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[hector13]

It's a wide bucket with various meanings to various non-democrats.  It essentially means not spending money we don't have.  As opposed to borrowing money to spend on things.

You would thus expect the debt to reduce in the hands of Republican administrations then if they were “fiscally responsible”.


It doesn’t.

[Schmaven]

It's a wide bucket with various meanings to various non-democrats.  It essentially means not spending money we don't have.  As opposed to borrowing money to spend on things.

You would thus expect the debt to reduce in the hands of Republican administrations then if they were “fiscally responsible”.


It doesn’t.

Well, that's likely a big reason why so many people nowadays support neither democrats nor republicans.

[Maximum Spin]

You would thus expect the debt to reduce in the hands of Republican administrations then if they were “fiscally responsible”.


It doesn’t.

No, administrations don't really make spending decisions. You'd have to say you expect the debt to reduce in the hands of Republican-controlled *Congresses*.
Which, to be fair, the last time the budget was balanced was while Congress was Republican-controlled, but they haven't done it since.

Also, Congresses have spent years making it more and more legally impossible to balance the budget and reduce the actual debt since most spending is automatic and basically untouchable - good luck getting support to reform medicare/medicaid, the largest single expense, in either party. So we can also look at who reduces the deficit more, which I analyzed just now and found that, in general, Republican-controlled Congresses have posted significantly lower deficits within my lifetime than Democratic or mixed (one house each). That brief period of balance in the 90s is pulling a lot of that weight, but it remains true, if less so, from the 2000s to now. I didn't check whether Democratic Congresses do significantly worse than mixed, though.

Incidentally, interest on the national debt is now projected to edge out military spending as the third largest Federal expense this year, making it, for all intents and purposes, functionally impossible to ever balance the budget again. As of right now, interest makes up about 2/5 of this year's deficit. This is going to get worse as debt rolls over into the current high interest rates. There are signs that the market is slowly cottoning on to this, which will raise the cost of borrowing even more. So, that's exciting!

ETA: By the way, if you were wondering, according to the source I'm using for my numbers, defense spending currently comes in at just under half the deficit, social security at nearly 80%, and medica* at over 98%. These numbers, to be clear, don't sum to 100% because I'm comparing each spending bloc to the deficit, not total spending - so it's a measure of how much you'd cut the deficit if you eliminated a spending group. Not that that would ever realistically happen.

(By the way, these numbers are using the officially reported budget deficit - for legal reasons, the actual deficit is slightly higher so the corresponding percentages slightly lower.)

[Lord Shonus]

You would thus expect the debt to reduce in the hands of Republican administrations then if they were “fiscally responsible”.


It doesn’t.

No, administrations don't really make spending decisions. You'd have to say you expect the debt to reduce in the hands of Republican-controlled *Congresses*.
Which, to be fair, the last time the budget was balanced was while Congress was Republican-controlled, but they haven't done it since.

Also, Congresses have spent years making it more and more legally impossible to balance the budget and reduce the actual debt since most spending is automatic and basically untouchable - good luck getting support to reform medicare/medicaid, the largest single expense, in either party. So we can also look at who reduces the deficit more, which I analyzed just now and found that, in general, Republican-controlled Congresses have posted significantly lower deficits within my lifetime than Democratic or mixed (one house each). That brief period of balance in the 90s is pulling a lot of that weight, but it remains true, if less so, from the 2000s to now. I didn't check whether Democratic Congresses do significantly worse than mixed, though.

Incidentally, interest on the national debt is now projected to edge out military spending as the third largest Federal expense this year, making it, for all intents and purposes, functionally impossible to ever balance the budget again. As of right now, interest makes up about 2/5 of this year's deficit. This is going to get worse as debt rolls over into the current high interest rates. There are signs that the market is slowly cottoning on to this, which will raise the cost of borrowing even more. So, that's exciting!

ETA: By the way, if you were wondering, according to the source I'm using for my numbers, defense spending currently comes in at just under half the deficit, social security at nearly 80%, and medica* at over 98%. These numbers, to be clear, don't sum to 100% because I'm comparing each spending bloc to the deficit, not total spending - so it's a measure of how much you'd cut the deficit if you eliminated a spending group. Not that that would ever realistically happen.

(By the way, these numbers are using the officially reported budget deficit - for legal reasons, the actual deficit is slightly higher so the corresponding percentages slightly lower.)

This could be solved easily by increasing government income - you don't have to return to Eisenhower levels of taxation to vastly increase the amount you take in.

A fair bit of the financial burden will dissipate in twenty years or so as well for demographic reasons - thanks to the Baby Boom after WWII and the lack of a Baby Boom later on, our demographics are increasingly top-heavy, with not enough working people to support the aged and infirm. As that generation ages out (preferably comfortably at a nice advanced age), the population will return to a much more balanced state that will improve all aspects of the economy. This could be accelerated if we remediated the imbalance by other means, such as by actually encouraging mass legal immigration of the eager workers from south of the border.

