We could have gotten government spending under control:
Too bad our government totally ignored the Simpson-Bowles report.
- Thread starter Aloha Hoosier
- Start date
We have had other attempts. Trump had one in '17, Reagan had the Grace Commission. The failure can be summed up in one word, ethanol.
It isn't really ethanol, but it is the best case. To be serious in cutting wasteful spending, ethanol has to go. Now, what percentage of Senators want to be president, 90%? What happens in Iowa to a senator who votes to cut?
This plays out in everything to be cut. Farm subsidies, any chance Hoosier Reps vote to cut?
Foreign aid is low hanging fruit, for inexplicable reasons Americans do not accept soft power as real. So no one will go to bat for USAID. But after that cuts will start offending.
I agree that ethanol is a scam.
Most leaders in the military like USAID's efforts because we recognize what they do reduces the need for us to do what we do.
You can’t cut ethanol. Farmers would go broke. Farmers are already going broke. DWS.
Trillions
My early mornings are spent listening to callers on C Span's Washington Journal. A popular theme from the callers is to spend money to help Americans and not spend our tax dollars on foreign aid.
This line of thought fits nicely into the theme Make America Great Again.
Like it or not, MAGA suits a great many Americans perfectly.
This is the most frustrating part to me. Too many people can't fathom just how important USAID is to our national security interests.
It is penny-wise pound-foolish. China is investing heavily in Africa and drawing African nations closer. There are a LOT of resources in Africa. Are they going to be sent west, or east?
U.S. Loses Soft Power Edge in Africa
Gallup World Poll data from Africa in 2023 show that the U.S. has lost its place as the most influential global power on the continent, with China gaining ground and Russia recouping its initial losses after invading Ukraine.
news.gallup.com
The way we influence other countries in the world is summed up by the acronym DIME, which stands for Diplomacy, Information, Military, Economic. We also call it hard power and soft power. Hard power is the M, or Military part of the acronym. It's by far the most expensive of the four. Soft power is the other three. USAID and the State Department does this stuff, and they do good things in helping countries be more stable and less likely to be part of a problem requiring hard power. Despite what many think, the military isn't looking for a fight. We hope to deter aggression and prevent a fight through the use of soft power.
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Dammit son, don't you know that you can't spell DEI without a DIME!!!!!
Another radical left ploy to assist the agrarian proletariat!!!
Would you consider our use of soft power to be successful? Seems like we’ve backed the wrong horse in many cases & our efforts have not exactly endeared us to peoples of the world who see us as meddlers. Any success stories?
A CIA cutout funding resistance, ostensibly “pro-democracy” movements is not national security.
It just creates more chaos. This org should be shipping water and toilet paper around the world if they should exist at all.
Correct. China’s Belt and Road is building infrastructure in impoverished countries, that’s how you project soft power.
We’re promulgating ideas and culture, many of them nonsense.
Of course. Soft power is the reason Egypt, Jordan and Israel haven't had a war for more than four and a half decades. Others are obvious too like keeping a very potentially volatile continent of Africa much less volatile than it would be. Don't forget the Marshall Plan. Also our relations with Japan since WWII. The examples are many.
This....this. I was screaming it from the rooftops.
But does everybody who was on the WC at the time remember Rockfish's moniker for Simpson-Bowles? He called them the "Cat Food Commission". And he wasn't alone. Many people mocked them in this way. Because, to them, the mere thought of touching entitlement spending was a one-way road to deepening poverty that was a casus belli. The defenders of the welfare state simply will not tolerate anything that touches the cost side of the ledger on social spending.
And that pressure, almost exclusively from people on the left like Rockfish, prevented the Obama Administration from acting on anything the Commission did.
Yes, I remember. Rockfish actually said there should be no limit at all on government spending.
While I don't disagree with you, the fact still remains that we have to get our budget house in order.It is penny-wise pound-foolish. China is investing heavily in Africa and drawing African nations closer. There are a LOT of resources in Africa. Are they going to be sent west, or east?
U.S. Loses Soft Power Edge in Africa
Gallup World Poll data from Africa in 2023 show that the U.S. has lost its place as the most influential global power on the continent, with China gaining ground and Russia recouping its initial losses after invading Ukraine.
