The scale of the debt crisis.

[candycorn]

No kidding, how much fraud is there in Minnesota.

Biden found quite a bit and like 50 people were indicted.

https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/us-attorney-announces-federal-charges-against-47-defendants-250-million-feeding-our-future

Back in the day when we had sensible responsible governance.

How much will be in California....dumbass.

DOGE didn't find any? That may be your answer.

If you find some...by all means prosecute the fraudsters. So far DOGE hasn't found much, have they dick breath?

 

[Anomalism]

A few thoughts

1. Zero based budgeting every 10 years to coincide with the midterm elections. 2030, 2040, 2050, etc.... No more "Interior got $18B last year so they get $18.2B this year...."
   • Every department submits a budget broken down into 5% of their total request. In other words, if Interior is going to request a $100M budget (for the sake of argument), they don't say, "Give us $100M and we will decide how to spend it.".
2. If it can't be broken down (Lets say for this new silly battle ship the blob wants to build), the bill is considered separately outside of the budget. Meaning that If our budget is $1T and theoretically balanced, any expenditure on this other track is out in the open. Representative Jane Doe has to have her name as the sponsor and whomever votes for it has to vote out in the open to support it. No more sacred cows acting as a fig-leaf for pork.
   • Put another way...You don't have a $500B defense bill. You have a budget that pays the troops, buys tanks bullets, bazookas, etc... But if the blob wants to build a separate battleship, it is voted on by itself. Representatives (and the President in this case) can't say, "I had to vote for the troops to get paid and the battleship was part of that bill...." Nope...it's a separate charge and you either voted for deficit spending or not.
3. Let the lawmakers get back to pork projects. If you want support to get rid of one of the 444 National Park units and save long term costs (I'm looking at you Harry S. Truman National Historic Site), you may have to approve the clean up of a wetland in Connecticut or a bridge in Montana. Short term costs; long term gain. Missouri can do a great job maintaining Truman's historical park if they want.

Just some ideas.

I like how you're thinking, and it brings me to another thought I've posted about. Riders on bills are insidious. They are used to make the exact type of rock and hard place situations you mentioned, and both sides do this in their own way.

Bills should be more straightforward and as advertised. These riders hidden within a million words need to go.

 

[Anomalism]

When we go to high school we are not taught any of this. And what you typed is more complicated and difficult to understand. I know little of this. What is worse is most people know nothing of this. And it exists. And elites are rich from it, and this is centuries in the making. Winners and losers are made from whims. Massive world debts exist and never will be paid off. So logically there are people who will never live well.

It is complicated. Imagine trying to explain it to a 16 year old. We could do better though, definitely.

 

[tyroneweaver]

I want to talk about the federal debt because I think most people fundamentally misunderstand the scale of the problem we're facing.

First, let's clarify basic terms that many people confuse. The federal deficit is how much more we spend than we take in each year. The national debt is the total accumulated amount we owe from all previous years combined. For fiscal year 2025, our deficit was approximately $1.8 trillion. Our total national debt is now over $36 trillion. Every year we run a deficit, it adds to that total debt, and we're now paying over $1 trillion annually just in interest on money we've already borrowed.

Here's the reality about military spending. Even the most dramatic cuts wouldn't solve this problem. If we completely withdrew from Europe and Asia, closed all 750+ overseas bases, and dramatically reduced our military presence globally, we might realistically save around $500 billion annually. That sounds enormous, and it is, but it would only reduce our annual deficit by roughly 25-30%. We'd still be running a deficit of $1.2-1.4 trillion every single year.

It gets worse. If you completely eliminated the military, no Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, no defense budget whatsoever, we'd still have an annual deficit of approximately $900 billion. Think about that. The thing politicians argue about most could be entirely zeroed out and we'd still be adding nearly a trillion dollars to the national debt every year.

The structural problem is this. Total federal spending is roughly $6.8 trillion while revenue is only about $5 trillion. Just three categories, Social Security ($1.5T), Medicare/Medicaid ($1.6T), and interest on existing debt ($1T), consume nearly $4 trillion alone. That's more than our entire tax revenue before we spend a single dollar on defense, infrastructure, education, or anything else.