[hector13]

You would thus expect the debt to reduce in the hands of Republican administrations then if they were “fiscally responsible”.


It doesn’t.

No, administrations don't really make spending decisions. You'd have to say you expect the debt to reduce in the hands of Republican-controlled *Congresses*.
Which, to be fair, the last time the budget was balanced was while Congress was Republican-controlled, but they haven't done it since.

Also, Congresses have spent years making it more and more legally impossible to balance the budget and reduce the actual debt since most spending is automatic and basically untouchable - good luck getting support to reform medicare/medicaid, the largest single expense, in either party. So we can also look at who reduces the deficit more, which I analyzed just now and found that, in general, Republican-controlled Congresses have posted significantly lower deficits within my lifetime than Democratic or mixed (one house each). That brief period of balance in the 90s is pulling a lot of that weight, but it remains true, if less so, from the 2000s to now. I didn't check whether Democratic Congresses do significantly worse than mixed, though.

Incidentally, interest on the national debt is now projected to edge out military spending as the third largest Federal expense this year, making it, for all intents and purposes, functionally impossible to ever balance the budget again. As of right now, interest makes up about 2/5 of this year's deficit. This is going to get worse as debt rolls over into the current high interest rates. There are signs that the market is slowly cottoning on to this, which will raise the cost of borrowing even more. So, that's exciting!

ETA: By the way, if you were wondering, according to the source I'm using for my numbers, defense spending currently comes in at just under half the deficit, social security at nearly 80%, and medica* at over 98%. These numbers, to be clear, don't sum to 100% because I'm comparing each spending bloc to the deficit, not total spending - so it's a measure of how much you'd cut the deficit if you eliminated a spending group. Not that that would ever realistically happen.

(By the way, these numbers are using the officially reported budget deficit - for legal reasons, the actual deficit is slightly higher so the corresponding percentages slightly lower.)

That’s what I meant (Republican-controlled congresses administering the budget) but I get where the confusion lies.

My point against Schmaven was they said Republicans (or, more specifically, non-Democrats, but they’re basically the only one realistically) were more fiscally responsible than Democrats, and fiscal responsibility meant not spending money that isn’t there, or in other words, by not borrowing, and that’s not the case, according to a very quick cursory Google.

It isn’t surprising the deficit doesn’t increase quite so much under a (more) conservative congress, but whether or not that’s a good thing (conservatives tend toward cutting spending instead of increasing revenues) is debatable.

[Maximum Spin]

That’s what I meant (Republican-controlled congresses administering the budget) but I get where the confusion lies.

Well, that's certainly not the standard meaning of "administration" in politics, and lots of people DO try to cite the statistics by Presidency even though it doesn't make sense.

ETA: Incidentally, while I only wanted to analyze the specific question of deficits and not get into whether it's actually a good or bad idea, I do think it's important to say:
In terms of increasing revenues, there's less room to maneuver in the current economic situation than you think. For just one example, the US, a country where over 30% of transactions are done with credit cards and over half of credit card users carry a balance, is suffering a severe credit crunch right now. Credit card rates are the highest they've ever been since official rate tracking began. Small-business financing is down and rates are up, which also tends to lead to unemployment increasing on a delay. The US economy is currently being buoyed, though, by strong investment inflows from overseas, lured by high interest rates. If the US becomes a less profitable place to invest money, credit becomes a little more unaffordable, or anything else nudges the system in the wrong way, we could easily end up in a formal recession - in an election year, at that.

[anewaname]

Where is the talk about the grift?

The core problem with political parties are individuals who seek to use the party to grift.
The core problem with ideological movements are individuals who seek to use the ideology to grift.
The core problem with grassroots movements are individuals who seek to use the movement to grift.

The core problem with {group} are individuals who seek to use the {group} to grift.

You all know people like that and you all have accepted them into your circle at times.

How do you separate the grifters from the {group}?

[Starver]

The main divide between democrats and non-democrats seems to be about spending.  Democrats argue for spending all our money and the money of our grandchildren on (insert noun here).  The fiscally responsible person is therefore inclined to choose non-democrat.

The opposing perspective seems to be the tendency for the "fiscally minimal" Republicans (also significant numbers of the Tories over here) to advocate shrinking government as they "tax less and do less" to effectively reduce the state in all ways (except for select things they care about, such as keeping a huge military or enforcing borders, for which they are willing to spend and scrape together funds at the expense of less 'vital' functions such as healthcare), presumably until they have no purpose left (except to stop anyone ever reversing these decisions, obviously).

