Author Topic: Government programs & regulations, spending, deficit, and budget process  (Read 463218 times)

DougMacG

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2022, Feds borrowed 4B/day totalling 10k per household
« Reply #1400 on: January 18, 2023, 11:16:39 AM »
https://justthenews.com/nation/states/center-square/feds-borrowed-4-billion-day-2022-totaling-10k-household

Feds borrowed $10,000 per household in one year, now every year not counting interest forever.

Managed like this, why wouldn't the economy tank?

Like representative Jim Clyburn (D-SC) said, "we all knew".  We all knew this spending would lead to this inflation. Did they also all know the damage that that kind of get an inflation causes?


DougMacG

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Re: Government programs & regulations, spending, deficit, and budget process
« Reply #1402 on: January 22, 2023, 08:05:14 AM »
Kevin Hassett’s idea: $3 of spending cuts for every $1 of raising the debt ceiling.

ccp

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Re: Government programs & regulations, spending, deficit, and budget process
« Reply #1403 on: January 22, 2023, 08:19:12 AM »
"Kevin Hassett’s idea: $3 of spending cuts for every $1 of raising the debt ceiling."

good idea but the usual conundrum for us Repubs who only control maybe 10 % of media outlets and leaders who cannot adequately express themselves on media

while the Vast overwhelming media DNC academic lawyer complex

knee jerk reply

"CUTTING MEDICARE SOCIAL SECURITY NO GOVERNMENT SERVICES PEOPLE WILL STARVE THROWN OUT ON STREETS" and "must raise taxes , cut defense " etc

We have to try as best we can though

versus we go into the garbage can.........

Crafty_Dog

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WSJ: How Congress constrained spending in the 1920s
« Reply #1404 on: January 23, 2023, 04:03:33 PM »
Congress Once Constrained Government Debt
In 1920, lawmakers curbed spending by putting a single committee in charge of the overall budget.
By John F. Cogan
Jan. 23, 2023 2:03 pm ET


The U.S. Treasury began taking steps last week to avoid default on the nation’s $31.4 trillion national debt. The government has been here before, and it will keep arriving here until Congress finds a way to control its voracious appetite for spending. The political will to cut spending is hard to muster. Congressional history shows that the budget process itself creates incentives for excessive spending and budget deficits.

Entitlement programs have accounted for all the growth in federal spending relative to gross domestic product in the past 60 years, causing the persistent budget deficits during that period. Entitlement expenditures are determined differently from so-called discretionary programs. Spending on the latter programs is set by fixed appropriations of money. Entitlement expenditures aren’t fixed in advance but determined by the program’s level of benefits, its eligibility rules and economic factors.

Jurisdiction for entitlement legislation is dispersed among more than a dozen committees in each congressional chamber. In the House, the Agriculture Committee has jurisdiction over farm-support payments and food stamps, the Education and Workforce Committee over student loans and grants, the Ways and Means Committee over Social Security, Medicare hospital insurance and welfare programs, the Energy and Commerce Committee over Medicaid (sharing responsibility for ObamaCare and Medicare Part B with Ways and Means).

In this system, no committee is accountable for total spending. Each committee has a reason to expand its programs and resist attempts to restrain them, but none have an incentive to keep overall spending down.

It’s analogous to the classic tragedy of the commons. Imagine a situation in which many fishermen have access to a commonly owned body of water. Each fisherman has an incentive to catch as many fish as possible, and no fisherman has a reason to restrain his catch. The area is eventually depleted of fish. But there’s one notable difference: Unlike the fisherman, once Congress has exhausted its supply of tax revenue, it can borrow from the future.

Earlier Congresses saw the consequences of dispersed spending authority and used expert committees with specialized knowledge (called authorizing committees) to create programs and their rules of operation. For most of the 19th century, a single committee in each chamber determined the total annual budget. The use of a single committee provided accountability and made possible the necessary funding trade-offs among programs. Except during wars and recessions, annual budgets were balanced with a suitable allowance.

But in the late 1870s to the mid-1880s, the House began dispersing spending authority. Former Speaker Samuel Randall delivered a prophetic warning in 1885: “If you undertake to divide all these appropriations and have many committees where there ought to be but one, you will enter upon a path of extravagance that you cannot foresee the length of or the depth of, until we find the treasury of the country bankrupt.”

The House dismissed these warnings and dispersed appropriations jurisdiction to eight committees. The Senate later followed suit. The new incentives caused expenditures to grow rapidly. From the 1890s to World War I, budget deficits were more frequent and larger than ever before in U.S. peacetime history.

After World War I, Congress recognized the source of its budget problem and solved it. A House select committee, established to create a new process in which the president would submit his own comprehensive budget request to Congress, recommended that the chamber consolidate all appropriation authority into a single committee. The remarkable resolution stripped seven House committees of their spending authority. Citing past support from some of its most respected former members, including Appropriations Committee Chairman James Garfield (1871-75) and Speaker Joseph Cannon (1903-11), the select committee urged members to “submerge personal ambition for the public good.” The House did so and consolidated appropriations in 1920. Two years later, the Senate changed its rules to match.

That restored budget accountability and eliminated the pre-existing system’s incentives for higher spending. From 1921 to 1930, when the Great Depression hit, federal spending was restrained and the annual budget was balanced.

