The only way to reduce the annual amount of deficit spending is to reduce the spending on entitlements, the so-called "mandatory" spending items required by the passage of federal laws which are on autopilot, whoever qualifies receives the charity and so the amount spent depends solely upon the number of people eligible for the charity. This "mandatory" spending consumes nearly every tax dollar collected by the federal government at the current time.
The deficit spending every year is roughly equivalent to the cost of the "discretionary" budget items, which, ironically, are the spending items contained in the federal Constitution. Defense, cabinet agencies, salaries and benefits for employees of the federal government . . . sure, there's some savings to be had here with increased efficiency, but not nearly enough to prevent the kind of deficit spending we've seen since the start of the new millennia. The entire non-military "discretionary" spending of the federal government is a little over $ 1 trillion per year right now. "Mandatory" spending for fiscal 2025 will be over $4 trillion, and servicing the current debt, the third leg of the federal budget stool, will be tickling $900 billion.
Entitlement reform is the only means of bringing the federal budget under some kind of control, and with Social Security and Medicare off the table, which account for roughly 1/3rd of the "mandatory" spending, we're talking about trying to find $1 trillion in savings out of $2.8 trillion spent, that's 35% of the entire "mandatory" spending budget. Ain't gonna happen folks, we're too far down the road Grover Cleveland sought to prevent us from taking when he said that though the people supported the government, the government shouldn't be supporting the people.
Was it Toqueville who said America was doomed once the voters realized they could give themselves access to the treasury?
Since FDR, government has been buying votes with Medicare and Social Security. And us here will probably see the collapse. Hyperinflation is on its way. (And I don't think cybersecurities will save us.)
Thomas Sowell: There are no solutions, just trade-offs.
So when they begin to lust for power and cannot attain it through themselves or their own good qualities, they ruin their estates, tempting and corrupting the people in every possible way. And hence when by their foolish thirst for reputation they have created among the masses an appetite for gifts and the habit of receiving them, democracy in its turn is abolished and changes into a rule of force and violence. For the people, having grown accustomed to feed at the expense of others, and to depend for their livelihood on the property of others, as soon as they find a leader who is enterprising but is excluded from the honours of office by his penury, institute the rule of violence; and now uniting their forces massacre, banish, and plunder, until they degenerate again into perfect savages and find once more a master and monarch. — Polybius. The Histories VI, 9, trans. by W. R. Paton
