the cost of a US census

@Kewpie said
Revenues are generated by tariffs. But they don't come from foreign countries. They come from whoever buys the goods in America, i.e. the American middle class, who are undertaxed by world standards. These are the voters your loony leader is fooling.

Australia sells blood products to America. Trump puts a tariff on those products. The people who pay those tariffs are m ...[text shortened]...
If you want to dispute this, no stupid granny inventions please, they're not rational arguments.

can you post your stat source? or are you just making these things up?

@Mott-The-Hoople said
this only becomes an issue when Republicans are in office right?

Nope. Other way around. sh76 only presents the one number, but it went up during Trump's term and down during Bidens term. The problematic policy changes related to deficit spending is almost entirely Republicans fault.

2016: 585
2017: 665
2018: 779
2019: 984
2020: 3,142
2021: 2,772
2022: 1,376
2023: 1,684

Republicans don't care, they don't see the trend in which Republicans always raise deficits. They complain when Democrats have the executive, but ignore it otherwise.

If anything the "policy" that Biden got wrong on the deficit was not repealing Trump's policies.

@AverageJoe1 said
You are correct. Voting against your self-interest is not a good thing 🤔 . Neither you nor I nor anyone in the Universe would vote against their self-interest. Sometimes you just nail it!!

Republicans near the lower end of the economic scale do it every single election.

@Mott-The-Hoople said
this only becomes an issue when Republicans are in office right?

It becomes an issue when an administration takes away citizens' benefits they've worked their entire lives for, just so they can fund tax breaks for their rich buddies (and, unsurprisingly, themselves).

@wildgrass said
If anything the "policy" that Biden got wrong on the deficit was not repealing Trump's policies.

Exactly. Let's hope the next Democrat president not only reverses policies, but also every single EO this president has belched out.

@Suzianne said
Exactly. Let's hope the next Democrat president not only reverses policies, but also every single EO this president has belched out.

Im honestly confused when conservatives try to say that deficits are a both party problem.

The graph literally looks like a roller coaster. If a republican is president it's going up, and a Democrat is president it's going down. There's a grown up in the white house, then a republican comes along and makes a fiscal mess. There's no ambiguity and barely an example of a republican president even trying to lower deficits over the course of a human lifetime.

@wildgrass said
$15 billion

Remember that the next time you try to make an argument that Republicans care about reducing the cost of government.

The fact that the mid-decade census under the rules Trump is insisting on is both illegal and unconstitutional is a bit more important than bean counter objections.

@wildgrass said
Bad policy causing the 2021 deficit would have been caused by which administration? Deficits are understandable as a response to a major conflict or economic shock. E.g wwII, 9/11, the 08 recession, COVID.

The deficit number then came down in the out years of all those events.

Edit: both sides is not the answer here. Every republican president raises deficits, every Democrat president lowers deficits. This has been true for 45 years of data.

You don't get to have an enormous ahistoric 2021 deficit and then then crow when that deficit goes down to still-obscene levels.

From an economic perspective, covid could have been over by the dawn of 2021. While I'll give 2020 a bit of a pass due to covid, I'm not buying covid as an excuse in 2021.

Edit: I will concede that in recent decades, Republicans have been even worse than Democrats on fiscal responsibility. What an embarrassment for that once-great party.

@Mott-The-Hoople said
this only becomes an issue when Republicans are in office right?

It should be an issue when both sides are in power.

As much as it hurts me to say so because I'm so angry at the Democratic party for so many reasons, at least Democrats have shown some willingness to at least try to achieve something that looks a little more like fiscal sanity.

Trump simply ignores the concept and then gaslights us about it.

@wildgrass said
Im honestly confused when conservatives try to say that deficits are a both party problem.

The graph literally looks like a roller coaster. If a republican is president it's going up, and a Democrat is president it's going down. There's a grown up in the white house, then a republican comes along and makes a fiscal mess. There's no ambiguity and barely an example of a republican president even trying to lower deficits over the course of a human lifetime.

So let me try to unconfuse you:

That the other guy is even worse is not a carte blanche excuse for irresponsible governance.

@sh76 said
You don't get to have an enormous ahistoric 2021 deficit and then then crow when that deficit goes down to still-obscene levels.

From an economic perspective, covid could have been over by the dawn of 2021. While I'll give 2020 a bit of a pass due to covid, I'm not buying covid as an excuse in 2021.

Edit: I will concede that in recent decades, Republicans have been even worse than Democrats on fiscal responsibility. What an embarrassment for that once-great party.

2021 was historic but a lot less than 2020 so...

@sh76 said
So let me try to unconfuse you:

That the other guy is even worse is not a carte blanche excuse for irresponsible governance.

Yah but if you see a Fiat racing an F1 car you can still see which one moves faster. Saying "they're both moving" does not adequately describe the situation.

@Suzianne said
It becomes an issue when an administration takes away citizens' benefits they've worked their entire lives for, just so they can fund tax breaks for their rich buddies (and, unsurprisingly, themselves).

Then will this logic of yours, “taking away benefits that they have worked their entire lives for” , saving up money to buy a lake house or take a cruise or put their grandchildren through college?…. Will this logic apply when I respond that well, “you want to take MY money that I have saved for my future and spend it to pay someone’s tuition and to pay for someone’s abortion. People that I don’t even know?””
Everyone, why will Suzanne not answer this question??

@AverageJoe1 said
Then will this logic of yours, “taking away benefits that they have worked their entire lives for” , saving up money to buy a lake house or take a cruise or put their grandchildren through college?…. Will this logic apply when I respond that well, “you want to take MY money that I have saved for my future and spend it to pay someone’s tuition and to pay for someone’s abortion. People that I don’t even know?””
Everyone, why will Suzanne not answer this question??

You are your brother's keeper, you know.