Starting in the 1930s, however, Congress began creating entitlement programs for people other than those who had performed some government service related to defense. (The only previous entitlements were pensions for servicemen.) The consequence is the return of dispersed committee jurisdiction in which entitlements now account for two-thirds of federal program spending.

Since the 1970s, Congress has made several failed attempts to change the budget process, most notably the 1974 Budget and Impoundment Control Act and discretionary appropriations caps and pay-go rules under the 1990 Budget Enforcement Act and subsequent laws. None of these reforms have overcome the powerful spending incentives created by the current system.

Many other ideas have been floated by individual lawmakers. In June 1979, Sen. Joe Biden urged that almost all spending be subject to annual approval by the Appropriations Committee. Mr. Biden said in a floor speech that his bill would make “new and existing entitlements subject to the appropriation of funds, thus effectively ending their entitlement status,” with exceptions only for then-existing Social Security and Medicare benefits.

In the current arrangement, the House and Senate Budget Committees may appear to provide accountability, but they have no independent authority to change entitlements. Similarly, the omnibus appropriations laws of recent years may give the appearance that the congressional leadership is in charge. But these bloated bills fund only discretionary spending and represent a failure of the appropriations process.

In 1917, President Woodrow Wilson advised Congress that “it will be impossible to deal in any but a very wasteful and extravagant fashion with the enormous appropriation of public moneys . . . unless the House will consent to return to its former practice of initiating and preparing all appropriations bills through a single committee.” The same is true more than a century later. Consolidating appropriations will be difficult for Congress, but no more difficult than it was in 1920. Lawmakers should again “submerge personal ambition for the public good.”

Mr. Cogan is author of “The High Cost of Good Intentions” and a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution

DougMacG

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Interest now costs more than defense
« Reply #1405 on: January 29, 2023, 05:20:13 AM »
https://confoundedinterest.net/2023/01/28/us-paid-853-billion-in-interest-on-its-31-trillion-debt-in-2022-more-than-the-us-defense-budget/

Speaking of morons, what's wrong with the people who run our country, and our voters?

What's the answer? More spending, more borrowing, more debt, more interest, higher interest rates?  They are trying to make irrelevant the people who want to fix it.

Crafty_Dog

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Re: Government programs & regulations, spending, deficit, and budget process
« Reply #1406 on: January 29, 2023, 05:25:01 AM »
 :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o

G M

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Re: Interest now costs more than defense
« Reply #1407 on: January 29, 2023, 08:12:22 AM »
https://confoundedinterest.net/2023/01/28/us-paid-853-billion-in-interest-on-its-31-trillion-debt-in-2022-more-than-the-us-defense-budget/

Speaking of morons, what's wrong with the people who run our country, and our voters?

What's the answer? More spending, more borrowing, more debt, more interest, higher interest rates?  They are trying to make irrelevant the people who want to fix it.

This is the "Loot the treasury" phase of imperial collapse.

Crafty_Dog

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Re: Government programs & regulations, spending, deficit, and budget process
« Reply #1408 on: January 29, 2023, 09:18:29 AM »
A very plausible assessment , , ,  :x :x :x :x :x :x :x :x :x

Crafty_Dog

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ccp

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Crafty_Dog

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Re: Government programs & regulations, spending, deficit, and budget process
« Reply #1411 on: March 06, 2023, 06:39:17 AM »
IMHO if we do not raise the retirement age here we are fuct for sure.  DeSantis agrees.  Trump opposes.

ccp

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Biden to "shore up Medicare "
« Reply #1412 on: March 07, 2023, 06:41:00 AM »
1) allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices

2) and the other is what Democrats always do

and both will do little:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/heres-what-biden-wants-to-do-to-shore-up-medicare-135302609.html

Crafty_Dog

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This seems like a potent point to me
« Reply #1413 on: April 14, 2023, 08:58:11 AM »



The Biden-Trump Plan to Cut Social Security
Doing nothing won’t protect beneficiaries. It’ll subject them to automatic 23% cuts in 10 years.
By David McIntosh
Updated April 13, 2023 5:34 pm ET
WSJ


Joe Biden and Donald Trump agree on one thing. “I guarantee you I will protect Social Security and Medicare without any change. Guaranteed,” Mr. Biden said in March. Mr. Trump has said: “I will do everything within my power not to touch Social Security, to leave it the way it is.” A pro-Trump super PAC launched an ad attacking Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for his efforts as a member of Congress to restructure benefits.

The Biden-Trump position may sound like a pledge to protect Social Security, but it isn’t. The law “without any change” requires a huge benefit cut in 10 years.


According to the latest annual report from the Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees, the Old Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund, from which the current levels of Social Security benefits are drawn, will be able to issue payments to retirees only until 2034. But the trustees might have been overly optimistic. They projected much lower inflation levels—4.5% in 2022 and 2.3% in 2023—instead of the record high rates that occurred. Since Social Security benefits are automatically increased for inflation, the trust fund will run out of money sooner.

The current law also says all payments must come from within the program. That means once the trust fund reserve is depleted, beneficiary payouts will be limited to whatever funds come in from Social Security payroll taxes. “Taking action sooner rather than later will allow consideration of a broader range of solutions and provide more time to phase in changes so that the public has adequate time to prepare,” the trustees warn.