Here's what many people really don't understand about who we owe. The debt isn't primarily held by China or foreign adversaries. Foreign holders own about 23.5% of our debt, with China holding just 2.2% of the total. The vast majority is owned by domestic interests such as the Federal Reserve, American mutual funds and pension funds, banks, insurance companies, state and local governments, and Social Security trust funds. When we pay that $1+ trillion in annual interest, we're mostly transferring money from taxpayers to American asset holders, pension funds, 401ks, IRAs, and financial institutions.

This creates an impossible trap. We can't simply default on this debt. US Treasury bonds are the foundation of global finance, considered the world's safest asset. Every interest rate globally is priced off Treasury rates. A US default would trigger immediate economic apocalypse: pension funds would collapse, retirement accounts would evaporate, the dollar would lose reserve currency status, and the 2008 financial crisis would look mild by comparison. Defaulting to stick it to monied interests would devastate ordinary Americans whose retirement savings are in these "safe" investments.

The intergenerational injustice is profound. We're running up massive debts for current consumption and leaving the bill to future generations. By the time our great-grandchildren inherit this debt in 2125, it will be so woven into the financial system that they can't refuse to pay it without destroying their own economy. They'll be trapped, the debt too large to realistically pay off, but too catastrophic to default on. We're essentially robbing our descendants, and they'll have no choice but to service obligations created by our spending decisions.

This isn't a problem that can be solved by cutting any single area of spending or making any one policy change. It's structural and requires either massive entitlement reform, significant tax increases, or realistically both. These are political third rails that neither party wants to seriously address. The longer we wait, the deeper the hole gets and the more limited our options become.

What are your thoughts on realistic solutions? Or is this problem already beyond the point where democratic politics can address it?

if we're going to just print money, why borrow against it. then they have to pay interest on the borrowing

 

[candycorn]

I like how you're thinking, and it brings me to another thought I've posted about. Riders on bills are insidious. They are used to make the exact type of rock and hard place situations you mentioned, and both sides do this in their own way.

Bills should be more straightforward and as advertised. These riders hidden within a million words need to go.

Thats a good idea.

My goal is to either embarrass the crap out of lawmakers who complain about government spending then turn around and approve these expenditures...or (better) have them explain how it benefits you. Because I believe it does. USAID for example, purchased billions of farm products and it didn't directly feed a single American. What it did was keep farmers employed, kept farming communities solvent, improve American standing in nations receiving the aid so they would buy American tractors, computers, and other exports. When the blob shuttered USAID...the next step was the bail-outs of the farmers. The taxpayers are still paying except we're getting zero benefit. Those who disagree can Argue the opposite all they wish but they're simply ignorant of the reality of the situation. I think lawmakers will have a hard time selling the public on the Truman historical park. Not to pick on Harry but some things need to be tossed overboard. There are thousands of programs like this. Big ticket things like these silly littoral destroyers...small ticket items like the NEA (take it in-house).... Do we still need to stress wearing the seat belts at the federal level????

At some point though, a fierce middle class tax federal increase will have to happen. What I recommend is "pumping the brakes" when we finally get to the point to where we accept the obvious. By that I mean;

1. Pick a 10 year period--lets say it starts in 2030.
2. Every other year cut tax returns by 20%. If someone was supposed to get $500 back, they only get $400. Sorry.
3. If your birth year ends in an even number, 2030, 2032, 2034, 2036, and 2038...you get less back.
4. If your birth year ends in an odd number, you feel the bite in 2031, 2033, 2035, 2037, and 2039

Couple spending cuts with serious revenue enhancements and we can at least get the ball back in the park.

 

[leftwinger]

No kidding, how much fraud is there in Minnesota. How much will be in California....dumbass.

The GOVT itself (GAO) estimates fraud at ($0.5T-$1.5T? or more).

