US Politics Mega-thread - Page 5709

On May 01 2026 07:21 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:

I appreciate your clever tongue-in-cheek conditional ("if... then..."), because it's not the case that the Taliban is gone from Afghanistan (they've been back for several years):

"The Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan in 2021, twenty years after their ouster by U.S. troops. Under their harsh rule, they have increasingly cracked down on women’s rights and neglected basic services." https://www.cfr.org/backgrounders/taliban-afghanistan

"Afghanistan under the Taliban, the Sunni Islamist group that retook power in 2021"
https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R45122

I wonder if we'll throw another few trillion into that void, or find a different void before Trump's presidency has ended!

On May 01 2026 06:25 CuddlyCuteKitten wrote:
The US has crossed the threshold of 100% debt to gdp ratio.
It's not a sure sign of disaster or anything but it's not great.

Historically it's only been this high for 2 years after WWII ended and 2020 during the dip in GDP from covid.

An interesting tidbit (that I don't really know if it's correct, I picked it up from a comment on an article) is that the US ran a 0 budget in 1999 and a surplus in 2000, and that it was projected in 2000 that the US could actually be debt free 2012 if it continued on that path.

It's hard to imagine how much money the US would have if it hadn't reacted to 9/11 with wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the chronic budget deficits that followed (currently at 6%).

A clean way to compare U.S. budget deficits/surpluses across 21st-century presidencies is to look at (1) starting vs. ending annual deficit, and (2) total deficits accumulated during each administration. The key point: the U.S. has run continuous deficits since 2001—no president in the 21st century has achieved a surplus (the last was under Bill Clinton in 2000).

⸻

Big picture (2001–present)

* 2000 (end of Clinton): ~$+128B surplus
* Every year since 2001: deficit (often very large)
* Deficits fluctuate mainly due to recessions, wars, tax policy, and crises (especially 2008 and COVID-19)

⸻

By president (21st century)

George W. Bush (2001–2009)

* Start: ~$+128B (surplus)
* End: ~−$1.4T deficit
* Trend: Surplus → large deficits
* Drivers: tax cuts, wars in Iraq/Afghanistan, 2008 financial crisis

👉 This is the only 21st-century presidency that begins in surplus and flips sharply into deficit.

⸻

Barack Obama (2009–2017)

* Start: ~−$1.4T (Great Recession peak deficit)
* End: ~−$665B
* Total deficits: ~$6.8T over two terms
* Trend: Deficits shrink steadily, though remain negative

👉 Key context: Obama inherits the largest modern deficit and reduces it by roughly half.

⸻

Donald Trump (2017–2021)

* Start: ~−$665B
* End: ~−$2.8T
* Total deficits: ~$6.6T
* Trend: Deficits rise again, especially in 2020–21

👉 COVID-19 drives the largest single-year deficits in U.S. history (over $3T in 2020).

⸻

Joe Biden (2021–present, through ~2025 data)

* Start: ~−$2.8T
* Recent level: ~−$1.8T
* Trend: Deficits fall from pandemic peak but remain historically high

👉 Even after the COVID spike subsides, deficits remain well above pre-2008 norms.

President—————-Start of Term———-End of Term
Bush:**************** +$128B)*************** -$1.4T
Obama:************** −$1.4T.**************** -$665B
Trump:************** −$665B.**************** -$2.8T
Biden:*************** −$2.8T.***************** -$1.8T

⸻

On May 01 2026 04:32 oBlade wrote:
.

On May 01 2026 09:43 LightSpectra wrote:


You almost accidentally stumbled on the point when you said "Direct election was never in because suffrage was asymmetric" but then you veered off into talking about women's suffrage and cow levels (?).

Suffrage was asymmetric because of slavery. States that owned many slaves had less total land owners because a small number of wealthy slave owners owned a greater percentage of the land and everyone else was comparatively poorer. Therefore they had less voters total. That's why the three-fifths compromise was necessary even with an electoral college that counted non-voting white men and women. Many states didn't even have a popular vote for the first few presidential elections.

