It's more than SS and Medicare being talked about here. No where do I hear any mention about all the money being given away to foreign interests,
Because we really don't give that much.
Granted, we give more to other nations than other nations themselves give, but it's still very small relative to other spending.
A quick search showed this:
In reality, foreign assistance typically makes up less than 1% of the trillions of dollars in federal spending. Still, the U.S. gives more money in foreign aid in total dollars than any other country in the world, distributing more than $640 billion globally from 2012 through 2022.
While $640 billion IS a lot of money, it is spread out over ten years.
Btw, I don't think that includes money spent recently on Ukraine.
....and that itself exceeds all other foreign aid. If you want to cut something, THAT is what you'd cut first.
no where do I hear anything about actually working together.
Trump tried that, but was viciously fought on everything.
One thing I do hear is grassbag playing the blame game
What did he say that isn't true?
The gov has a spending problem. We can't tax our way out of this mess.
Gov tax revenue over the past 80 years has averaged between 16 and 18 percent of gdp, no matter what the tax rates were.
....and no matter which party was in charge, gdp has only averaged about 2.7% growth over that same period.
Yet federal spending has far exceeded 2.7% of gdp over those same 80 years.
Look at this chart showing gov spending as a percent of gdp.
Graph and download economic data for Federal Net Outlays as Percent of Gross Domestic Product (FYONGDA188S) from 1929 to 2023 about outlays, federal, Net, GDP, and USA.
fred.stlouisfed.org
When you were working, if your expenses were rising three or four times as fast as your increases in income, and you were making up the difference with yearly increases in your debt load, would you have considered it as being indefinately sustainable?
Grassley is correct. It is time for an adult conversation, but the dems don't want to even talk about cutting spending. All they want to do is take more money from people.
....but that has been shown to not work, because no matter the tax rates, the gov consistently collects 17% of gdp in taxes.
The ONLY way to fix any of it, is to cut spending. If spending isn't cut, SS and medicare WILL be in trouble and end up having to be cut.
Why? Because those are "pay as you go" programs. If the surplus for those programs are allowed to run out, what other choice will there be?
The money collected from current workers simply isn't enough to make the promised payments to recipients of those programs.
Can you make payments that you are lacking the funds to pay?
Neither can the government.
....at least not without printing the money with which to do it.
....but that'll fuel inflation, and that's no good either. All that does is dilute the value of already existing money.
So again, what is wrong with what Grassley stated? We DO need an adult conversation on a national level, about our govs spending problem.