Candyporn is lying. DOGE found plenty (estimate 10%-20%). Congress wont listen, they won't stop the fraud and they will not implement the big cuts required. //

 

[Anomalism]

Thats a good idea.

My goal is to either embarrass the crap out of lawmakers who complain about government spending then turn around and approve these expenditures...or (better) have them explain how it benefits you. Because I believe it does. USAID for example, purchased billions of farm products and it didn't directly feed a single American. What it did was keep farmers employed, kept farming communities solvent, improve American standing in nations receiving the aid so they would buy American tractors, computers, and other exports. When the blob shuttered USAID...the next step was the bail-outs of the farmers. The taxpayers are still paying except we're getting zero benefit. Those who disagree can Argue the opposite all they wish but they're simply ignorant of the reality of the situation. I think lawmakers will have a hard time selling the public on the Truman historical park. Not to pick on Harry but some things need to be tossed overboard. There are thousands of programs like this. Big ticket things like these silly littoral destroyers...small ticket items like the NEA (take it in-house).... Do we still need to stress wearing the seat belts at the federal level????

At some point though, a fierce middle class tax federal increase will have to happen. What I recommend is "pumping the brakes" when we finally get to the point to where we accept the obvious. By that I mean;

1. Pick a 10 year period--lets say it starts in 2030.
2. Every other year cut tax returns by 20%. If someone was supposed to get $500 back, they only get $400. Sorry.
3. If your birth year ends in an even number, 2030, 2032, 2034, 2036, and 2038...you get less back.
4. If your birth year ends in an odd number, you feel the bite in 2031, 2033, 2035, 2037, and 2039

Couple spending cuts with serious revenue enhancements and we can at least get the ball back in the park.

Your USAID point is fair in my opinion. Most people see foreign aid and think we're just giving money away, when in reality programs like that are often disguised industrial policy that benefits American workers and businesses while building strategic relationships. When we eliminate them and then turn around and bail out the same farmers anyway, we're paying the cost without getting any of the benefit.

I appreciate that you're willing to say the quiet part out loud about middle class tax increases. The math simply doesn't work without revenue increases, and pretending we can cut our way out of a $1.8 trillion deficit is delusional. Your staggered birth year approach is interesting. It distributes the political pain and makes it harder to organize mass opposition around a single tax hike year.

That said, I think the challenge with your timeline is political durability. A 10 year phase in requires five consecutive Congresses to maintain discipline and not reverse course when it becomes unpopular. That's optimistic, given our track record. Maybe there's a way to structure it so the initial legislation locks in the schedule in a way that's harder to undo? Some kind of automatic adjustment mechanism that doesn't require annual votes?

The broader point you're making about forcing transparency and accountability, making lawmakers own their spending votes individually, requiring justification for every program, that's the foundation. Without that, even good tax policy just feeds a broken system. We need both the process reforms AND the revenue increases working together.

I wonder if any of this is politically possible before the math forces our hand in a crisis. Your proposals are rational, but they require lawmakers to do unpopular things voluntarily. History suggests they won't until bond markets or a fiscal crisis forces them to. At that point, the solutions will be much more painful and chaotic than what you're proposing now. Though it's worth mapping out what sensible solutions look like, even if we suspect they won't be implemented until it's too late.

 

[leftwinger]

Based on little dity Walz Minn, Multiply this by probably 1 million fraud daycare or transport.



You phony TDS middlers,fags, homO and board Stain can stick you dirty fingers in you ears and yell nuh-uh! As loud as you want but some of these frauds are getting shutdown an prosecuted. Funny, so many black or Somali. Prove it wrong disliking stain and TDS homeO middlers like dirty MACSTAIN.

No idea how to get this much fraud money reclaimed. How many decades? It ramped up only since Obiden 1.0 got the ball rolling would be my guess.

 

[leftwinger]

Stop the bleeding. Stop $1T fraud. Then cut spending. Raise top rate to 40%. Won't help much as money moves.

When people see $1T fraud you are going to get a revolt civil war by APR 15. Why should we pay for this BS?

