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A Deeply Fractured US

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Navy_Pete said:
Also passing budget bills that run a deficit then shutting down the government by not raising the debt ceiling is political showmanship taken to destructive limits.
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We do the same thing - legislate commitments, then fail to fully fund them. The mechanisms are different; the results are the same.
 
Brad Sallows said:
We do the same thing - legislate commitments, then fail to fully fund them. The mechanisms are different; the results are the same.
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We don't do the same thing at all though; the commitments never get budgeted for so the money isn't actually spent, and we don't have an equivalent separate debt ceiling limit. Basically the budget gets approved, and if it runs a deficit the debt goes up, with on legislated cap.

The debt ceiling thing is stupid; the money gets approved and spent, then they complain that the budget the spent (knowing it was a deficit and would increase the debt), increases the debt ceiling. If they actually cared about fiscal responsibility they would just not approve deficit spending. Approving deficit spending then complaining about the debt growing is like a teenager going wild with a credit card then not wanting to pay the monthly fee.

It's not even like they can blame the Democrats, the same Tea Partiers kept running a deficit when Trump was in and they controlled both houses. Weirdly cutting taxes for the wealthy does not, in fact, trickle down or result in the Government revenues going up to offset the tax cuts.
 
Navy_Pete said:
We don't do the same thing at all though; the commitments never get budgeted for so the money isn't actually spent, and we don't have an equivalent separate debt ceiling limit. Basically the budget gets approved, and if it runs a deficit the debt goes up, with on legislated cap.

The debt ceiling thing is stupid; the money gets approved and spent, then they complain that the budget the spent (knowing it was a deficit and would increase the debt), increases the debt ceiling. If they actually cared about fiscal responsibility they would just not approve deficit spending. Approving deficit spending then complaining about the debt growing is like a teenager going wild with a credit card then not wanting to pay the monthly fee.
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The debt ceiling is just a way of preventing runaway expenditures - they have mandatory spending; we don't. To me as a consumer of government services to which I am (theoretically) entitled, it doesn't matter how a program becomes underfunded - because the government didn't budget, or because the government can't borrow the money. "Government shutdown" is a situation of selective un- or under-funding, not a complete embargo; selective default is similar.
Navy_Pete said:
Weirdly cutting taxes for the wealthy does not, in fact, trickle down or result in the Government revenues going up to offset the tax cuts.
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The first can't be true unless wealthy people are able to isolate all of their spending/investment from the rest of the economy.

The second depends on where the taxing authority sits on a Laffer curve - which must assuredly be real, even if we can't accurately pinpoint anything except the endpoint at 0% and even if the tax take at 100% is still, somehow, non-zero. Britain played with higher tax rates for a little while (introduced in 2009) and eventually believed it lost money - the number of reported high incomes fell and the consequent tax take fell, but the results must be regarded as equivocal because tax rates were not the only thing changing over the course of a few years. All that we know now is that the highest rate is down, and the take from the people subject to it is up.
 
Brad Sallows said:
We do the same thing - legislate commitments, then fail to fully fund them. The mechanisms are different; the results are the same.
Click to expand...
The results on the coal face are not the same though.

When was the last time a Canadian federal govt member‘s pay had to be approved every year, with the threat that their pay is delayed? Or that the govt civilians get furloughed while they break the deadlock?

This is the reality for the US federal govt (including military) and while it doesn’t always lead to them having their pay delayed, it has happened a few times in the last decade or two.
 
dimsum said:
The results on the coal face are not the same though.

When was the last time a Canadian federal govt member‘s pay had to be approved every year, with the threat that their pay is delayed? Or that the govt civilians get furloughed while they break the deadlock?

This is the reality for the US federal govt (including military) and while it doesn’t always lead to them having their pay delayed, it has happened a few times in the last decade or two.
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To be fair is if any other country spent the way the US has over the last couple decades they would be like Argentina or Greece now.
 
dimsum said:
The results on the coal face are not the same though.
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Granted, for some things. That's because the processes are selective and not identical.
dimsum said:
When was the last time a Canadian federal govt member‘s pay had to be approved every year, with the threat that their pay is delayed? Or that the govt civilians get furloughed while they break the deadlock?
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Hard to envision, because few governments can fall over a budget, and if they do, a new one is chosen quickly.