People are going to defend anything and everything -- and, in most cases, they will have good defenses. However...refer back to the bolded part.
This is why I've said that across-the-board cuts is probably the only politically feasible way to get this done. As soon as we start debating each spending item on their own merits, we'll come to the conclusion that we need to maintain all of them. Because all of them can, at some level, be defended.
Except...we can't afford all of them at the levels we are currently funding them. This is what is meant by the term "hard decisions."
I have no issues with cutting overall aid and prioritizing what remains. Pretty much anything can be cut, with care. And pretty much any taxes can be raised, with care. My concern is that many want aid totally eliminated and that's patently ridiculous. I am also skeptical elon is the guy who knows what should be a priority.
And this is the general idea that lies at the bottom of Modern Monetary Theory.
It's such an obvious recipe for economic disaster, it's hard to believe that anybody takes it seriously. We know exactly what happens when a government doesn't respect any fiscal boundary....spending however much they can get the policymakers to agree on, the only limitations being political rather than economic.
Look, I'm all good with spending on "soft power" -- hell, I can see the merits in all kinds of spending we can't afford. And it's true this is a tiny fraction of our spending.
But the truth remains: in the past 74 years, we've had precisely one year where the Treasury collected more than 19% of GDP in tax revenues. And that was due to the dot-com boom...that was just on the verge of busting.
Well, folks, we are headed on a trajectory where the federal government will be regularly spending 25% of GDP, every year. In other words, we have zero hope of raising the tax revenues necessary to continue affording the government we have.
By all means, come to the table with your own areas to cut costs. Or, if you can't do that, at least sit it out as other people try to figure out how to attack it. We aren't taxing our way out of this.
Let me put your mind at ease with that: it's wholly unrealistic that we're facing a situation where we'll eliminate foreign aid in its entirety....even if there are people calling for that.
And keep in mind that Elon Musk doesn't hold the purse strings. Neither does Trump. Congress does. What Elon is doing right now, most prominently, is gathering up all the data on some areas of our spending and shining a light on it. Hopefully he continues giving us more insight into all of it.
I think the purpose is more to bring pressure to bear on Congress....to destabilize the fiscal status quo that has reigned in this country all of my life. I loved Ronald Reagan, truly. But let's face it, he was a failure at altering the trajectory of a government that has been growing on cruise control. What victories he won were, at best, ephemeral.
I would argue that the biggest reason Egypt, Jordan, & Israel haven’t been at war is because they remember what happened last time & see the military power that Israel projects, but perhaps I’m overestimating how important knowing you’ll lose a war is in determining whether to start one. If Africa is our big success story, in light of many, many failures I’m going to have a hard time getting excited. I’d also caution against conflating mutually beneficial economic partnership with soft power through USAID.
Except that Elon is also cutting spending to programs that are for us here. And no where are there talks on reallocating the wasted funds to domestic programs. So.... We're just going to look like assholes to the rest of the world, potentially lose allies(both in trade and militarily) and still have shit infrastructure here. I guess it makes the lead in our water more palatable knowing those lazy asses in Africa are no longer getting our excess food we aren't eating.
Eastern Europe is pretty pro-American. In my lifetime they were anti-American.
Several Middle Eastern countries have governments far closer to America than their people. Jordan is one, and as much as I might hate Saudi Arabia, their government is far more aligned with us than their people. It isn't a speedy process. It is investing in the future.
Though wars created the relationships, South Korea and Japan are who they are from soft power. Soft power isn't just giving money. Sending US teams and performers overseas, even movies and music, is soft power.
Increasing its size and scope is part of government DNA. It really makes no difference whether one is a Democrat or Republican. We have incentivized government expansion with lenient to non-existent fiscal processes and with the legalization of corruption and massive amounts of money in the selection process.
But I do think people like Trump and Musk can make a difference. No matter what one might think of them, one good thing is true, they are stubborn and independent enough that neither will ever be controlled by the system. That’s good.
Cutting isn't the only way to address. If people like what the government does, there is another way to pay for it.
