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Actual leading drivers of federal spending: - Social Security: 21% - Medicare: 15% - Defense: 14% - Interest: 13% The administration has at points said soc

by abeppu 2y ago

Actual leading drivers of federal spending: - Social Security: 21% - Medicare: 15% - Defense: 14% - Interest: 13% The administration has at points said social security and medicare won't be touched, no one's been talking seriously about defense spending cuts, and we understand there to be giant risks with screwing around with paying interest. So almost 2/3 of our 6.8T budget is off limits. The 10B for the whole NSF is like < 0.15%. I'd love us to have a serious conversation about addressing the debt, but that can't start with asking for tax cuts and protecting existing entitlement benefits under their exact current terms. https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/federal-spending/#spending-categories https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...

jghn 2y ago
Further: My understanding has always been that "defense" is quite a bit larger than reported as there are a lot of things that are really in the name of "defense" that aren't categorized that way in the budget.
throw0101c 2y ago
> […] and we understand there to be giant risks with screwing around with paying interest. Yeah… maybe: > "We're even looking at Treasuries," Trump said. "There could be a problem - you've been reading about that, with Treasuries and that could be an interesting problem." > He added: "It could be that a lot of those things don't count. In other words, that some of that stuff that we're finding is very fraudulent, therefore maybe we have less debt than we thought." > It was not clear whether Trump was referring to debt service or other government payments made by the Treasury Department. * https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/trump-says-us-might-have-less-debt-than-thought-2025-02-09/ https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/trump-says-us-might-have-...
tzs 2y ago
> The administration has at points said social security and medicare won't be touched That's also in the 2024 Republican party platform: "FIGHT FOR AND PROTECT SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE WITH NO CUTS, INCLUDING NO CHANGES TO THE RETIREMENT AGE". (Shouting copied from the source). There are however a couple reasons to doubt the sincerity of that. First the Republican Study Committee, which around 80% of House Republicans belong to, keeps proposing that the retirement age be raised. Second, if nothing is done to either cut benefits or raise revenue or both the Social Security trust fund runs out of money around 2035. Around 20% of benefits are paid out of the trust fund. If that is allowed to happen then the only way to not cut benefits would be for Congress and the President to make that up out of the general budget. The only thing Republicans have said along the lines of increasing SS revenue is that their policies will lead to so much economic growth that tax revenue, including the payroll taxes for SS, will go way up and that will be enough to avert the trust fund's insolvency. Meanwhile, many of their proposed tax cuts will shorten the time to insolvency. The proposal to eliminate taxes on tips and to eliminate taxes on SS for retirees with high non-SS income will move the insolvency up by up to a couple years or so. Anyway, I'm sure that if the trust fund is allowed to become insolvent those who let that happen will say that since they did not actively cut benefits they did not violate the party platform. The Democrats also have repeatedly introduced bills to address the trust fund, which concentrate on raising its revenue. The main method in these bills is to raise the cap on income subject to the payroll tax. Right now you pay 6.2% on the first $176100 (in 2025) of your pay. The Democrat proposals are to include some income above that cap in payroll tax. I believe there have been proposals to get rid of that cap, to raise the cap, or to put a cap on that cap (e.g., payroll tax on first $176100, then no payroll tax from there to $400k, then payroll tax again on income above $400k). A poll of a proposal that would do the cap on the cap thing (with the numbers given above), gradually raise the payroll tax from 6.2% to 7.2%, make the annual COL adjustment more accurately reflect inflation, and a few other things which would result in there being a small surplus got overwhelming support from voters [1] (here's the PDF with the detailed results) [2]. Overall support is 82%. This doesn't vary much by education level or income level or age. By party affiliation support is 88% for Democrats, 82% for independents, and 74% for Republicans. Note: the above results are for a proposed package that includes several things. The poll also looked at the individual things in isolation and at variants of them. [1] https://www.aarp.org/social-security/survey-raising-taxes/ https://www.aarp.org/social-security/survey-raising-taxes/ [2] https://www.nasi.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/NASI_SocialSecurityat90.pdf https://www.nasi.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/NASI_SocialS...
blindriver 2y ago
You can't say you're serious about cutting debt and say "$10 billion is too small to care about!"
abeppu 2y ago
Nvm apparently the defense cuts are coming. I gotta wonder how that's gonna go over with some of the base. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/02/19/trump-pentagon-budget-cuts https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/02/19/...

