TylerDurden

It sounds like the real lesson here, aside from not driving with expired tags whilst you have a combo of drugs/guns in your car, is that talking to the police without your attorney present is almost always a bad idea.

Greco

I don't know if you guys are tracking this, but you're arguing about the smoke screen. Late last night/early this morning, the House passed a bill that has Rand Paul sounding like the only sane person in the party. Some people wanted to fight with me on another thread about how this was going to go and while this still has to work through the Senate, it sure looks like the Republican super-majority is going to move forward with this fiscally irresponsible bill. Video:

Dake/Starocci is going to be decided by the order of passivity calls.

This is a specious question, but aside from that leveraging debt has been a hallmark of US economic expansion and innovation. What you consider to be good investment, others may not and you'd also have to decide what items are the "extra" over and above revenues. That essentially is what politics is - an big debate about how to allocate resources. That's how you'd decide what is "good" or "bad" debt. My thoughts on what the federal government should invest in over and above annual revenues probably differs from yours, but I do not think that the US government should have zero debt. That's a fallacy of composition. Government investment in infrastructure and research, for instance, is hugely beneficial to our economy - eliminating that is cutting off your nose to spite your face. On a very superficial level, I'm not in favor of policies that create funding gaps the didn't previously exist for things that don't move the economic needle for average folks. If your aim is to reduce revenue, that's fine but offering plans that do not have a corresponding reduction in spending is bad policy for deficit and debt management. The reverse is also true.

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.

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. 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.

It's not false.

It's in the thread.

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.

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.

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.

If I were a person who was having a child in the next four years, I'd rather have this. I'm actually all for Freakonomics-adjacent incentives - though I don't think we need to incentivize having babies and I'm not sure this is enough of an incentive to the end, regardless. I know it wouldn't be for me.

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.

You're citing the JEC Republican report that came out 15 years ago and was essentially trying to draw connections between the auto bailout (which Bush started) to Obama and continue this idea that it was reckless Democratic spending. https://goliards.us/adelphi/deficits/ You can't let AI do the work for you without reading the information. 75% of largest increases in our country's history have been under either Republican majorities in the Senate and/or in the White House. The other one is a clean up of the housing market crash.