Chart above – Congress is only allowed to vote on 30% of the nation's spending. "Someone" declared the other 70% off limits.
Imagine getting elected to congress to represent a “flyover state”. And after being sworn in, being told by the big shots – of both parties – that there's NOTHING you can do to reduce the budget deficit. Because more than of half everything politicians spend is never voted on. It renews automatically. Blake Moore (Utah) wants to change all that. See link below.
This is why we need younger people in DC. Congressman Moore is 43. Most of the politicians making life miserable for us are almost twice that age, and should have retired a decade or more ago from ANY job that requires mental acuity. President Biden is 82. Candidate Trump is 78. Nancy Pelosi is 84 (not a misprint). Nancy Feinstein was 90, until she died of old age while still in office. Mitch McConnell is 82. Chuck Schumer is 73. I can do this all day, folks . . .
Why isn't most spending ever voted on? Someone was clever enough to classify these programs as “mandatory spending” when they were dreamed up decades ago. Social Security. Medicare. Obama Care. Medicaid. Interest on the national debt. SNAP (food stamps). Unemployment Insurance. Earned income tax credits. Political salaries. The US Forest Service (!!!!). Pensions. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. On and on.
I imagine octogenarian politicians are losing their minds right now, and shouting “Hey – you in back – Congressman Moore. Sit down, and shut the eff up!! No voting on this stuff . We'll let you know when you can speak. Now on to today's business. Let's continue the roll call vote to recognize May as Asian American heritage month. And Pacific Islander heritage month. And Jewish Heritage Month. And Clean Air month. And Mental Health month . . . “ Hey is it ironic – or INSANE – that we're NOT voting on spending, but ARE televising these heritage holidays?
Imagine if the average American spent his or her paycheck like this. “Well, the things I feel are mandatory are . . . Starbucks on the way to work. Burger King on the way home. A new iPhone 15 Pro. A weekend in Atlantic City. Titos hand crafted vodka. Adidas Cortez Pickleball sneakers. The Xfinity Comcast Gigabit Internet and Ultimate TV package . . ."
Congressman Moore, I want you for my next president. You can pick Nikki Haley as your running mate if you want, even though she ran a $hitty campaign, and then immediately caved and endorsed a convicted felon. She'll might bring along some women's votes. We don't need ANY more octogenarians in the white house. They don't care how much they spend, because they're at death's door. Let's be governed by representatives who have something to live for.
I'm just sayin' . . .
~Why Rep. Moore thinks the budget fights in Congress miss the point – Deseret News~
https://old.reddit.com/r/economy/comments/1d4v2ob/over_half_the_federal_budget_is_never_voted_on/
by baltimore-aureole
19 comments
1- Bit of a false equivalence to say forestry, salaries, insurance, and the social safety nets are luxuries like a new iPhone, vacation, booze, etc no?
2- Comparing how a household spends money to how a government spends money is the pinnacle of economic illiteracy. Or willing stupidity to drive a political point more often.
3- Pragmatically, if every spend item for the government was up for a debate every single year, **nothing** would get done with just 1 or 2 obstructionists. If they want to defund a program supposed to run for years indefinitely, a vital function of government like basic infrastructure and social security, they can defund that program with an amendment or bill, not by just going like “well, this year we’re not gonna” and letting it expire….
Requiring annual congressional approval of Social Security, Medicare, debt interest, and other mandatory outlays would be a nightmare scenario.
We have a revenue problem, made worse by deficit “hawks” constantly lowering taxes on the wealthiest people in the country.
Every once in a while an insufferable twat will try to bring up programs like Medicare and Social Security as programs we need to reform spending or vote on spending even while our political process is broken. So these ignorant fools say, don’t worry about our broken political system or the fact the inequality is at an all time historical high or that tax rates on the most wealthy are much lower than rates that helped the country accelerate the American economy and middle class in the past. No, instead risk life sustaining benefits to millions of poor, working and middle class people so we can have votes on these benefits. Never trust these people. The focus is very clear. Reduce spending, close tax loopholes, increase taxes on people making hundreds of millions of dollars a year, and don’t fucking allow republicans to ever control the budget (because then they pass massive tax breaks for the most well off people in the country and brag about it at their golf clubs).
That is one reason. A political system where members of the House spend much – perhaps most – of their time “dialing for dollars” (calling potential donars/lobbysts) for campaign funds makes it worse. The biggest single issue is out of control defense spending and the power of the military industrial complex.
Stupid tax cuts for the rich don’t help either.