Excited to see what irrelevant bullshit you'll talk about in your next reply, it doesn't get more pointless than Diablo references.

On May 01 2026 10:16 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:

Yeah, I think creating trade wars (and real wars) will continue to sour relations with our allies, especially when we drag them into our messes. The worse our relationships are, the more likely that those "allies" will look elsewhere for solutions, goods, and services. If that happens, then our economic problems may accelerate and lead to significant consequences for us. And it'd be our fault.


Obviously, the Republican party is not fiscally responsible; they just use that phrase to cover for the fact that they'd rather give tax cuts to the wealthy than actually fund programs that could help the working and middle classes who actually need assistance.

As for calling in the debt, it'd certainly be awkward if a country asked for the United States to honor repayment of a sizable debt, especially if it was publicized that the ask was due to skepticism that the United States would be willing to pay the country back. Either the United States honors the debt, which would enable other countries to ask for money back too (creating a domino effect of debt repayment that the United States couldn't complete in one fell swoop), or the United States makes an excuse to not honor the debt (yet? ever?), in which case the other countries will start to assume that the United States won't pay them back either, which could again create one hell of an uncomfortable economic situation... for the entire world.

On May 01 2026 09:36 WombaT wrote:
Who’s calling in the debt? What does that look like? If you don’t really have to worry about that, I mean why worry about it? Until you have to of course. But one of the main benefits of being such a pre-eminent, dominant power is that it’s quite tricky for people to come collect

But if you do have to worry about it or claim you do, then you have to look at well, those pesky surpluses or deficits.

Republicans consistently campaign on cutting national debt, or yearly deficits and in office basically do the opposite. It’s basically a complete nonsense.



Apologies for the wonky table formatting and outsourcing to ChatGPT for this. It is decent at pumping out snapshots of what you already know to be the case but don’t want to spend an inordinate amount of time deep diving sources.

If people object, or these numbers are completely inaccurate I’ll take the L on that one.

If they’re even vaguely accurate the idea that Republican Presidential periods correspond with fiscal responsibility is utterly ludicrous

On May 01 2026 11:18 Introvert wrote:


Not to argue the point too much because neither party is particularly responsible, but as your AI summary itself says, Obama came in after financial crisis spending, and Trump ended with COVID. The best way to actually restrain (but not actually fix) spending has been a Democrat president and a Republican House, and least looking at Clinton and Obama. Still, the problem is spending, not revenue, and with that in mind receipts don't matter as much as outlays. And there is absolutely no appetite, esp on the left, for less government spending. They wail when Republicans try to slow discretionary spending. And entitlement spending, where most of the growth in spending comes from these days? Crickets.

Complaining about tax cuts is all fine partisan fare, but even with tax cuts revenue keeps going up. It's spending spending spending.

On May 01 2026 11:18 Introvert wrote:


Not to argue the point too much because neither party is particularly responsible, but for as your AI summary itself says, Obama came in after financial crisis spending, and Trump ended with COVID. The best way to actually restrain (but not actually fix) spending has been a Democrat president and a Republican House, and least looking at Clinton and Obama. Still, the problem is spending, not revenue, and with that in mind receipts don't matter as much as outlays. And there is absolutely no appetite, esp on the left, for less government spending. They wail when Republicans try to slow discretionary spending. And entitlement spending, where most of the growth in spending comes from these days? Crickets.

Complaining about tax cuts is all fine partisan fare, but even with tax cuts revenue keeps going up. It's spending spending spending.

On May 01 2026 12:04 WombaT wrote:

If the US is anything like the UK, a lot of entitlement spending goes to pensioners, and they turn out to vote in droves. And are also a growing demographic just generally

So you basically can’t touch that side of things, least here because it’s political suicide, even if it’s bad policy, which in the UK I think it is.

In the UK we have a ‘triple lock’ on pension income which basically insulates those entitlements from anything going on in the wider economy.

Which independently is fine, except everyone else has to eat things like inflation, which is one part of that particular triple lock.

Which costs billions to enforce incidentally here, when genuinely disabled people are finding it harder to get state care.

