The_barBEARian said:ATL Bear said:The_barBEARian said:Mitch Blood Green said:ATL Bear said:KaiBear said:EatMoreSalmon said:KaiBear said:boognish_bear said:The Treasury just quietly admitted the U.S. government is insolvent. $47.78 trillion in liabilities. $6.06 trillion in assets. My Six Penny Plan would balance the budget in five years. But that would require the government to actually stop spending money it doesn't have.…
— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) March 24, 2026
Media must believe Trump is likely to win in Iran......as they are already massaging our electorate for the next crisis.
However there is nothing he can do politically, or realistically d, to balance the budget.
Budget needs to do more than balance. Some of the debt needs to be paid down so we can be ready for the next major crisis.
Dems will never allow freebies to be cut ......Republicans will never permit massive cuts to the defense budget or to increase taxes.
And neither want to touch SS and Medicare.
The problem isn't SS and Medicare. It's Republicans. Every time they get into office, they cut taxes and increase spending on war. Enough already.
There are ways to address SS and Medicare, and they can be done through bipartisan compromise. What we can't keep doing is cutting taxes and then spending trillions on war efforts. I'd much rather a 67-year-old get $1500 per month in SS than bomb another Middle East country.
I agree.
The only steps taken to reduce spending over the last decade have all been Medicare related.
Defense spending has skyrocketed.
Spending on all other entitlements has skyrocketed.
Social Security isnt the problem and there have been several positive steps under Biden and Trump to reduce Medicare spending.
Anyone deflecting blame onto those programs is being disingenuous and is probably personally enriching themselves at the expense of fellow Americans.
The steps have primarily been in Medicare B and D. They were mostly nods to the insurance and pharma industries, have pushed higher premium costs to individuals, and have seen the medical expenses outpace inflation by almost 4 times.
The cost cutting measures I know of would primarily fall under Medicare Part D and are Pharma related.
Biden's Inflation Reduction Act requires Medicare now negotiate drug prices on the top 10 most expensive drugs every year and Trump's Most-Favored Nation executive order requires Pharma to price match whichever country is paying the lowest price for the medication.
If insurers are pushing higher premiums (source?) it certainly isnt because of these cost cutting initiatives.
I find it suspect you always seem deflect from cutting the defense budget to Medicare and Social Security.
The defense budget has grown to over $1 trillion a year and the pentagon hasnt passed an audit in a decade.
We could cut the defense budget in half and 99% of Americans wouldnt even notice.
If we cut the defense budget in half waaaaaay more than 1% of the American population would notice.
Because a cut of 50% would mean massive reductions in number of military personnel. So all of those cut would notice.
It would mean massive drawbacks on buying new military equipment which would mean layoffs at those companies that make the items. Everything from uniform makers to missile factories.
It would mean closing some bases. Which everyone in the area would notice as suddenly there is a huge drop in number of people living in an area, buying, going to school, etc.
A cut that big would have massive ripple effects throughout the economy for a long time.
Just look at how areas were impacted in the 90s with bases being closed. Some of those bases are still just nothing but abandoned buildings, runways, etc. Over 30 years later and they are still empty. The towns nearly died. For the bases in bigger cities they struggled for a while but finally saw development near the empty bases.
Way more than 1% would notice.
