McConnell Blames Entitlements, Not GOP, for Rising Deficits

So "entitlement programs" (aka minimal societal decency) made this sudden enormous leap this year, timed w huge stock buy-backs? Amazing.

 

Entitlements is the noose around the neck of the American government, but both parties are too scared to do anything about it because while people are fine taking the entitlements of others, they'll fight to the death if you talk about scaling their entitlements back.....so you end up doing nothing and just letting the situation get worse and worse.



Let's look at that mandatory spending



That's 2.5 trillion dollars for Social Security, Medicare, unemployment, and Medicaid alone. If you add in interest paid on the national debt, you are already north of 2.8 trillion dollars then add in the rest of mandatory spending and you've hit 3 trillion dollars long before you've spent a dime of discretionary spending on things such as keeping the government open or paying for the military.....and for all of that stuff you have 1 trillion set aside.

When you hear most politicians talk about cutting spending, they'll look to trim a bit of the 1 trillion while allowing the 3 trillion of mandatory spending and interest to get further and further out of hand.

 

Like I said before, the people won't allow you to do the responsible thing and cut entitlements, that's why it's a noose. Basically people will support cutting from any entitlement they aren't using, but they'll riot if you talk about cutting anything they use.....so nothing ever gets cut and the problem only gets worse.

Personally I'd have them cut from all of those programs to a point where there was a surplus which was used to entirely get rid of the debt which would save over 300 billion dollars a year in interest payments. Once there is a surplus and no debt, then you start talking about what you want to spend on. That said, no politician could do so without getting voted out of office and replaced with "free stuff" politicians because people really are that dumb.

Also, you'll have ridiculous nonsense like talking about tax cuts despite the fact that they cost less than half of what you spend in interest every year.....Again, it's not buying the Cadillac, it was getting the large fries instead of the small fries that is why you are broke right?

 

**** him he should be shot as a traitor to this country.

DD

 

The government currently spends 2.5 trillion dollars a year on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and unemployment.....but yeah, it's the 150 billion in tax cuts that is a killer.....all the while politicians like Ocasio-Cortez is suggesting a healthcare program that would cost 4 trillion dollars a year (on top of many other expensive programs) which would balloon mandatory spending to right around 6 trillion dollars a year. which would likely be paid for with deficit spending causing that 300+ billion spent on interest to get much, much higher every year.

I'm glad these issues have been brought up, but there are no solutions on the left because they are even more ridiculously fiscally irresponsible than the Republicans are. We need some responsible politics to make this problem go away, but I can't imagine where it will come from.

 

Yup 100% spot on. Pretty ridiculous for the Republicans to blame anyone but themselves for spiking the deficit. They always talk a good game about controlling federal spending, but they never actually do it.

 

That's the kind of incisive, nuanced discussion we've come to expect from ya DD.

 

True statement, although I've been hearing this from both parties for years. Nothing ever gets done.

Bobby is right and we all know it. Budgets will never balance until we start cutting from Social Security, Medicare, and Defense. Neither side is willing to commit political suicide to begin to address all these so, here we are until the day these programs collapse under their own weight,

 

The Tea Party is against big government and out of control spending. I'm sure they'll show back up any day now, totally sure of it...

 

Whenever these words show up on a post that you're typing up you really should just delete it all and move on. Betting on the opposite of what Bobby says is the safest investment you can make.

 

Nobody is "for" it. Thats why it doesn't happen.

 

No one is, and that's my point. You can't cut entitlements without getting voted out of office, so they are strangling the country. All anyone wants to talk about are the things that are relative loose change, no one wants to tackle the actual problem....hell most Democrats today want to make it worse.

 

The current GOP is a bunch of lying, greedy, ignorant a-holes, screwing their own constituents right and left while they play up stupid **** like Native American DNA and other dumb crap. Now they want to blame "both sides" for the deficit. Jesus.

This country is so f'ed.



https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...ames-entitlements-not-gop-for-rising-deficits

Republicans in December 2017 also passed a tax cut projected to add more than $1 trillion to the debt over a decade after leaders gave up on creating a plan that wouldn’t increase the debt under the Senate’s scoring rules.

At the time, McConnell told reporters, “I not only don’t think it will increase the deficit, I think it will be beyond revenue-neutral.” He added, “In other words, I think it will produce more than enough to fill that gap.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York responded Tuesday by saying McConnell and other Republicans “blew a $2 trillion hole in the federal deficit to fund a tax cut for the rich. To now suggest cutting earned middle-class programs like Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid as the only fiscally responsible solution to solve the debt problem is nothing short of gaslighting."

 

one president and two supreme court justices later...

 

Which is why it's a good idea when the economy is going well to use tax revenue to help pay down the debt. When you do something stupid like cut taxes while the economy is booming, you end up growing the deficit even more.

 

Cutting taxes can help the economy boom and it doesn't cost very much to do so....hell they can even end up paying for themselves. Either way, when you are pointing to loose change as the reason you are broke, you are completely missing the big picture. 150 billion dollars is less than half of what is spent on interest on debt every year. If you don't tackle the real monster spending pits like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment, and military spending, then you aren't going to do **** towards fixing the problems.

You need cuts across the board and absolutely no more "free stuff" type entitlements to drag the country down further. By all means, tell me what kinds of politicians would agree to that

 

Cutting taxes can help the economy boom. When the economy is struggling it might be a good idea to cut taxes. When the economy is already booming, there is no need to cut taxes and the revenue should go towards paying down the debt a bit.

Another huge spending requirement that the govt. must make every time and can't be cut no matter what is the interest on our debt. I believe that is actually a higher percentage of our annual spending than Medicare. Increasing that debt is going to add a cost that can not be cut like Military spending even that cut is only theoretical.