Republicans Broke the House—Will Voters Care?

What this proves is the congress are the thieves... They write the bills that are either signed or no one gets a dime to make the federal government work. The entire congress is made up of a bunch of thieving grifters.

 

Question all you want. In reinforcing failure by nominating Trump over Haley, you have turned a probable victory into a near-certain defeat. No matter what mental gymnastics you undertake, you can’t win a presidential election without the assent of the swing voters. And they will not vote for Trump again. Learn or don’t.

 

Do you have a clue what conservatism literally means?

 

Let’s look at spending

Federal Net Outlays as Percent of Gross Domestic Product



In 2023 spending was 22% of GDP. In all of the Reagan years it was over 20%. The increase can be entirely attributable to debt service expense.

Here is tax as a percentage of GDP. At a high level it seems pretty consistent. If you look deeper you see it go down during the Reagan years, Bush years and Trump years. Taxes were decreased even though they were substantially below spending.





Looking at deficits

Federal Surplus or Deficit [-] as Percent of Gross Domestic Product



It follows that deficits generally increased more during republican administrations.

Some republicans have built up this fantasy, that they hate deficits, that the deficits are because of increased spending, and it is the democrats fault. It just isn’t true. If republicans were really concerned about deficits they wouldn’t be voting in tax cuts when they are already in deficits.

You didn’t get the memo. Republicans have finally just given up on it. Now “conservatism” is about worshiping Donald Trump. That’s pretty much it. Republicans stand for absolutely nothing, except for fealty to Donald Trump. You just don’t seem to be paying attention.

 

Of course. Read closer, *professor*.

 

So you want to radically change from 2023 when govt spending to gdp is 22%, to Reagan years when govt to gdp was 21-22%?

 

There are primarily, 2 ways to eliminate a deficit: reduce spending to below revenues, or increase revenues beyond spending. The latter entails increasing the size of the government (lecture me more about "conservativism", *professor*). Conservatism would naturally favor the former. (A third way exists as a hybrid, but those are the 2 primary wats).

Trump is a basically a Hail Mary. Decades of poly's campaigning conservative pub, and legislating liberal dem, have rendered voters cynical. And desperate.

Haley, et al would be guaranteed status quo spending > revs, = downward (suicidal really, at this point) trajectory.

So too Trump it seems, but Trump at least delivered on the SCOTUS (after decades of frustration on that front), and now, as politically persecuted by weaponized DOJ, it's become compulsory, to shove trump down their gullets, again.

 

Trump was mostly a populist Democrat. There is nothing conservative about him.

 

Last year the cost to service our debt surpassed 1 Trillion per year. The deficit was 1.7 trillion.

The GDP crawls at a snails pace, while our debt compounds. We're in a death spiral.

NB: we're borrowing more than a Trillion per year--so we're literally borrowing, to service our debt.

Bury your head in the sand as you please. It won't alter reality.

 

To him it means whatever mental gymnastics are necessary to vote for a criminal. Because the criminal condones his anger, grievance and Otherism. We know the obvious truth well by now.

Oh, and that poster really really cares about deficit spending. That's why he's so excited to vote for the guy who never paid any taxes and who voluntarily reversed decreasing deficits, to bring us our first non-crisis $1 trillion+ deficit.

Grievance and tax cuts. And people who are ethnically different. No matter how the "true conservatives" wrap it up.

 

LOL at people who believe there are two parties.

 

Any congress critter not in favor of spending our money like drunk sailors is now considered batshit crazy.

 

By and large voters won’t care because they prefer to believe we have two parties.

 

You're right they tend to ignore the Green party

 

There was one potus candidate who continued to talk about reducing debt and called out both parties and Trump. But Nikki Haley didn’t stand a chance as maga will vote for Dear Leader no matter what.

 

The US asset base is approximately $160T.
About half of that asset base is controlled by Boomers, or roughly $80T.

Eventually Congress will figure out the only way out of this mess is to tax Boomer's assets and finally agree on something to reign themselves in. Taxing the shit out of the eldest of us.

 

To a large extent members of Congress represent the views of their constituents and that includes members of the so called Freedom Caucus who supposedly favor fiscal responsibility especially considering that they only support extreme measures like blocking budget agreements when there is a Democrat in the White House.

Americans are against irresponsible government spending as long as it doesn't involve cuts to programs in which they receive benefits and similarly Americans favor reducing the federal deficit in principle so long as it doesn't mean reducing the deficit through increasing revenue by raising taxes. Walt Kelly's character Pogo said it all "We have met the enemy and he is us".

 

Both sides suck. What's the difference here?

You both vote for and enjoy your own flavor of corruption. The answer is in the middle. It's NOT just a Republican or Democrat problem. You are both horrible at running the country and the numbers prove it. Biden and Trump have both done good things and they have both done horrible things. When we have a president who will bring both sides together instead of tearing us apart, we can progress as a country. Until then, we will continue to swirl the porcelain throne while you sit here and fight with each other over who's shit sandwich tastes the best.

 

The answer is clear when you they want a dictatorship, with them choosing the dictator.

 

All true, but I don't think they appreciate how much damage so do their own economic interests, both of the changes in domestic policies they advocate and foreign policy