TylerDurden

It really is ok to say that you liked the way Obama handed immigration. He's been the best Republican president in a long, long time.

Trump also undercut a bipartisan immigration bill that would have provided more appropriate resources to work through the years-long backlogs of immigration cases so he could play political games with people. For all of his tough talk and his supporters eating it up, Obama's deportation rate was higher and more targeted to people with actual criminal records. I really don't understand why Trump supporters didn't love Obama. He did all the stuff Trump talks about. Must have been the tan suit. Bill Clinton literally signed a law that expanded the crimes that were grounds for deportation and saw a 4x increase in deportations during his last term after the legislation was passed. Hell, that legislation got the ball rolling on deportations.

That's a red herring. Why would anyone support of the deployment of the United States military into the streets of its cities so it can act as a police force? It's amazing to me how many people support and cheer on the erosion of their rights.

There's no room for sensible takes on this forum. You're supposed to ignore evidence or make up your own to support whatever your favorite media outlet tells you to support.

By definition, hyperbolic statements aren't true or meant to be taken as such. My guess is this thread will be full of a million examples of things that aren't hyperbole being presented as hyperbole.

It's simply FBI data dating back 34 years. This stuff isn't hard to find.

It's been on a downward trajectory since 1991.

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trumps-washington-dc-national-guard-plan-ignores-fbi-crime-data-rcna224290 https://www.factcheck.org/2025/08/trump-distorts-violent-crime-statistics-in-ordering-takeover-and-troops-to-d-c/ DC's violent crime rate in 2024 was the lowest it's been for more than 30 years, per the US attorney's office and lowest since 1966 per the FBI reporting.

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.

Back to the topic. This idea isn't all that bad - aside from the fact it's assuredly not paid for by anything in the bill and would simply add to the annual deficit and the long term debt. But I'm pretty sure we only care about that sort of thing when your favorite political party isn't in power, so we'll just skip over that for now. These sort of custodial accounts already exist (in a more tax-advantaged form) - I have them for my kid. One difference is that I wasn't given seed money for it. They certainly aren't going to grow enough from $1,000 (if you don't/can't invest more) to pay for college, but I wouldn't turn it down simply because it won't cover the entire cost of something. Simple estimates show that you might end up with a little less than a $6,000 return if you average 10% return on the original investment. The devil is in the details, of course, and this particular item has a 5-year window for children born from December 31, 2024 - January 1, 2029. Interpret that timeline as you like. There's also a $5,000 annual contribution limit and 18 is the age of maturity, with a mandatory payout at 31. It also appears that there is not up-front deduction like you'd see from a 529. Those details tell me that this isn't likely to have a huge impact on the people who would need it the most, but gives another tax-preferred vehicle (even if it has fewer tax benefits) for folks who would already be able to fund the similar accounts that already exist, but gives them $1,000 to have a baby. I don't hate it, but it's largely political theater.

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.