Thus consequences of leaving Social Security “without any changes,” as promised by Biden-Trump, are dire. Ten years from now, benefit cuts of 23% will be triggered if there is no change to Social Security, according to one analysis.

Elected officials have several options from which to choose, none politically palatable. Payroll taxes could be increased, as has been done in the past. Some have advocated transforming Social Security into a system of privatized pension accounts. The eligibility age could be raised again.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy recently said that the GOP has ruled out cuts to Social Security and Medicare as part of this year’s budget battle. Former Vice President Mike Pence said: “While I respect the speaker’s commitment to take Social Security and Medicare off the table for the debt-ceiling negotiations, we’ve got to put them on the table in the long term.”

Meanwhile, the Biden-Trump strategy has been to play “beat the clock,” leaving their successors to deal with the crisis.

Candidates with a record of entitlement reform like Messrs. Pence and DeSantis would do well to point out that doing nothing is the worst Social Security cut.

Mr. McIntosh is president of the Club for Growth. He served as a Republican U.S. representative from Indiana, 1995-2001.

Crafty_Dog

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WSJ: McCarthy's Debt-Ceiling Marker
« Reply #1414 on: April 18, 2023, 06:12:42 AM »
Kevin McCarthy’s Debt-Ceiling Marker
The Speaker can only win a showdown if the House GOP stays united.
By The Editorial BoardFollow
April 17, 2023 6:46 pm ET

Addressing the NYSE, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy rejected President Biden's push for further debt, outlining a 3-point fiscal path that 'limits, saves and grows.' Images: Bloomberg News Composite: Mark Kelly

Washington is cruising toward another showdown over the federal debt ceiling, and Americans can be forgiven for turning the channel. But House Speaker Kevin McCarthy laid out the House Republican offer on Monday, and it might even succeed if the GOP can stay united.


“Debt limit negotiations are an opportunity to examine our nation’s finances,” Rep. McCarthy said in a speech at the New York Stock Exchange, and the picture isn’t pretty. U.S. debt held by the public is more than $25 trillion. Spending as a share of the economy is 23.7%, the Congressional Budget Office reported in February, and rising to 24.9% by 2033, a level reached only twice since 1946—in 2020 and 2021 when Congress shoveled money into the pandemic emergency.

President Biden and Democrats in Congress ladled $6 trillion more onto the national debt in a mere two years on everything from electric car subsidies to an IRS blowout. America will spend $10.5 trillion in the next decade on interest payments alone, Mr. McCarthy noted.

Amid this grim scene, Mr. McCarthy has a fair opening offer for President Biden. One: “Defaulting on our debt is not an option.” Two: House Republicans won’t pass an increase in the federal debt without reforms or spending restraint. “A no-strings-attached debt limit increase cannot pass,” he said, in a red line amid all the red ink.


The Speaker’s requests are hardly radical. Republicans want to return the federal government to the spending levels of the bad old days in . . . fiscal 2022. They then want to cap the growth of spending at 1% annually over 10 years for domestic discretionary accounts. These are reasonable limits after the spending sprees of recent years.

The negotiating weakness is that Mr. McCarthy didn’t distinguish between defense and social-welfare priorities, which suggests that defense could take a hit. A plurality of his caucus won’t abide cutting the Pentagon budget when China is building a menacing military and U.S. defense spending is only 3% of the economy, a historical low.

The Speaker was also at pains to say Social Security and Medicare won’t be touched. This is a concession to the political reality of controlling only one half of one branch of government, though there’s no path to long-term fiscal sanity without reforming entitlements.

The other GOP priorities are energy and permitting reforms that passed the House recently with four Democratic votes, and a work requirement for able-bodied adults between 18 and 59 in return for food stamps or Medicaid. They also want to claw back Covid emergency money that hasn’t been spent now that the pandemic is over.

The challenge for the Speaker is that President Biden refuses to negotiate and has refused even to talk since they last met 75 days ago. Mr. Biden wants to run out the clock until the debt limit is reached, then predict a cataclysm, and assume the GOP majority will panic and pass an increase without any reform. He knows most of Wall Street and the press will be on his side, never mind the financial merits.

In other words, Mr. Biden wants to come close to a debt crisis without triggering one. This is a risky game, and Mr. McCarthy warned that Mr. Biden could “bumble into the first default in our nation’s history.”

The trillion-dollar question is whether Mr. McCarthy can keep his narrow majority together against this combined assault. If he can pass a debt-ceiling increase with reforms, he’ll be in a stronger negotiating position. If he fails, he’ll bring a rubber knife to an alley fight.

***
Default shouldn’t even be on the table because the debt ceiling is in many respects a fake cliff. More than enough revenue will continue to flow into the Treasury to pay interest on the debt and priorities like Social Security. The Treasury Secretary can prioritize those payments, and some legal observers say she has a legal obligation to do so under the 14th Amendment. Other parts of the government might operate at reduced capacity for a time, but that has happened before.