The fact remains that the government legislates obligations, in some cases fails to fully fund them, and in some cases legislates rules that make it difficult to impossible for people to exercise other options. If parties want programs, the programs should be fully funded. Rank them, and cut the lowest ranked ones or increase taxes until the programs are fully funded. Our part should be to withhold votes from parties that add commitments to the pile.
 
Brad Sallows said:
Granted, for some things. That's because the processes are selective and not identical.

Hard to envision, because few governments can fall over a budget, and if they do, a new one is chosen quickly.

The fact remains that the government legislates obligations, in some cases fails to fully fund them, and in some cases legislates rules that make it difficult to impossible for people to exercise other options. If parties want programs, the programs should be fully funded. Rank them, and cut the lowest ranked ones or increase taxes until the programs are fully funded. Our part should be to withhold votes from parties that add commitments to the pile.
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You and your logic and intelligence, clearly a heretic ;)
 
Brad Sallows said:
Granted, for some things. That's because the processes are selective and not identical.

Hard to envision, because few governments can fall over a budget, and if they do, a new one is chosen quickly.

The fact remains that the government legislates obligations, in some cases fails to fully fund them, and in some cases legislates rules that make it difficult to impossible for people to exercise other options. If parties want programs, the programs should be fully funded. Rank them, and cut the lowest ranked ones or increase taxes until the programs are fully funded. Our part should be to withhold votes from parties that add commitments to the pile.
Click to expand...
None of this changes the fact that the US government has created their own independent requirement for a debt cap (all the way back to 1917), which just doesn't exist in Canada or elsewhere.

They vote on a budget, then they have to separately authorize exceeding that debt ceiling, which is arbitrary and not connected to whether anyone will loan them that money.

Everywhere else you either approve a budget or not, and inherently accept that it will either be a deficit or a surplus (based on projections).

When they get the brinksmanship where the government shuts down and things (including salaries) don't get paid, it's not because they can't get funding, but because they can't legislate their shit together to actually pay for things they've already spent, with money that's available, and why their credit rating got dropped at one point because they became an unreliable lendee (sp?).

The time to draw a line about not spending money is before it's spent, not afterwards, especially when it's things like niche tax cuts, local pork barreling products, and other things that they are doing for big donors to get political capital with the countries money. If they can't give their collective nuts a tug and prioritize spending within the government revenues at budget time sorted, they have no moral right to not pay their obligations when the bills roll in.
 
Navy_Pete said:
None of this changes the fact that the US government has created their own independent requirement for a debt cap (all the way back to 1917), which just doesn't exist in Canada or elsewhere.
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Either a government pays for what it legislates, or it doesn't. There's no "our system is better because the way we impose spending caps is different".
 
Brad Sallows said:
Either a government pays for what it legislates, or it doesn't. There's no "our system is better because the way we impose spending caps is different".
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Not better, just different. But in our case, things that are legislated as requirements don't get covered unless they are in the budget. But once they are in the budget, there isn't a requirement to update some kind of separate debt ceiling, which is what causes the government shut downs and has huge impacts on US gov credit ratings, as well as people's lives.
 
Here is an explanation of US Government shutdowns from the Brookings Institute. As far as I can gather it has nothing to do with debt ceilings but has to do with the failure of Congress to pass the 12 annual appropriations bills.
Article Link
Here is another Brookings piece about the debt ceiling "American Style" .
Article Link
 
Last edited:
QV said:
Trump: no new wars, Abraham Accords, and border getting under control.

Biden: Ukraine, Israel, border out of control.

Easy math.
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Okay go with that math, the rest of society will just shake our collective heads at what an embarrassment he is as well as the fact he's a traitor to the Republic.
open.substack.com

You knew he couldn't keep his big trap shut, didn't you?

Bodies of murdered babies, children, women and men were still on the ground wrapped in blue blankets and tarps in Kibbutz collectives and villages across southern Israel yesterday when Donald Trump took the stage at a campaign rally in West Palm Beach and made his first public comments after the...
open.substack.com open.substack.com
 
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