FLBear5630 said:
whiterock said:
Married A Horn said:
FLBear5630 said:
Married A Horn said:
Ive said it before, but when you are 36T in debt and run a deficit of 2T... stuff has to be cut or eventually its all cut.
2T is a lot of cuts man. I need to see you start making suggestings to get us in the black before I take you serious.
We are in this mess because they gave away trillions of dollars not to work. You are not getting in the black anytime soon being 33T in the hole. Cutting real capabilities is not a responsible way to do it. Obama, Trump and Biden really put us in a hole over the last 20 years. You are looking at 50 years to climb out of this mess, not having weather or aviation safety capabilities is not where cuts should be made.
I dont disagree. But when I mean in the black, I just mean the budget. I have yet to see you propose how we might do that... You just fight against every single cut they announce.
That could be done in one year.
"cutting real capabilities is not a responsible way to go it...."
utterly wrong. That is exactly what we have to do.
USG will raise about $5T this year in revenues, and spend about $2T. The deficit is 40% the size of revenue. You cannot economize your way out of that kind of imbalance. You have to economize + do less of some things + none of other things + grow revenues by growing the economy +(some tariffs). One can debate the steps, but not the pathway. There is no other path to a balanced budget that will not include doing less, divesting of functions, operations, assets, and finding ways to raise revenues, etc.....
Not everything Govt does is essential, ya know.
I asked a doctor friend back when Obamacare was a hot issue - "how do we spend less on healthcare?"
His answer was immediate - "we have to do practice less medicine."
You cannot significantly cut spending without significantly cutting activity levels.
You do this. I am talking public safety in real physical terms, infrastructure, travel, weather for maritime/ag, food safety, and product safety standards. You come back with health care and other "programs".
No ****, health care has waste that needs to go. Just go to the doctor and try to figure out insurance. No ****, USAID is misused.
There are government services that the private sector do not want to do because it is not profitable. Weather is a perfect example, there is more to weather than WAZE and Weather Channel. My son works in maritime, they constantly are working with the NWS, USGS, Coast Guard and Private Sector. NWS, NOAA and USGS provide information that the private sector calibrate off. The Govt is not all waste. Just because Trump doesn't like it doesn't mean it needs to go.
Look at what you said there in bold. Clearly, there is demand for information on weather. Has it ever occurred to you that if the USG got out of the weather business, the private sector would step up to meet that demand? It happened in space travel (SpaceX). Why would it not happen in weather? That is a polemic, of course, not a recommendation for outright and immediate divestiture. But could we slash our spending on weather stuff by 50% and have little or no loss in capability? Probably.
The USG does not maintain an enormous fleet of troops ships and passenger aircraft, either. If we need to move an army to some distant land, we contract with cruise ship lines and commercial air carriers to do the job for us.
For that matter, other than law enforcement and military functions, what else is the government doing that the private sector could do? Post Office? (yep). PBS? (Yep). And what things is the federal government doing which could be done by states? Education? (Yep). There are private companies looking at those kinds of questions and offering their services all day, every day. Had lunch with a young man several months ago at Terry Blacks who works for a company which has built the capability to track every cargo ship in the world, real time. For commercial customers. It is superior to anything the USG has. So it can be done.
And on and on and on.
That's how you have to think to slash federal spending by a third. You have to ask tough questions and be willing to step on toes. Every dollar of government spending has a constituency which will squeal bloody murder if their budget gets cut so much as a penny (like you're doing). That's why its so hard to cut government spending. You never realize how many sacred cows your feeding until you start talking about cutting back on the feed. But when your back is against the wall, and ours most certainly is, you cannot sweat the nicks & bruises & braying that occur from transformative cuts.