28 trillion of the debt is held by the public:
[This consists of all national debt held by any person or entity that is not a U.S. federal government agency. This includes individuals, corporations, state or local governments, Federal Reserve Banks, foreign investors, foreign governments, and other entities outside the United States Government. The terms of these securities can range in maturity, the way they are sold to investors, and the structure of their interest payments. Debt held by the public does not include intragovernmental debt.](https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/national-debt/#breaking-down-the-debt)
Social security and Medicare are taxed separately, and have their own funds/pots of money that they draw from. Taxpayer pay directly into those programs. Why would you need regular votes to draw on contributions you’ve already made to the social security and Medicare funds?
The political right has been talking about the budget, deficits, and the debt for 40 years, yet they keep reducing taxes on the rich and accepting pork for their districts. They are not serious people.
The whole system is backwards. We should not vote on whether to pay the bills afterwards.
We should be able to vote on a lot more issues social or budgetary then we do.
As digitized as society is as a whole we should be able to do this at scale and speed and start showing stats on how often our representatives vote against us.
Transparency is a huge problem in the federal government.
It needs to be clear and concise but they don’t want that.
Umm, they can raise taxes? You know, preferably on the rich. It would also help cut down on inflation. But hey, let’s be more sensational on how “powerless” elected officials are.
Maybe if we got more of them off Russia’s teat, we could get things done that would actually help our country.
Have they tried auditing the Federal Reserve and the Pentagon?
https://www.cbpp.org/research/policy-basics-introduction-to-the-federal-budget-process
This is the source
It explains every question and accusation you made
If we can enforce the Green Energy Revolution, reduce the power of oil and other carbon fuels in the world, then there will be less necessity for the military to be so large. Reducing it then will be much easier and better for the environment. Call it a secret present or benefit for doing the change-over.
The U.S. military uses more energy than anything else, so shrinking it will be a huge benefit.
There is something that can be done. Increase revenue
1. We owe most of it to ourselves.
2. What we don’t owe to ourselves could easily be paid off by collecting the $688b/yr in unpaid taxes from the 1%.
3. We could pay that off even fast if we repealed the Bush/Trump tax cuts for the 1%, *even if we let everyone else keep their tax cuts*
4. We could pay it off ***even faster still*** if we took the savings from a Universal Healthcare program and used them to pay off the debt
5. and finally… WE DON’T WANT TO PAY IT OFF. Keeping other nations tied up in our bond market makes the US dollar stronger internationally and lets us buy cheap imports, effectively turning the rest of the world into a low cost factory for American consumers.
Find something else to worry about because our national debt ain’t it.
Oh, and because somebody’s following me around and posting weak counter arguments, here’s the response to them in advance because I’m tired of typing them up:
1. Yes, it does negate the impact. Debt we owe ourselves isn’t debt, it’s money supply
2. That just stinks of defeatism and doomerism. Also the figure is closer to $625b. Unless you’re counting what they’re already collecting because Biden gave ’em back some of their enforcement funding.
3. There is no economic impact. Multiple studies show the Bush/Trump tax cuts were bad for the economy. It was just wealth hording used to form monopolies.
4. There is no “might”, the numbers are from the CBO and are accurate as hell. And it would be easy to raise taxes in proportion to the savings (again, if we wanted to, which we don’t)
5. Bond markets are fine. We’re just moving the bonds from China to India/SE Asia so we can start up a cold war with China.
Since I’m tired of reposting the above I’m going to save it for latter and start posting it directly to my 1st post.
Wow. You are insane or evil. You don’t know how bugets work or know and are trying to convince people that food stamps equate to a new iPhone or social security equates to Starbucks.
If you want to balance the budget, increase revenue by taxing more at the higher levels of income. Don’t cut food stamps or social security. 2 programs that have shown to feed money back into the economy while also taking care of citizens
In the grown up countries, all kinds of government spending can be changed at any time by passing legislation to change government spending.
In Australia, what prevents massive cuts to universal healthcare? … Well, in practice, nothing. Any legislation that can pass the lower and upper house with a 50% majority could in theory completely remove all aspects of universal healthcare at any moment.
Of course that would never happen because politicians on both sides are sensible enough to realise not only would that be a terrible idea, it would also be deeply unpopular across the entire country, and voters aren’t so rusted onto their party of choice that they would overlook such a colossal mistake.
And neither party is going to hold the healthcare of the nation hostage to score a political point.
But in America?… I’m not so confident about that. Maybe America is a country that actually does need restrictions on what politicians can vote on. Imagine how much they’d screw it all up if they even tried?
At least until American voters grow up a bit, and US politicians get past this deeply divisive period of politics and the cult like Trump worship, maybe it’s safer for the car keys to be kept on the top shelf out of reach of children.
You forget that tax cuts for the wealthy in a time we have deficits is a big culprit in the debt.