 

[blackhawk]

We are past the point of no return on this to even begin to deal with this you will need massive spending cuts as well as increased tax’s on everyone. These are things no politician would run on and if one did the public wouldn’t vote for them.

 

[candycorn]

Your USAID point is fair in my opinion. Most people see foreign aid and think we're just giving money away, when in reality programs like that are often disguised industrial policy that benefits American workers and businesses while building strategic relationships. When we eliminate them and then turn around and bail out the same farmers anyway, we're paying the cost without getting any of the benefit.

I appreciate that you're willing to say the quiet part out loud about middle class tax increases. The math simply doesn't work without revenue increases, and pretending we can cut our way out of a $1.8 trillion deficit is delusional. Your staggered birth year approach is interesting. It distributes the political pain and makes it harder to organize mass opposition around a single tax hike year.

That said, I think the challenge with your timeline is political durability. A 10 year phase in requires five consecutive Congresses to maintain discipline and not reverse course when it becomes unpopular. That's optimistic, given our track record. Maybe there's a way to structure it so the initial legislation locks in the schedule in a way that's harder to undo? Some kind of automatic adjustment mechanism that doesn't require annual votes?

The broader point you're making about forcing transparency and accountability, making lawmakers own their spending votes individually, requiring justification for every program, that's the foundation. Without that, even good tax policy just feeds a broken system. We need both the process reforms AND the revenue increases working together.

I wonder if any of this is politically possible before the math forces our hand in a crisis. Your proposals are rational, but they require lawmakers to do unpopular things voluntarily. History suggests they won't until bond markets or a fiscal crisis forces them to. At that point, the solutions will be much more painful and chaotic than what you're proposing now. Though it's worth mapping out what sensible solutions look like, even if we suspect they won't be implemented until it's too late.

You're right about the crisis of courage in our congress. For decades, they have ceded power to the Executive; getting it back will require a collaborative executive. I don't see that happening anytime soon.

=====

Well, my idea exposes the "category killer"; I guess is the best way to put it.

For example, GWB paid for the great Iraqi misadventure with supplemental budgets. The public didn't care much because we were just attacked. If you were to try that today since we were not attacked recently, I think the president would have a harder time ramming that through.

Congress Approves $79 Billion Supplemental War Budget | Arms Control Association

www.armscontrol.org

For example, big expenditures of hundreds of billions of dollars will have to be considered on a one-by-one basis. That silly battleship Trump wants....you either vote yes or no; the new Air Force Ones (if they were to come up again), straight up or down. Purchasing Greenland (not an all together bad idea in my view as long as we do it on the up and up)...straight up or down vote. The votes will stand out like sore thumbs and have to exist on their own merits without the help of any ancillary benefits like paying troops or funding NASA. There will still be pork and pet projects and some will fail. But the scopes of the money for them will be much smaller since it can't be hidden easily in the budget.

 

[candycorn]

Stop the bleeding. Stop $1T fraud.

Should be easy since it doesn't exist.

When people see $1T fraud you are going to get a revolt civil war by APR 15. Why should we pay for this BS?

Perhaps you can show us where the $1T fraud is.... Nobody seems to know since nobody is being arrested for it.

 

[otto105]

I want to talk about the federal debt because I think most people fundamentally misunderstand the scale of the problem we're facing.

First, let's clarify basic terms that many people confuse. The federal deficit is how much more we spend than we take in each year. The national debt is the total accumulated amount we owe from all previous years combined. For fiscal year 2025, our deficit was approximately $1.8 trillion. Our total national debt is now over $36 trillion. Every year we run a deficit, it adds to that total debt, and we're now paying over $1 trillion annually just in interest on money we've already borrowed.

Here's the reality about military spending. Even the most dramatic cuts wouldn't solve this problem. If we completely withdrew from Europe and Asia, closed all 750+ overseas bases, and dramatically reduced our military presence globally, we might realistically save around $500 billion annually. That sounds enormous, and it is, but it would only reduce our annual deficit by roughly 25-30%. We'd still be running a deficit of $1.2-1.4 trillion every single year.

