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It's a strategy, called Starve the Beast. The idea is to collect taxes, which then forces the current government to cut expenditures. The current Trump administ

It's a strategy, called Starve the Beast. The idea is to collect taxes, which then forces the current government to cut expenditures. The current Trump administration is no difference, this is what all the talk about government bloat is about. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast It's pretty clever in its cruelty: Once you have cut taxes, it essentially doesn't matter which party wins the next election: The have to gut expenditures anyway.

maleldil 2y ago
> Once you have cut taxes, it essentially doesn't matter which party wins the next election: The have to gut expenditures anyway See the current Labour government in the UK, who would very much like to spend money on government initiatives but can't because the Tories made sure there was nothing left.
mrguyorama 2y ago
The worst part about it is we already have a playbook to actually reduce the US debt, which we did very well in the 90s. Elect US senators and Representatives to go to the floor and debate about individual programs on CSPAN so people can actually hear arguments about it. This is why, for example, the ISS didn't get cut, but the SSC did. Both were huge science programs that cost tens of billions of dollars and Clinton's administration explicitly wanted to keep both programs but the voting public, through senators and house reps, including democrat members of both forced them to pick only one.
- dragonwriter 2y ago
  > The worst part about it is we already have a playbook to actually reduce the US debt, which we did very well in the 90s. Uh, we didn't. Even in the “balanced budget” years 1998-2001, the debt increased. Unless you mean reducing the debt to GDP ratio, which we did in parts of the 1990s, and some periods since, but that's not much explained by the spending control methods you discuss, but by growing the economy.
  - dllthomas 2y ago
    I thought we actually ran a surplus for a year or two? My impression is the "how", though, was "take in more revenue than expected because of the tech bubble", which isn't exactly a "how" we could or should replicate.
    - dragonwriter 2y ago
      > I thought we actually ran a surplus for a year or two? Four; federal fiscal years 1998-2001, had a federal surplus, per OMB figures: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFSD https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFSD But, through that entire period (almost every quarter, and definitely every year) the federal debt still increased: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEBTN https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEBTN So, not really a demonstrated playbook to reduce the debt. OTOH, for a longer period in the 1990 (starting about 1995), in the last half of the long and strong 1990s expansion, the arguably more important debt: GDP ratio was going down. The 2010s might have seen something similar -- it had roughly, though more noisily than in the 1990s, plateaud before the Trump tax cuts, and might have dropped even with similar spending patterns without them. But, yeah, the secret there is largely strong economic expansion, though you can still screw it up on the fiscal policy side.
  - mrguyorama 2y ago
    People want the US debt number to at the very least, stop going up. I'm not in any hurry to see the debt go to zero this decade, but some people insist it's necessary (I don't agree) and they got enough sway to own our country this political cycle. I said we have a playbook to reduce the US debt. A more correct statement would have been "We already have a playbook to audit and reduce US government spending". It is NOT done by giving one of the least competent ketamine junkies in front of a computer with a list of budget item names and tweeting the ones he finds most offensive. Air that shit in congress where it can face PUBLIC scrutiny and debate, not in a forum literally controlled by the guy doing it. That's how we got rid of the unfortunate boondoggle SSC and kept the better ISS. The fed reports a doubling of tax receipts from 1990 to 2000. There has been at least another doubling since then. Because Trump is a corrupt grifter and a shill for certain corps, he has already floated a plan to cut more taxes. Trump supporters do not want to bring taxes back up on companies apparently. They'd rather keep seeing their own taxes go up. So they're going to cut stuff. Probably good stuff, probably important stuff. I'm saying there is a demonstrated productive way to cut stuff in the US system while limiting the pain and cutting of actually important stuff and that's what they would be doing if they actually wanted to fix any problem Also I'm pretty sure the GAO has a standing list of things to do. That would also be better than this.

maleldil 2y ago

> Once you have cut taxes, it essentially doesn't matter which party wins the next election: The have to gut expenditures anyway See the current Labour government in the UK, who would very much like to spend money on government initiatives but can't because the Tories made sure there was nothing left.

mrguyorama 2y ago

The worst part about it is we already have a playbook to actually reduce the US debt, which we did very well in the 90s. Elect US senators and Representatives to go to the floor and debate about individual programs on CSPAN so people can actually hear arguments about it. This is why, for example, the ISS didn't get cut, but the SSC did. Both were huge science programs that cost tens of billions of dollars and Clinton's administration explicitly wanted to keep both programs but the voting public, through senators and house reps, including democrat members of both forced them to pick only one.

dragonwriter 2y ago
> The worst part about it is we already have a playbook to actually reduce the US debt, which we did very well in the 90s. Uh, we didn't. Even in the “balanced budget” years 1998-2001, the debt increased. Unless you mean reducing the debt to GDP ratio, which we did in parts of the 1990s, and some periods since, but that's not much explained by the spending control methods you discuss, but by growing the economy.
- dllthomas 2y ago
  I thought we actually ran a surplus for a year or two? My impression is the "how", though, was "take in more revenue than expected because of the tech bubble", which isn't exactly a "how" we could or should replicate.
  - dragonwriter 2y ago
    > I thought we actually ran a surplus for a year or two? Four; federal fiscal years 1998-2001, had a federal surplus, per OMB figures: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFSD https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFSD But, through that entire period (almost every quarter, and definitely every year) the federal debt still increased: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEBTN https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEBTN So, not really a demonstrated playbook to reduce the debt. OTOH, for a longer period in the 1990 (starting about 1995), in the last half of the long and strong 1990s expansion, the arguably more important debt: GDP ratio was going down. The 2010s might have seen something similar -- it had roughly, though more noisily than in the 1990s, plateaud before the Trump tax cuts, and might have dropped even with similar spending patterns without them. But, yeah, the secret there is largely strong economic expansion, though you can still screw it up on the fiscal policy side.
- mrguyorama 2y ago
  People want the US debt number to at the very least, stop going up. I'm not in any hurry to see the debt go to zero this decade, but some people insist it's necessary (I don't agree) and they got enough sway to own our country this political cycle. I said we have a playbook to reduce the US debt. A more correct statement would have been "We already have a playbook to audit and reduce US government spending". It is NOT done by giving one of the least competent ketamine junkies in front of a computer with a list of budget item names and tweeting the ones he finds most offensive. Air that shit in congress where it can face PUBLIC scrutiny and debate, not in a forum literally controlled by the guy doing it. That's how we got rid of the unfortunate boondoggle SSC and kept the better ISS. The fed reports a doubling of tax receipts from 1990 to 2000. There has been at least another doubling since then. Because Trump is a corrupt grifter and a shill for certain corps, he has already floated a plan to cut more taxes. Trump supporters do not want to bring taxes back up on companies apparently. They'd rather keep seeing their own taxes go up. So they're going to cut stuff. Probably good stuff, probably important stuff. I'm saying there is a demonstrated productive way to cut stuff in the US system while limiting the pain and cutting of actually important stuff and that's what they would be doing if they actually wanted to fix any problem Also I'm pretty sure the GAO has a standing list of things to do. That would also be better than this.