Craze, your thoughts about Reagan were confirmed in his Budget Director David Stockman's book "The Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolution Failed".
Bottom line, politicians hesitate to cut popular programs.
Given Trump cannot run again, he very well might cut popular programs. Just a thought
I suggest you look up how we've helped to prevent war between Egypt, Israel and Jordan for so long.
By supplying Israel with the world’s best military equipment? If our soft power were the driving force here, the military support wouldn’t be needed. Why haven’t these same tactics worked in other ME countries with similar cultures? I’m not arguing that we haven’t done things to exert soft power, I just think you might be overestimating its impact.
You would have to raise taxes 30-40% to close the deficit and pay for what we currently have. If they did that the economy would quickly plunged into a recession as discretionary spendings would be the first place people cut, which would lead to job cuts.
Next up would be defaults on car loans and mortgage loans. Then the banks would implode. Then you get a depression.
Now it wouldn’t ever get that far because they would print whatever it takes to keep the system going. However, we would end up with a higher debt to GDP when all said and done.
There are two feasible ways out.
Option 1: Small increases in taxes and larger cuts to government. And probably 10-20 years of slow growth and pain.
Option 2: Higher inflation, higher growth (requires low taxes and fewer regulations) and monetize the debt.
Look, we have already spent the money and the path we’re on leads to destruction at some point. There is going to be pain for all the terrible decisions that were made. The question is, which path is politically feasible. Since, they can print the money, it’s option 2 in my opinion.
Give me option 1 but not necessarily large cut. Small cuts and no additions. Plus reallocate bloat to education and infrastructure upgrades. plus an increase minimum wage($20/hr) plus incentives/caps/or whatever to make businesses don't increase prices drastically at the beginning of all this.
Our country needs a massive increase in wages. The gap between the top and the middle and the bottom is way to big. That gaps needs to narrow.
I would say there are just as many saying the revenue side shouldn't be touched.
Both sides need to be on the table.
Yes by building up the Israeli military, Jordan and Egypt tiring of getting their asses kicked and effectively paying both parties to not attack Israel.
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It is penny-wise pound-foolish. China is investing heavily in Africa and drawing African nations closer. There are a LOT of resources in Africa. Are they going to be sent west, or east?
U.S. Loses Soft Power Edge in Africa
Gallup World Poll data from Africa in 2023 show that the U.S. has lost its place as the most influential global power on the continent, with China gaining ground and Russia recouping its initial losses after invading Ukraine.
It’s an uncivilized hell hole of a continent. It is by far the most violent, least investable one, and nothing has changed in 25 years. Let the Chinese or Russians (hasn’t worked out well) try and use influence to control it.
We certainly don’t need people like Ilhan Omar coming here on the basis of USAID. I’d much rather build stronger relationships with India and Latin America (we need socialism to be overthrown again).
The other two ways to address it are tax increases and extraordinary economic growth.
Well, the latter is pretty much entirely outside of our control. It happens when it happens -- although it's certainly true that public policy can have impacts on that. We should absolutely have a public policy that does as much as it can to encourage growth and as little as it can to discourage it.
As for the former, I will once again repeat: for the past 74 years (including a number of years with marginal income tax rates reaching above 90%, and many more years with them at 70%), we have had precisely 1 year where federal tax revenues reached 19%. That was tax year 2000...which was the tail end of the dot-com boom. Right before it burst.
One. Out of 74. Here they all are again....
If you're of the belief that we can raise the tax revenues to pay for the government we have, I will just politely but firmly tell you that you are mistaken.
One other comment on this...
If people like some service the government offers, I don't have any problem with them paying for it. Make each of those particular services optional and a la carte. Allow the people who want them to pay the bills for them. And what funds the Treasury raises for each one of those a la carte services becomes that service's budget.
I truly would have no issue with people putting their own money where their mouths are. But if they're operating of the belief that they can get all the money they need from other people....then they don't really "like what the government does" as much as they say they do. They only like those things when somebody else is paying the freight.
All. Close unnecessary tax loop holes. Add incentives for them to hold ground on prices and employment. Increased dollars to consumers via higher wages and static prices will create a higher volume of sales. It's trickle down that actually trickles down.