It gets worse. If you completely eliminated the military, no Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, no defense budget whatsoever, we'd still have an annual deficit of approximately $900 billion. Think about that. The thing politicians argue about most could be entirely zeroed out and we'd still be adding nearly a trillion dollars to the national debt every year.

The structural problem is this. Total federal spending is roughly $6.8 trillion while revenue is only about $5 trillion. Just three categories, Social Security ($1.5T), Medicare/Medicaid ($1.6T), and interest on existing debt ($1T), consume nearly $4 trillion alone. That's more than our entire tax revenue before we spend a single dollar on defense, infrastructure, education, or anything else.

Here's what many people really don't understand about who we owe. The debt isn't primarily held by China or foreign adversaries. Foreign holders own about 23.5% of our debt, with China holding just 2.2% of the total. The vast majority is owned by domestic interests such as the Federal Reserve, American mutual funds and pension funds, banks, insurance companies, state and local governments, and Social Security trust funds. When we pay that $1+ trillion in annual interest, we're mostly transferring money from taxpayers to American asset holders, pension funds, 401ks, IRAs, and financial institutions.

This creates an impossible trap. We can't simply default on this debt. US Treasury bonds are the foundation of global finance, considered the world's safest asset. Every interest rate globally is priced off Treasury rates. A US default would trigger immediate economic apocalypse: pension funds would collapse, retirement accounts would evaporate, the dollar would lose reserve currency status, and the 2008 financial crisis would look mild by comparison. Defaulting to stick it to monied interests would devastate ordinary Americans whose retirement savings are in these "safe" investments.

The intergenerational injustice is profound. We're running up massive debts for current consumption and leaving the bill to future generations. By the time our great-grandchildren inherit this debt in 2125, it will be so woven into the financial system that they can't refuse to pay it without destroying their own economy. They'll be trapped, the debt too large to realistically pay off, but too catastrophic to default on. We're essentially robbing our descendants, and they'll have no choice but to service obligations created by our spending decisions.

This isn't a problem that can be solved by cutting any single area of spending or making any one policy change. It's structural and requires either massive entitlement reform, significant tax increases, or realistically both. These are political third rails that neither party wants to seriously address. The longer we wait, the deeper the hole gets and the more limited our options become.

What are your thoughts on realistic solutions? Or is this problem already beyond the point where democratic politics can address it?

Double spending on the military and the police state.

Invade other countries and steal their resources.

 

[leftwinger]

You're right about the crisis of courage in our congress. For decades, they have ceded power to the Executive; getting it back will require a collaborative executive. I don't see that happening anytime soon.

=====

Well, my idea exposes the "category killer"; I guess is the best way to put it.

For example, GWB paid for the great Iraqi misadventure with supplemental budgets. The public didn't care much because we were just attacked. If you were to try that today since we were not attacked recently, I think the president would have a harder time ramming that through.

Congress Approves $79 Billion Supplemental War Budget | Arms Control Association

www.armscontrol.org

For example, big expenditures of hundreds of billions of dollars will have to be considered on a one-by-one basis. That silly battleship Trump wants....you either vote yes or no; the new Air Force Ones (if they were to come up again), straight up or down. Purchasing Greenland (not an all together bad idea in my view as long as we do it on the up and up)...straight up or down vote. The votes will stand out like sore thumbs and have to exist on their own merits without the help of any ancillary benefits like paying troops or funding NASA. There will still be pork and pet projects and some will fail. But the scopes of the money for them will be much smaller since it can't be hidden easily in the budget.

Another bunch of TDS scrambled BS. Get off the boards you big dumb leftist loon.// even sadder is the phony middler saps willing to entertain you of all scum on debt? you dirty rotten lying skanky pig butted sack of human garbage. Mark it funny you 85IQ baboon.

 

[candycorn]

The GOVT itself (GAO) estimates fraud at ($0.5T-$1.5T? or more).