That way potentially lies the remnant US government as featured in Snowcrash (subsumed by a patchwork corporatocracy system), of course. Hard to tell if some of the "low taxes, lower spending" advocates would mind that (with their links to the organisations that would expand to fill such gaps), though I suppose it could just be a matter of how firm they think their balloon should be inflated, and a fear that making it large enough to satisfy everyone's need risks it bursting...


(But I do get annoyed by "what the people want is lower taxation". Of course everyone wants to pay less tax, but they also generally need someone to pay taxes, in order to not have to privately pay 'non-tax' charges for everything from basic roads to an effective law-enforcement. And already those who could pay more notice it less... or even actively manage to avoid their nominally allotted amount in ways that most people can't.)

[Frumple]

It isn’t surprising the deficit doesn’t increase quite so much under a (more) conservative congress, but whether or not that’s a good thing (conservatives tend toward cutting spending instead of increasing revenues) is debatable.

I mean, the premise itself is debatable because we haven't been seeing conservative administrations cut deficit basically the entirety of any of our lives. Generally it's been the exact opposite, with one mismanagement or another causing it to go steadily or rapidly up instead of the other way around. Part of the persistent unfucking of GOP screwups that have defined every non-GOP administration in my lifetime has been dragging that back in the other direction.

The problem with the premise is that american conservatives have been utterly divorced from economic sanity (on top of every other sort) for longer than any of us have been alive. They fundamentally do not understand, and have no interest in learning, how to govern a federal organization in such a way that a functioning government can see deficit reduction. Instead they do stupid horseshit like cutting income and operations and looking befuddled when it turns out the latter was actually saving more than it was costing and the former is actually required to bring the damn thing down. This just happens time, and time, and time, again and again and again.

There's a persistent myth in stateside discourse that our conservatives are fiscally capable or responsible, but it's just. Not right. It's never been right, and it's really damn unlikely it will be any time soon.

[Maximum Spin]

I just looked at actual historical deficit numbers for the last few decades and found the opposite.

[hector13]

https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-us-canada-68132436?src_origin=BBCS_BBC#lx-stream

Currently breaking is punishments for Trump’a fraud case.

$355 million fine, $4 million fine each for Eric and Donald Jr, 3 year ban from doing business in NY.

[Starver]

Not the full $370m? Oh well, close enough. Still going to be difficult for him/his wallet-holders/donors to stump that up even as security in order to appeal the decision.

Or someone else is going to make a killing by lending him the bond with 10% or so non-recoverable fee, if he doesn't find a way to liquidate some other assets...

[Lord Shonus]

He has to pay up (into a holding fund that will be returned in whole or part if appeals go his way)or find a bond within 30 days. That's not going to be easy, particularly when he's already been hit with 83 million in the Carrol case and has more civil cases on the way.

Finding a bond is going to be extremely difficult, because he's a bad investment - even with ruinous interest rates, any reductions on appeal would probably not be enough to make such a loan profitable, particularly with a lendee that has a history of not paying his debts. Meanwhile even the campaign griftosphere will be hard pressed to cover this hit - Trump's entire campaign in 2016 was only $398 million dollars, less than he was hit for in just these two cases. Given how long appeals take, this could be extremely damaging to him.

[McTraveller]

This week while on a business trip I learned that apparently some states (at least CA) want a claim to your income in the form of income tax for the days you "work" in their state on business trips even if you're a non-resident.

This feels worse than the US levying income tax to its citizens who live abroad; at least those people are citizens of the US.  I'm not a citizen of that state that wants to tax me! I have no representation there!

Apparently they have levied taxes on companies not even based in CA, like a consulting company in TN - but because that company provided services to companies in CA, apparently that money "earned" in CA is subject to CA tax.  Like if I sold a craft I made, online, to someone living in CA, apparently technically I'd have to pay CA business income tax on that.

I haven't found any records of this going to SCOTUS, but (somewhat not surprisingly) the courts in CA say this is all fair game.  I don't know how this doesn't violate interstate commerce clauses, and while I'm generally against abusing the ICC, this sure sounds like a time when I'd want the feds to step in.

----

Also I love the descriptions of some of these house resolutions.  HR 987, a resolution "denouncing the harmful, anti-American energy policies of the Biden administration" (I don't know the origin of the quote - maybe it's in the HR text itself? It was in quotes in the Forbes article I read, but wasn't attributed there).  I suppose there may be some short-term "harm" in the current policies, yes; but anti-American? In the long term these are also the policies we need, by the way... I'd rather have an ounce of prevention than have to pay the pound of cure later...

[Bumber]

Trump paying more in damages with no actual victim than Norfolk Southern for ruining an entire town.

Message clear: Don't base your business in a Blue state.