by abeppu 2y ago

jghn 2y ago

Further: My understanding has always been that "defense" is quite a bit larger than reported as there are a lot of things that are really in the name of "defense" that aren't categorized that way in the budget.

throw0101c 2y ago

> […] and we understand there to be giant risks with screwing around with paying interest. Yeah… maybe: > "We're even looking at Treasuries," Trump said. "There could be a problem - you've been reading about that, with Treasuries and that could be an interesting problem." > He added: "It could be that a lot of those things don't count. In other words, that some of that stuff that we're finding is very fraudulent, therefore maybe we have less debt than we thought." > It was not clear whether Trump was referring to debt service or other government payments made by the Treasury Department. * https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/trump-says-us-might-have-less-debt-than-thought-2025-02-09/ https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/trump-says-us-might-have-...

tzs 2y ago

> The administration has at points said social security and medicare won't be touched That's also in the 2024 Republican party platform: "FIGHT FOR AND PROTECT SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE WITH NO CUTS, INCLUDING NO CHANGES TO THE RETIREMENT AGE". (Shouting copied from the source). There are however a couple reasons to doubt the sincerity of that. First the Republican Study Committee, which around 80% of House Republicans belong to, keeps proposing that the retirement age be raised. Second, if nothing is done to either cut benefits or raise revenue or both the Social Security trust fund runs out of money around 2035. Around 20% of benefits are paid out of the trust fund. If that is allowed to happen then the only way to not cut benefits would be for Congress and the President to make that up out of the general budget. The only thing Republicans have said along the lines of increasing SS revenue is that their policies will lead to so much economic growth that tax revenue, including the payroll taxes for SS, will go way up and that will be enough to avert the trust fund's insolvency. Meanwhile, many of their proposed tax cuts will shorten the time to insolvency. The proposal to eliminate taxes on tips and to eliminate taxes on SS for retirees with high non-SS income will move the insolvency up by up to a couple years or so. Anyway, I'm sure that if the trust fund is allowed to become insolvent those who let that happen will say that since they did not actively cut benefits they did not violate the party platform. The Democrats also have repeatedly introduced bills to address the trust fund, which concentrate on raising its revenue. The main method in these bills is to raise the cap on income subject to the payroll tax. Right now you pay 6.2% on the first $176100 (in 2025) of your pay. The Democrat proposals are to include some income above that cap in payroll tax. I believe there have been proposals to get rid of that cap, to raise the cap, or to put a cap on that cap (e.g., payroll tax on first $176100, then no payroll tax from there to $400k, then payroll tax again on income above $400k). A poll of a proposal that would do the cap on the cap thing (with the numbers given above), gradually raise the payroll tax from 6.2% to 7.2%, make the annual COL adjustment more accurately reflect inflation, and a few other things which would result in there being a small surplus got overwhelming support from voters [1] (here's the PDF with the detailed results) [2]. Overall support is 82%. This doesn't vary much by education level or income level or age. By party affiliation support is 88% for Democrats, 82% for independents, and 74% for Republicans. Note: the above results are for a proposed package that includes several things. The poll also looked at the individual things in isolation and at variants of them. [1] https://www.aarp.org/social-security/survey-raising-taxes/ https://www.aarp.org/social-security/survey-raising-taxes/ [2] https://www.nasi.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/NASI_SocialSecurityat90.pdf https://www.nasi.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/NASI_SocialS...

blindriver 2y ago

You can't say you're serious about cutting debt and say "$10 billion is too small to care about!"

abeppu 2y ago

Nvm apparently the defense cuts are coming. I gotta wonder how that's gonna go over with some of the base. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/02/19/trump-pentagon-budget-cuts https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/02/19/...