A few days ago Joe Biden said that the $3.5 trillion omnibus spending bill "costs zero dollars." Since then outrage has flown from conservatives and earnest defenses have issued forth from liberals.
Please just stop it. Biden obviously misspoke, but only slightly. All he meant is that the bill won't raise the deficit because it's paid for by higher taxes. That's it. This has absolutely no effect on whether you should support or oppose the bill, so how about if we ditch all the dumb arguing about it?
In addition, I continue to find it unfortunate that DC convention continues to force us to refer to things by their ten-year cost. Sure, you can write "ten year cost" every single time you mention the bill, but most people only pay attention to the headline number itself, especially if it's in the, um, headline. The reality is that this bill, in its current form, would increase spending by about $350 billion per year out of a federal budget of $5 trillion. That's an increase of 7%. You may decide for yourself if that's too much, or if the programs funded by the bill are worth that kind of spending.
On the topic of misstatements, hardening back to the assertion of his being duped by the military: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/09/28/top-generals-afghanistan-withdrawal-congress-hearing-514491
Harkening… once again the horror of something making Coral look good.
What a surprise: Generals want to continue making war.
Indeed. And politicians continue to misspeak about what the generals tell them.
Ozzy knew this fifty years ago.
Here's a chart with the publicly-held debt as a percentage of GDP overlaid with 30-year yield rates: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=H9MC
For a short period when the debt was falling, it was conceivable that the yield rate was correlated to debt %. That obviously fell apart in the 2000s.
For a long time lots of people saw 100% of GDP as a not-so-arbitrary number to be wary of. But then we blew right past it and it turned out that it was in fact just an arbitrary number.
Even if you fear debt, the Feds could -- and probably would -- buy more Treasuries to hold. Don't fear the debt so much.
Well, it just shows you how in their own heads liberals are, because this is a huge opportunity to point out how little social spending there actually is, once you subtract military spending, health care spending on Medi Care, and all other routine spending.
Of course, the Clinton campaign managed to lose to Trump, so now I don't think the Dems have some well thought out reason why overall spending is not front and center all the time.
It is so, so much better to say "7% more" than "3.5 trillion dollars" if you are trying to point out how much you get for this bill. Ideally, it would also make some people wonder what we get for over 700 billion per year in military spending, but hey one step at a time.
Like it matters. Not all "Social spending" has supporters. The infrastructure bill is more popular overall.
Do you refer to the spending on Afghanistan as a twenty-year cost? Or as it’s per-year average?
Buying treasuries won't work. Dollars are wanted because of demand. The Fed would destroy the value of the currency even more. You simply don't get reserve currency status. Once it's gone, liquidation here we come.
Cut the defense budget by $200 billion. Think what we could do with the money.
What’s the last important thing the US military did? They killed a bunch of kids in Afghanistan. Didn’t say it was a good thing. How much is that worth to you? Why do you all want to spend money on an organization who’s most notable achievement this year is killing children?
It makes no sense to me.
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