It shouldn’t come to that. Mr. McCarthy says he wants a “reasonable negotiation,” and a reasonable President would meet him part way. The Speaker will have to keep his nervous caucus together to pass a debt-ceiling bill, and then to accept that it won’t get everything it wants. But winning even one or two of his debt-ceiling proposals would be a big victory. If Republicans can’t stick together, they’ll lose in a rout.

Crafty_Dog

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WSJ
« Reply #1415 on: May 09, 2023, 08:55:06 AM »
President Biden meets Tuesday with Congressional leaders at the White House to discuss the federal debt limit, and GOP leaders Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell could do worse than point to Monday’s Congressional Budget Office budget review for April. It shows that federal outlays continue to soar even as tax revenue declines.

April is typically the best month for the federal fisc because it’s the tax payment deadline for the previous year. But this year the April budget surplus fell by $135 billion from a year earlier. Including adjustments for timing shifts in federal outlays, the decline was $274 billion, or 73% from April 2022.

That portends bigger budget deficits for the rest of the fiscal year. The deficit for the first seven months is already $928 billion, or 236% higher than in 2022 with timing adjustments. Keep in mind that this is happening when the economy is still growing and the unemployment rate is still low.

The big culprit is spending, which is up 12% in the first seven months or nearly $400 billion, including timing adjustments. Entitlements are up 11% and education spending owing to student-loan changes is up 56%. Chalk this up to the spending pipeline enacted by the last Congress that has years to go unless it’s pared back by this Congress.

And get this: Interest on the national debt rose 40%, or $107 billion, and is already $374 billion for the first seven months. That’s what happens when interest rates rise 500 basis points in a year to fight the inflation that runaway federal spending helped to ignite.

Revenue fell 10%, as the economy slowed, and individual income taxes fell 18%. CBO says it’s too early to know for sure, but it suspects one reason “could be lower-than-expected realizations of capital gains last year.” That happens when the stock market declines, as California in particular is discovering. You can’t soak the rich when they’re not making money.

All of this screams for the urgent need to slow the growth of federal spending, as House Republicans did as part of their debt-ceiling increase bill. Your move, Mr. Biden.
« Last Edit: May 09, 2023, 11:50:24 AM by Crafty_Dog »

Crafty_Dog

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WSJ: Biden's ridiculous line in the sand
« Reply #1416 on: May 09, 2023, 11:51:42 AM »
second

Biden’s Ridiculous Line in the Sand
Just because the president’s debt ceiling position is political and absurd doesn’t mean it’s not dangerous.
James Freeman hedcutBy James FreemanFollow
May 9, 2023 11:58 am ET

One of the dangers when someone begins his first executive job at age 78 is that he may struggle to develop good managerial judgment. The danger is compounded when he spent a career as a legislator and may not comprehend that political posturing is not the solution to every problem. American voters may also be thinking that in hindsight filling the world’s most important management position with a rookie wasn’t optimal. Let’s hope that our now 80-year-old president has benefited from a couple years of seasoning. But it’s hard to be optimistic while watching him draw an arbitrary and unreasonable line in the sand over federal borrowing authority.

By all accounts the president is still clinging to his monthslong refusal to negotiate over the debt limit even as he prepares to welcome congressional leaders to the White House on Tuesday afternoon.

Those not accustomed to studying the absurdities of Washington may wonder why Biden administration staff are discussing increasingly kooky ways to evade federal law rather than simply accepting the constitutional reality that Congress has a say in federal spending and debt decisions. Perhaps due to Mr. Biden’s career as a political posturer, he doesn’t even appear to be embarrassed as he pretends that he’s standing on principle in rejecting negotiation to secure more borrowing authority. Naturally our posturer-in-chief had the opposite position as a senator and as vice president, when he served as a negotiator.

Now, apparently disappointed that he didn’t cut a better deal on behalf of President Obama in 2011, Mr. Biden suddenly pretends that negotiation is unnecessary and the White House can simply order Congress to pass a higher debt limit.


Yet much of the press portrays Mr. Biden as someone who is trying to solve a problem. “Biden meets with congressional leaders in urgent bid to avoid default,” claims a Washington Post headline. But his bid is obviously not urgent if he’s still unwilling to negotiate on the subject.



The White House in recent days has emphasized that Biden is willing to discuss spending cuts as long as they are not tied to the debt ceiling increase, a message he is expected to repeat at Tuesday’s meeting.
So he’s conceded that a president must negotiate such things with Congress, except at the moment when negotiations are most needed? This is absurd. But it won’t be funny if the government can’t pay its bills.

There doesn’t appear to be a deep state at the White House thwarting the president’s bizarre policy. Unnamed staff are staking out the same odd position that, sure, spending restraints need to happen, but not when they would be helpful in averting a debt crisis. The Post account continues:

McCarthy’s bill to raise the debt limit, passed by the House last month, would cut federal spending by $4.8 trillion over 10 years. The White House has rejected that proposal, but Biden aides have recognized that they need to reach an agreement with House Republicans on government spending levels, regardless of the resolution to the debt limit.
The White House position gets even weirder. So determined is Team Biden to vindicate Mr. Biden’s anti-bargaining stance that it may try to pretend it has suddenly discovered a vast new presidential power. The Journal’s Andrew Restuccia and Natalie Andrews report:

In a sign of the intractability of the negotiations, the Biden administration has begun weighing whether it can unilaterally issue debt by invoking the 14th Amendment if Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling, according to people familiar with the matter. The amendment states that the validity of U.S. debt authorized by law “shall not be questioned.” Administration officials are reluctant to take that path, raising concerns about the legality of the move and the potential market reaction, the people said.
Here’s another idea: Endorse the position of Sen. Biden and Vice President Biden and the U.S. Constitution and work with Congress to decide the appropriate levels of federal spending and debt.

