had been over $500,000M.

 

[TylerDurden]

11 minutes ago, jross said:

FALSE

• COVID was during FY 2020, October 1, 2019–September 30, 2020.
• The Fiscal year before was FY 2019, October 1, 2018–September 30, 2019.
• The FY 2019 deficit in 1983 dollars was $325,262M.  It was NOT the single largest deficit year the US has ever had.

https://goliards.us/adelphi/deficits/

Let's make a new point and explore it.  Let's make the claim that Trump was going to have the largest deficit year in FY2020 if there never was COVID.

Stephen Bloch calls out FY 2020 Quarter One (Oct-Dec 2019) separately to identify pre-Covid impact.  He takes the first quarter and multiplies it by four to predict an annualized amount.  This annualized amount for FY2020 (pre Covid) was $720,624M.  That is a large number but is representative?  No it is not.  Q1 is when the budget is first available and the heaviest spending occurs.  Significantly less spending occurs throughout the mid quarters of which Bloch doesn't account for.  This is an inflated number.  Had Bloch done the same thing with FY 2019 Q1, the annualized deficient would had been over $500,000M.

 

It's not false. 

Edited 1 hour ago by TylerDurden

[Offthemat]

7 minutes ago, TylerDurden said:

It's not false. 

Your statement and the point you are trying to make is both fallacious and irrelevant.

[Paul158]

11 minutes ago, TylerDurden said:

It's not false. 

Those are the facts, Tyler. People who do numbers or data have the ability (or desire) to manipulate them any way they want to get the desired outcome. Sometimes they are just plain incompetent.

Edited 1 hour ago by Paul158
missed a word

[TylerDurden]

29 minutes ago, Bigbrog said:

Not trying to play semantics here but this one in particular is important I believe, but your links were about the deficit, not the budget.  The budget is a piece of the pie in regard to the deficit.

I'd love to see some data around the deficit that takes into account some of the other factors I believe should be taken into account...and I say this not because I don't like what the data says but I think there may be some things hidden in the lagging indicator that were left out in some of the calculations (I could be wrong).  It would be cool to see a breakdown of how much of a lagging indicator it is and what are ALL the things that have significant impact on the deficit.  

Good conversation, outside of the partisan stuff.

The deficit is based on the budget, they're basically 1:1. It's the difference between what we spend versus what we collect in a fiscal year. That speaks to an administration's ability/willingness/desire to make the revenues and expenses closer via the legislative (or other) processes. All debt isn't bad debt and people often engage in fallacies of composition when they think about national debt versus their individual households. The level is the debate - which is part of the reason we end up with the debt ceiling debates.

For sure there are obligations that continue over time and span administrations, no debating that, but I'm not sure what you're getting at with lagging indicators that you've mentioned. For sure there are bills designed to make the next person look bad, no doubt about that. 

I'd argue that it's not partisan to point out factual information about which administrations have done better with that balance. But either way, I'm certainly not arguing that Democrats are perfect. I happen to think they're an absolutely horrendous operation. 

41 minutes ago, Paul158 said:

 Usually, the party that is not in control obstructs and fights tooth and nail to block any decent legislation to fix this mess. How do propose we really fix this mess. Right now, we are spending 2 trillion more than we bring in. The interest on the national debt is over 1 trillion dollars every year. Whatever plan that gets put in place will probably take 20 years to fix this mess. 

First, I agree that the current operation of our congress is an obstructionist sh*tshow. I'm sure we all have various ideas about how we got here. It wasn't always this way. We've lost a lot of statesmen in the past 15-20 years and have replaced them with caricatures. Blame the rise of social media, disinformation, or whatever you prefer. We're made to believe that anyone who doesn't share your opinion is your enemy. It's sad, really. 

The answer to how to fix this or anything else someone considers an issue, like most things that are political, is that it depends on what your priorities are. 

If we think that our debt load it too high, we have to either spend less, increase revenue or a combination of the two. But the devil is always in the details and, even at that, you're relying on politicians to do the "right" things.

The way I see it, those priorities change amongst politicians (and voters) depending on who is in the White House and the balance of congress - and that's why nothing ever seems to get fixed. 

 

[jross]

49 minutes ago, TylerDurden said:

It's not false. 

I'm open to correction.  What data source are you referring to?  I understand table 2 from https://goliards.us/adelphi/deficits/ to show numerous examples where FY2019 in 1983 dollars has less deficit than numerous other years.  

[TylerDurden]

2 minutes ago, jross said:

I'm open to correction.  What data source are you referring to?  I understand table 2 from https://goliards.us/adelphi/deficits/ to show numerous examples where FY2019 in 1983 dollars has less deficit than numerous other years.  

Ignoring the full COVID year, which is valid, the annualized amount for the first three months is the second largest ever, right behind the 08-09 auto bailout that spanned Bush/Obama, which one could reasonably be argued deserved to be singled out, but wasn't. So there definitely aren't numerous others. So, at worst, I looked a the bright red line, saw the number, misspoke and it's the second highest. 

While some may disagree that the annualized amount is correct - I know you do - I don't think it's far fetched when you consider the negative revenue impacts of the Trump tax cuts and increases in spending.

At the very least, the same data set isn't trying to game the system with some partisan agenda as some have implied (not you). 

But whether it's the largest or second largest, no one can debate the trend lines.