How much does Medicare cost? It’s gigantic. It dwarfs many other welfare programs. And people who are perfectly capable of affording their own care in the US system are still eligible as far as I’m aware

It’s never really about spending, it’s a moral judgement on who money should be spent on. Which is perfectly fine as a prism, but it’s packaged as something else.

Trump’s just spaffed 25 billion up the wall in operational costs alone for his Iran foray, never fucking mind how much the compounding costs of fuel price increases are

Is that acceptable spending or do you oppose that?

On May 01 2026 11:18 Introvert wrote:


Not to argue the point too much because neither party is particularly responsible, but as your AI summary itself says, Obama came in after financial crisis spending, and Trump ended with COVID. The best way to actually restrain (but not actually fix) spending has been a Democrat president and a Republican House, and least looking at Clinton and Obama. Still, the problem is spending, not revenue, and with that in mind receipts don't matter as much as outlays. And there is absolutely no appetite, esp on the left, for less government spending. They wail when Republicans try to slow discretionary spending. And entitlement spending, where most of the growth in spending comes from these days? Crickets.

Complaining about tax cuts is all fine partisan fare, but even with tax cuts revenue keeps going up. It's spending spending spending.

On May 01 2026 12:22 WombaT wrote:

FDR had some shit to deal with, grew the deficit. Truman pulled it back to basically even stevens. Eisenhower kept it basically there. Kennedy grew it a little, Johnson grew it a little more. These last few were talking deficit/surpluses of a few percent, nothing crazy.

Then Nixon made a decent dent in it of a 2.4% narrowing from a deficit of 2.8% that he inherited from Lyndon Johnson

Since Nixon, every single Republican President has grown the deficit. Every single Democratic President has shrunk it.

I’m sure that’s just fluke or something.

It is interesting to be looking at the numbers. Outside of big epochal events,such as WW2 the deficit tended to be floating between 0-3% for quite some time.

On May 01 2026 13:03 Introvert wrote:



Is there a reason you replied to my first post again and ignored my answer to your question?

It actually is more complicated than that. Every Dem president since Carter has been elected during bad economic times and ridden the wave of economic recovery. Biden more complicated, but as we said the end of the Trump term had a bunch of COVID spending. Also, again, "every Democratic president since Nixon" is all of three people! Carter ended his term with federal spending up. So did Reagan, with Dems in Congress blocking any spending cutbacks. Then Clinton, who as I said before had the "Dem president Republican Congress". Ditto Obama. Biden came in after massive COVID spending. Looking at presidencies is missing half the story since Congress is a part of this too. Presidents don't get to make budgets and just implement them. Or take HWB. Federal spending decreasing. Then a recession, then he goes back on his no taxes pledge (look! a moderate raising taxes like dems want! What, no credit?). Still, a recession that kicked him out of the White House. Dems + Biden still spent a crap ton in inflation causing stimulus while they controlled both houses for the first two years. IDK as much about how they do it in Europe (though I see complaints about lack of stimulus) but in America our politicians don't do belt-tightening during bad times. They just spend more.

The thing is, it's just easier to spend money than haggle on where to cut. Which is why they don't cut. All they manage is sometimes, maybe, to slow the rate of increase of spending. And sometimes that lets natural economic growth outpace spending.

On May 01 2026 13:18 dyhb wrote:
The trend of Dems blocking cuts in Republican presidencies (using the specter of cuts to accuse Republicans of killing grandmas and orphans and minorities), and Republican congresses being elected in Dem presidencies as a reaction to their early increases in spending (1994 Gingrich contract with America, 2010 Tea Party wave), are important enough that omitting them is a sure sign of political partisanship.

Not that either party has done well on the subject, but you have to give fair consideration in order to have an ounce of understanding on the subject.

On May 01 2026 13:31 Introvert wrote:


tbf Republicans don't do anything about it even when they control everything (though the filibuster complicates things). Republicans couldn't even turn discretionary spending down to pre-COVID levels. And as you said, they have to deal with the attacks. But with Trump in the White House there isn't even a pretense anymore. You do have to look at Congress though, absolutely.