Crafty_Dog

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Crafty_Dog

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NRO: Biden's 14th Amendment Folly
« Reply #1418 on: May 16, 2023, 07:35:37 AM »
Joe Biden’s 14th Amendment Folly
By THE EDITORS
May 15, 2023 6:30 AM

Joe Biden is musing aloud about violating his oath of office and seizing powers not granted him by the Constitution in order to avoid negotiating with the House of Representatives. This is a shameful way for the president of a constitutional republic to act.


The so-called 14th Amendment option — to have the president issue debt not approved by Congress — doesn’t actually exist. Until 2023, nobody in the executive branch has ever pretended that it does. “I have talked to my lawyers,” Barack Obama said in 2011, and “they are not persuaded that that is a winning argument.” Left-leaning legal scholars such as Laurence Tribe once agreed. Nothing has changed but the intensity of partisanship.

The Constitution is quite explicit: Congress, and only Congress, has the power “to borrow Money on the credit of the United States.” Congress, and only Congress, has the power to raise revenue, and all bills to do so must start in the House. The Framers were quite open in designing this system to give Congress the power of the purse so that it could bring the executive to heel.

Section Four of the 14th Amendment, designed to ensure the repayment of Civil War debts even over Southern objections, barred the federal government from repudiating its existing debts. But it did not, explicitly or implicitly, change the allocation of power to issue new debt. At the time, new issuances of debt were approved one at a time by Congress. The so-called debt ceiling instituted during the World War I is not a limit but a congressional grant of power to the Treasury to issue a certain amount of new debt, with discretion over time and terms. But once that new debt is exhausted, there is simply no authority in the executive branch to borrow more.


Why is the president openly mulling seizing power from Congress? Because Biden has, as usual, let the progressives who dominate his party box him into a corner from which the only exit is to flout the law.


It has long been the practice of presidents and Congresses of both parties to negotiate conditions before Congress raises the debt ceiling.  But after the showdown between congressional Republicans and President Obama in 2011, progressives decided that their party should henceforth refuse to negotiate and instead insist on principle on “clean” debt-ceiling raises, with no fallback position. The 2013 debt-ceiling fight reinforced their view that this was a workable strategy. Biden and Democratic leaders in Congress have thus talked themselves into Stalingrad-style “not one step backward” pronouncements against making even a penny of concessions.

Republicans have proven more flexible, passing a debt-ceiling increase through the House with enough attached that there is ample room to negotiate. Kevin McCarthy hasn’t publicly indicated what his bottom line is, but he plainly can’t get his caucus to sign a deal in which Republicans are supposed to get nothing and like it.


This can end only with one side blinking — either the Democrats will make concessions or the Republicans will fold — or with the government going into default for the first time in American history. Nobody wants that. Biden insists that a default would somehow be the fault of Republicans, but he could avoid it by signing the package they passed. He could propose his own counteroffer, but he hasn’t. The president is the one who hasn’t offered anything and is claiming he never will.

Both sides are playing a game of chicken with default, but Biden is the only one who is also threatening the constitutional order to get what he wants. If he goes down that road, it will have poisonous consequences, which Chip Roy has described to us as “open warfare” between the president and the House of Representatives.

When the Constitution and the 14th Amendment were written, if Congress refused to borrow more money, the government would just have to stop spending for a while until it could raise revenue. To the extent that the inability to borrow more money threatens an immediate default today, it is only because our system of budgeting, entitlement spending, debt, and deficits has been hopelessly broken by liberal spending policies. If even Democrats are now howling about fiscal Armageddon and threatening the Constitution over the consequences, perhaps it is time to start addressing the disease instead of just treating the symptoms.


ccp

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I was wondering if some of the Democrats complaining the deal is not good
is a ploy because it is good for them and want the Republicans to think they are mad when indeed this deal is better for them

big deal we got a 20 hr week Medicaid work requirement only for able bodied single men up to age 54 and who have no dependents

https://www.kff.org/medicaid/state-indicator/medicaid-enrollment-by-gender/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D
https://www.medicaid.gov/state-overviews/scorecard/who-enrolls-medicaid-chip/index.html

------

95 million enrolled in Medicaid [ :-o :-o :-o]
https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/analysis-of-recent-national-trends-in-medicaid-and-chip-enrollment/


https://www.prb.org/resources/majority-of-people-covered-by-medicaid-and-similar-programs-are-children-older-adults-or-disabled/

~ 82 % are disabled, elderly , children{<18yo)
institutionalized or already work part time or full time

so maybe ~ 16  to 18 % are single adults ?
  and some of those are female who are not asked to work.

Why are single women exempt from work requirement?