Candyporn is lying. DOGE found plenty (estimate 10%-20%). Congress wont listen, they won't stop the fraud and they will not implement the big cuts required. //

So your fantasy goes like this:

• DOGE--one of the blob's pet projects--found fraud.
• The Congress--both houses controlled by the blob's party--"won't listen"...and "will not implement the big cuts required"?

Okay...

Fraud needn't be cut.

Fraud is a crime.

If they found the crime...why isn't the blob's DOJ indicting the fraudsters? Why isn't the FBI arresting the fraudsters. The DOJ found about 50 Somalis who ran a fraud ring in 2022...Biden was able to get them arrested and indicted.... Why can't your blob?

 

[candycorn]

Another bunch of TDS scrambled BS. Get off the boards you big dumb leftist loon.//

I'm sorry you don't have any ideas other than "cut fraud"--as if that would make a dent in $38T!

Go to bed dick breath....you're just a drunk at the end of the bar in this discussion; nobody wants to hear your rants.

 

[leftwinger]

Oh it's out there. Not sure about this one? But $1T per year since Obiden 1.0 is more likely than not. Now being exposed laundered thru corrupt State black NGO mostly found so far.

 

[candycorn]

Oh it's out there. Not sure about this one? But $1T per year since Obiden 1.0 is more likely than not. Now being exposed laundered thru corrupt State black NGO mostly found so far.

$55 Trillion now?

You keep getting dumber and dumber. Do you EVER doubt anything you read from your right wing loon media?

 

[leftwinger]

Catherine Austin Fitts, former Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) under President George H. W. Bush, has long raised concerns about systemic financial irregularities within U.S. government agencies, particularly HUD and the Department of Defense (DOD).

In 2017, she collaborated with Michigan State University economist Mark Skidmore on a study that identified $21 trillion in unauthorized government spending across DOD and HUD from 1998 to 2015. This figure emerged from uncovered financial adjustments—such as $6.5 trillion in unsupported Army adjustments in 2015 alone—highlighting a profound lack of transparency and accountability.

Fitts has argued that FASAB Standard 56, a federal accounting rule, enables the concealment of vast financial data by allowing secret modifications to financial statements, rendering them effectively meaningless. She warns that this lack of disclosure undermines the integrity of U.S. financial markets, including Treasuries, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and municipal bonds.

She views the situation as a national security and economic crisis, stating that "the value of an asset is only good if you can protect it" in a system where financial law is no longer enforceable. Fitts now advocates for gold as a core investment, citing the collapse of trust in paper assets and the global shift toward real, tangible assets amid growing financial lawlessness.

Her warnings have influenced public discourse, contributing to calls for independent audits—culminating in the Pentagon’s announcement of its first-ever department-wide financial audit in 2017.

 

[candycorn]

Catherine Austin Fitts, former Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) under President George H. W. Bush, has long raised concerns about systemic financial irregularities within U.S. government agencies, particularly HUD and the Department of Defense (DOD).

In 2017, she collaborated with Michigan State University economist Mark Skidmore on a study that identified $21 trillion in unauthorized government spending across DOD and HUD from 1998 to 2015. This figure emerged from uncovered financial adjustments—such as $6.5 trillion in unsupported Army adjustments in 2015 alone—highlighting a profound lack of transparency and accountability.

Fitts has argued that FASAB Standard 56, a federal accounting rule, enables the concealment of vast financial data by allowing secret modifications to financial statements, rendering them effectively meaningless. She warns that this lack of disclosure undermines the integrity of U.S. financial markets, including Treasuries, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and municipal bonds.

She views the situation as a national security and economic crisis, stating that "the value of an asset is only good if you can protect it" in a system where financial law is no longer enforceable. Fitts now advocates for gold as a core investment, citing the collapse of trust in paper assets and the global shift toward real, tangible assets amid growing financial lawlessness.

Her warnings have influenced public discourse, contributing to calls for independent audits—culminating in the Pentagon’s announcement of its first-ever department-wide financial audit in 2017.

She is right about one thing..

The blob constantly taking money Congress approved for "A" and steering it to his pet projects is as illegal as it is immoral. That alone should get him impeached by unanimous vote in both houses.