10-02-2023, 02:22 PM
(10-02-2023, 08:42 AM)Belsnickel Wrote: I can see some room for government cuts to expenses. When you look through the history of the US, the sweet spot seems to be about 20% of GDP being federal net outlays. We are lower than many of what people consider our peer nations, but one of our biggest issues is that we haven't adjusted this appropriately based on economic trends. We could, and are, working to decrease the percentage in current times based on the current economic activities, but we need to also work on increasing government revenues if we are ever going to dig ourselves out of this hole.
The problem is that politicians of both parties refuse to address the elephant in the room....the budget of the DOD. Billions of dollars are wasted in their budget, fraud, cost overruns, outdated or bad weapons systems, and extraneous bases. No one wants to be the politician that causes a defense contractor to lose a federal contract or hold them responsible for their costs. No one wants to look weak on defense so their budget gets increased year after year.
Congress's unwillingness to address outdated technology, true fraud control within the various departments also adds billions to the budget and loss of manpower hours
They want to fix the entire budget from the smallest segments which are the programs that benefit Americans directly.
I know that my financial planner would tell me, that when faced with a deficit like that, it has to be fixed in a 2 pronged attack...cut expenses and add revenue. We have had over 40 years of trying to make the Republicans' "trickle-down economy" work and what we've learned is that it doesn't. Time to rollback some of those tax cuts
Fueled by the pursuit of greatness.