THIS IS SMALL POTATOES AS FAR AS A 'WIN' FOR REPUBLICANS
MORE SMOKE AND MIRRORS




ccp

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cradle to grave "free" money
« Reply #1421 on: June 15, 2023, 08:18:42 AM »
"THE END TO CHILD POVERTY ACT"

who could be against that ?

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/stimulus-proposal-could-americans-monthly-163115730.html

if the NATIONAL DEBT WAS A STOCK I WOULD PUT ALL MY MONEY INTO IT.

it only goes up.


DougMacG

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$5 Trillion in pandemic shutdown spending is hard to track
« Reply #1422 on: July 16, 2023, 08:03:15 AM »
Who knew?

https://justthenews.com/nation/states/center-square/report-finds-pandemic-spending-difficult-track-even-experts

I remember honest (liberal) business owner friends talking to each other about how to get the PPP money.

Our real world seems like a fictional caricature of what could go wrong with all Leftist governance. We aren't really just throwing around more and more trillions trillions like it's play money when we already "owe" more than we can imagine, are we?

FYI to the young people wanting "debt forgiveness", your share of the total debt just went up by WAY MORE than the ten grand of 'free money's you thought you were getting.

And now we find out the extended shutdowns did no good for public health.  Trillions wasted and hundreds of billions of that were lost in invited fraud.

15 days to stop the spread might be the worst joke of the century.  "15 days" lasted years, cost trillions, literally and didn't stop the spread.
« Last Edit: July 16, 2023, 08:12:06 AM by DougMacG »

Crafty_Dog

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Re: Government programs & regulations, spending, deficit, and budget process
« Reply #1423 on: July 16, 2023, 09:35:48 AM »
Good thing Manchin and Sinema joined the Reps to block the $5T Build Back Better!!!!!!!!!!!!

A point which should be made when Magoo claims credit for bringing inflation down.

ccp

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DougMacG

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Deficits and debt, Biden made it worse
« Reply #1425 on: July 18, 2023, 05:32:57 AM »
Is there anything wrong in this country where you can't say, Biden made it worse?

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/editorials/president-bidens-deficits-threaten-economic-doom

I wonder when, maybe 15 years ago, I was posting that if we would just act responsibility now we could grow our way out of this, even 10 trillion, maybe 20 trillion of debt with enough sustained, long term growth.  At 30 trillion with no end in sight, what can you say?  When do we want to start acting responsibly?

43 million among us are on food stamps, SNAP, free food.  Majority want even more people dependant on food stamps.
https://www.newsnationnow.com/the-hill/majority-of-voters-want-snap-increased-not-cut-poll/

What percentage are on government health care now, 100?

To paraphrase a great leader of past times, this isn't the way.
« Last Edit: July 18, 2023, 06:15:33 AM by DougMacG »

DougMacG

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Government monster loan to Ford
« Reply #1426 on: July 22, 2023, 09:08:32 PM »
Ford loses $5 Billion on EVs trying to please the benevolent totalitarian regimes and now gets a zillion dollar "loan" from same government, right as the line between free money and loan gets blurred.

Crony governmentism is a form of fascism, would someone please tell the voters these crooks work for that it's wrong.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/news/ford-just-got-a-loan-bigger-than-anything-seen-since-the-advent-of-the-auto-industry-here-s-what-the-company-is-spending-it-on/ar-AA1edjqC?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=92ed5726a8fd4b1f81a416a90acb3bc5&ei=13
« Last Edit: July 23, 2023, 04:58:53 AM by Crafty_Dog »

DougMacG

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« Last Edit: August 03, 2023, 08:36:23 AM by DougMacG »


DougMacG

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Re: $1.7T budget deficit?!? (third worst?)
« Reply #1429 on: August 08, 2023, 08:01:33 PM »
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/aug/8/cbo-says-federal-deficit-will-reach-17-trillion-ye/?utm_source=Boomtrain&utm_medium=subscriber&utm_campaign=evening&utm_term=evening&utm_content=evening&bt_ee=Xt8ABrQzbiXpPjRCfGEug9IVA3Yr5kUU5q3BIa9RHoV%2BYz0ZXefU5htyvOsWpNlR&bt_ts=1691530834000

And this: 
https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/credit-card-debt-hits-1-trillion-first-time-ever

It's like no one cares.

To state the obvious math on all the debt:
More debt means less net worth.  We are trillions poorer because of the debt. IN ONE YEAR.  And the runup in credit card debt is directly a result of the inflation from the trillions in excess government spending, still overspending by almost two trillon per year.  It's insanity.  More specifically, it's a form of mental illness like a cutter. Inflicting injury, self harm on yourself.  It isn't even the next generation anymore.  The damage is now.
https://www.npr.org/2010/02/10/123529829/cutting-elevated-from-symptom-to-mental-disorder

We know better but on it goes.  Hundreds of billions of dollars a month - in addition to all the taxes paid.
https://www.usdebtclock.org/

Almost no one cares.

Oh no, there's more:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/08/economy/401k-hardship-withdrawals/index.html
« Last Edit: August 08, 2023, 08:27:18 PM by DougMacG »

Crafty_Dog

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Re: Government programs & regulations, spending, deficit, and budget process
« Reply #1430 on: August 11, 2023, 08:57:44 AM »
I could swear I saw somewhere that interest on the debt is now 15% of revenues?!? 

