Pubs looking to trim Medicaid, Food Stamps, etc. to fund Trump Tax Cuts.

You can’t run up $30T in debt and pretend you saved something for retirement. You didn’t pay your fair share of the operating budget so whatever you think you put away in SS isn’t there. You are a debtor, not a saver. Thank your elected officials but social security is an entitlement.

 

You clapped that silliness years ago. HOW you budget isn’t WHAT you budget. You can’t cut enough from the $600B in running the government to make a difference. It’s just math. There’s $5.4T of other stuff you can’t/wont/aren’t going to touch.

 

here’s the real question as there were no Specifics in the OP: if we’re spending $100 now are does the “cut“ mean that we won’t be spending 150 in five years? Or are we going from 100 to 90? Typically, the answer is we are simply slowing the rate of increase. please advise and let me know if I’m wrong.

 

Trick question. We are not cutting spending or the deficit. It all just fake blustering.

 

Okay, per your reply, if we are not cutting spending this thread is moot. Thanks!

 

Just my opinion.

 

Dems for years were able to demonize the Pubs using the "they are cutting your SS, or they are cutting that- when all they really wanted to do was take away the built in increase- almost all the accounts in our budget start from where they budget was last year(and that is their baseline) and almost all of the different budgets have a built in automatic increase. If we just maintained the current level of spending instead of allowing the auto increases that would be a good start to reducing our spending- then the hard decisions have to be made- to appease the dems they have to include defense spending

 

He’s saying the money you think is there, isn’t there. Social security is not a “retirement account”. It should be thought of more as insurance.

If we are going to cut the budget it 100% needs to involve slashing social security and Medicare and make any cuts felt immediately. Anything else is kicking the can down the road - pushing it off to future generations.

It just isn’t a serious position to say “no cuts to entitlements” and think the problem can be solved with “waste and abuse” out of the $600B.

The elderly MAGA position is ostensibly to protect future generations. Yet, they want 100% entitlements with no cuts (actually they demand COLA as well). But they are perfectly willing if not over the moon excited at the prospects of doing things like eliminating child hunger and anti-poverty programs, i.e cause direct harm to future generations. These people couldn’t be more full of shit if they tried.

I’m not even close to saying these programs ought to be eliminated (that would be a catastrophically bad policy which would send millions of seniors to the streets homeless), but we can definitely cut 10% through a combination of modest benefit reductions and means testing, and doing that would be far more than whatever fantastical figure you could come up with from “fraud and waste”.

 

AGREE 100%

 

My guess is most voters also work. The source said a "responsible and reasonable work requirement”. Do any of us really have an issue with this?

I understand that definition is fluid, but there should be a reasonable landing spot we can all agree on .

Just my thought. It isn't some blanket dismantling.

 

SS is a numbers game as well as a safety net. Everyone looks at dollars out and never dollars in. It is a balance sheet. Where are the imbalances, SSI, income cut off, martian immigrants?

Same with medicare, look at all the commercials to get free stuff on medicare. Imagine the impact of mobility scooters or anti-fat pills vs overall wellness . Or just cancer treatments.

politicians are all full of crap with surface level analysis and talking points. Much like talk tv. Very few folks do in depth analysis, it is work and not agenda driven.

 

Yep. When i started work i really wanted to contribute to some kind of self chosen savings program that was talked about in the early 80s (Jack Kemp?) instead of SS as i thought it was doomed to insolvency. After working 15 years or so it was too late to do that and make financial sense - i was in too deep if the choice even existed - which it didn’t

That many people putting money into investment programs had the real likelihood of artificially inflating their value but the obligation would have been removed from the US govt. at least.

 

All joking aside, there have been multiple expansions of these programs. If I trusted anyone to earnestly look deeply into these programs, and transparently share their findings, I would be willing to bet that there are truly $Billions of savings and changes that could be made without hurting the most vulnerable. We (me) have become so polarized that no one trusts anyone else enough to provide honest assessments and tough solutions to real problems.

 

The defense and intelligence spending, especially the special non-budget items are INSANE and dwarf every other federal program. There can be no discussion of cuts without including the largest, most wasteful line items. Otherwise, why bother?

 

You're not going to eliminate a $1.8 trillion deficit without both spending cuts and revenue increases. Yet Trump is talking about major tax cuts. Whatever, if any, total spending cuts Trump enacts will be offset by lower revenues from the tax cuts. Deficit isn't going down.

 

What are non-budget items?

 

The bottom line is irrelevant I guess.

The fact remains we are spending 23% of GDP(well higher than non wartime average) while tax collection is about at historical averages.

We can parse it out, and we should to see where spending cuts can be made. But to just oh well it’s all entitlements and defense and ignore the issue it lame.

 

How about just a little honesty? Most on here act like you can make some real headway having a few less people at the irs when I’ve demonstrated over and over the juice on efficiency is small. If you aren’t able to cut entitlements and defense you aren’t making a scratch in the deficit. My contention is there exists no will to go after those on either side.

The fact is most righties just ignore math and make posts like yours “spending cuts need to happen” without a real discussion on how that occurs. Efficiency is a distraction. Go get your $60B in it but without entitlements and defense it’s all just blowhards being blowhards.

 

On its face I don’t have a problem with it but my gut tells me (admittedly I don’t have the data in front of me) that 1) people abusing benefits, while infuriating, is not a significant amount of money in our budget, and 2) the working requirements would be implemented in such a way it would be more harmful than beneficial. I’ll wait to see until the actual bills are drafted but that’s my initial reaction.

 

I tend to agree with both points.
I do think if the numbers are where this data says, upthread we should consider a work standard. Even if minimal.