Can we lay hands on any citation about this?

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Re: Government programs & regulations, spending, deficit, and budget process
« Reply #1431 on: August 11, 2023, 09:58:06 AM »
I could swear I saw somewhere that interest on the debt is now 15% of revenues?!? 

Can we lay hands on any citation about this?

I can't find that. The government doesn't publish it that way. I like that you have it as a percentage of revenues rather than a percentage of spending. One site says interest is 11% of budget. We are overspending our revenues by about 30%. That makes your number of 15% about right, but it is going to go up rapidly as we stagnate the economy, continue the massive deficits, and watch interest rates go up and up on new debt.

Scary stuff. I know of about two people who care, you and me.  ccp too I'm sure, but that's still only makes three.

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Re: Government programs & regulations, spending, deficit, and budget process
« Reply #1432 on: August 11, 2023, 12:04:41 PM »
".ccp too I'm sure, but that's still only makes three."


Agree !

Crafty_Dog

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Re: Government programs & regulations, spending, deficit, and budget process
« Reply #1433 on: August 11, 2023, 12:49:01 PM »


"One site says interest is 11% of budget."

Link?

"We are overspending our revenues by about 30%."

Link?

"That makes your number of 15% about right"

IIRC the piece that I saw but did not have the time to capture also noted that only quite recently this number was quite a bit smaller.

I was under the impression that most of our debt was long term?  Thus, a rapid increase in interest payments as a result of the recent Fed action (in constant dollars interest rates still are essentially zero, yes?) caught me by surprise.

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Re: Government programs & regulations, spending, deficit, and budget process
« Reply #1434 on: August 13, 2023, 11:53:52 PM »
"Three-quarters of Treasurys must be rolled over within five years."

  - Monday WSJ
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-scary-math-behind-the-worlds-safest-assets-a22069f9
« Last Edit: August 14, 2023, 07:11:33 AM by DougMacG »

Crafty_Dog

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Re: Government programs & regulations, spending, deficit, and budget process
« Reply #1435 on: August 14, 2023, 04:30:24 AM »
UH OH , , ,

DougMacG

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Debt interest payments as % of spending
« Reply #1436 on: August 14, 2023, 07:56:47 AM »
Coming back with links for recent posts.

Interest costs represented about 8 percent of total federal outlays in 2022. By 2033, that share will rise to 14 percent and will exceed programs such as defense and Medicaid. At that point, interest payments would be twice the amount the federal government spends on income security programs.

https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2023/02/interest-costs-on-the-national-debt-are-on-track-to-reach-a-record-high#:~:text=Interest%20costs%20represented%20about%208,spends%20on%20income%20security%20programs.
« Last Edit: August 14, 2023, 08:00:29 AM by Crafty_Dog »

ccp

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Re: Government programs & regulations, spending, deficit, and budget process
« Reply #1437 on: August 14, 2023, 10:36:33 AM »
so what Scott Grannis says no big deal
 :roll:

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Re: Government programs & regulations, spending, deficit, and budget process
« Reply #1438 on: August 14, 2023, 11:01:15 AM »
usdebtclock.org
GDP = 27.5 T
Federal debt = 33 T
debt per taxpayer is more than a quarter million dollars.
Interest expense now = 658 Billion

 * 20% of debt is owned by government.  How you analyze net debt is up to you, but it is money taken from the private sector and financing more government, trillions and trillions not available for private investment.

Federal revenues = 4.6 T
(This is the budget.  Everything else is over budget.)

Federal spending = 6.45 T
Deficits = 1.85 T
We are overspending an amount 40% over revenues!!
(Can't tax more.  We are at a point where higher tax rates DON'T bring in more money, proven by both Obama and Biden.)

Interest expense now is 14.3% of revenues. $658 billion / 4.6 trillion.
Link:  usdebtclock.org
Poised to triple.

Total government spending, federal, state and local is 37% of the economy. The private sector is just 63% of the economy.

(Doug) With rounding and out of control governance, interest expense is potentially on target to triple in 5 years.  Interest rates on Treasuries as recently as the Trump years rounded to 1%.  Now they are above 4% headed to at least 5% and worse.  3/4ths of existing debt will be rolled over in the next 5 years, plus we are adding new debt at a rate that easily rounds to 2 trillion per year, 10 trillion more in 5 years. 658 Billion interest expense at present becomes 2.2 Trillion dollars interest expense per year in 5 years in this scenario. That is roughly half of current tax revenues.

All of this is happening in what some call relatively good economic times, low unemployment rate for example. What happens if things turn downward?
« Last Edit: August 14, 2023, 11:43:47 AM by DougMacG »

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Re: Government programs & regulations, spending, deficit, and budget process
« Reply #1439 on: August 14, 2023, 11:32:10 AM »
so what Scott Grannis says no big deal
 :roll:

Scott uses 'net debt', so we only owe 80% of 33 trillion.  (What's the emoji for that?)

As recently as 2016 or even 2020 pre-covid I argued that if we got our act together now we could grow our way out of this. 

Interest rates going from 1.5% to 4.5% is not a 3% move it's a three-fold move; the same amount of debt cost three times as much to service. But we don't have the same amount of debt. We are hell-bent on adding 10 trillion every 5 years or is that rate going to increase? Meanwhile our growth rate approaches zero, and our political discussions are about jailing the challenger rather than reforming the system.
« Last Edit: August 14, 2023, 11:52:32 AM by DougMacG »

DougMacG

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Re: Government programs & regulations, spending, deficit, and budget process
« Reply #1440 on: August 14, 2023, 11:49:30 AM »
Scott grannis also talks about the 'area under the curve', speaking of calculus.

If you chart a line projecting out the long-term growth rate of the US economy and then draw the line where the economy underperforms under the policies of these jackasses, you can see the trillions and trillions of dollars of economic activity that never occurred and never got taxed on.

They pass thousands of burdensome regulations and hundreds of taxes and stagnate our economy and then tell us that economic growth isn't really possible anymore. Well why isn't it?

If you wanted to get the debt under control and not have it take over our entire budget and entire economy you would have to do a couple of simple things. Quit deficit spending and grow the economy.

But no. Nobody gives a bleep.

Crafty_Dog

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Re: Government programs & regulations, spending, deficit, and budget process
« Reply #1441 on: August 14, 2023, 04:03:26 PM »
Not really fair to describe Scott as saying "No big deal".  My understanding is that he consistently looks at debt as part of a ratio.

Let me see if I can get him to comment , , ,

Crafty_Dog

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Re: Government programs & regulations, spending, deficit, and budget process
« Reply #1442 on: August 26, 2023, 04:33:15 PM »
A talking head on FOX today (WSJ Report show?) cited as fact that next year interest payments would be greater than military budget

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Re: Government programs & regulations, spending, deficit, and budget process
« Reply #1443 on: August 26, 2023, 07:32:28 PM »
A talking head on FOX today (WSJ Report show?) cited as fact that next year interest payments would be greater than military budget

Yes.  Soon after that, twice the military budget. Of course, depending on the cost of the world wars to come. After that, interest costs will be more than total revenues, on this trend.  Then , what?  Where does this end?  It ends, of course, with the largest financial collapse since humans have roamed the planet. I get the math, I just don't get why no one (besides us) gives a rip.

The deficit is 40% above revenues.  I've been telling that to people who will listen..  The reaction I get is no more than a look that says, interesting trivia, not a hint of okay outrage.

It's like there is a hurricane coming and there is a switch where you could just turn it off before it comes but everyone is too busy or not interested.
« Last Edit: August 27, 2023, 05:31:01 AM by DougMacG »

Crafty_Dog

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Re: Government programs & regulations, spending, deficit, and budget process
« Reply #1444 on: August 27, 2023, 06:10:39 AM »
"The deficit is 40% above revenues."

Just want to double check here:

Is it the DEFICIT or SPENDING that is 40% above revenues?

DougMacG

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Re: Government programs & regulations, spending, deficit, and budget process
« Reply #1445 on: August 27, 2023, 08:17:01 AM »
"The deficit is 40% above revenues."

Just want to double check here:

Is it the DEFICIT or SPENDING that is 40% above revenues?

Yes, it has to be worded correctly to be true.  Deficit IS the excess of spending over revenues.

Deficit is (currently running at) 1.85 T
Revenues are 4.6 T
1.85 T / 4.6 T equals 40.22%
Source US debt clock.org
Yes we are spending 40% more than we take in.

40% is the ratio of current deficit to current revenues (unless someone else has better numbers).
 
Revenue is the correct baseline (denominator), not spending. Total revenue is the amount we can spend at zero deficit.

Interestingly, revenues won't increase when we raise tax rates further, and they didn't decrease when we lowered them (1926, 1963, 1983, 1996, 2005, 2018).

Must spend less.
« Last Edit: August 27, 2023, 07:22:53 PM by DougMacG »

ccp

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Debt big threat
« Reply #1446 on: August 27, 2023, 10:26:18 AM »
My personal FWIW biggest threats to the US

Tied for #1 - China and debt and the entitlement programs such as Medicare Soc Sec not being financially sound
economists can keep stating how it is of no big concern, but it keeps increasing
we do not have any real reserve to tap if we are faced with another crises such as 2008, corona , war, etc.

#3 - Democrat party policies

# 4 - Orwellian tech

notice Climate Change is not on the list

it is in IMHO something we do need to pay attention to while gradually migrate to alternate souces of energy (fussion , nuclear quantum) but not an emergency


DougMacG

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WashPost: Deficit to double in 1 year (interest rate on debt to triple)
« Reply #1448 on: September 05, 2023, 11:20:41 AM »
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/09/03/us-debt-deficit-rises-interest-rate/

No f*cking clue what's causing it. 

You might look at the money and politics of the owner and the paper and find the problem.

IT'S THE SPENDING STUPID.

We have HOW LONG to turn this around?

Zero days and zero minutes.  Maybe somebody could put some urgency on this.

ccp

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Re: Government programs & regulations, spending, deficit, and budget process
« Reply #1449 on: September 05, 2023, 11:41:26 AM »
can't read it but can assume

author plays dumb to the spending.

did he recommend we confiscate all the shares of Amazon Bezos owns to pay down the debt by 1/50 th of one percent?

the rich need to pay their fair share -  :wink: