Well, late Saturday night, secretive $500B in Medicare cuts were added, in addition to further Medicaid cuts topping $1 trillion, for a combined $1.5T in cuts to poor, disabled, and elderly people who will die or go homeless as a result. No one is paying attention.
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No
"Of the 2024 Medicaid improper payments, 79.11% were the result of insufficient documentation. These payments typically involve situations where a state or provider missed an administrative step and do not necessarily indicate fraud or abuse."
Depending on the year, that means that intentional fraud is around 1.8%, almost all of it over charging by medical companies and physicians.
https://www.cms.gov/newsroom/fact-sheets/fiscal-year-2024-im...
The next generation's inheritance has already been spent. Let's not spend any more of their kid's inheritance. We can't afford to kick this can down the road forever, because the road isn't infinite. If we run out of road, everyone might be homeless.
The GOP are not serious about the debt. The Trump tax cuts of 2017 and the big ugly bill is estimated to add 1.5 and 4 trillion to the federal debt. To add insult to injury, it is cutting benefits to the people who need it the most.
We could find out who is more serious about the debt by comparing the total debt in January 20th 2017 when Trump entered office and January 20th 2021 when he left office, with the size of the debt when Joe Biden entered office in January of 2021 and left office in January of 2025. If you do that you will see the former raised the debt from $19.95 trillion to $27.75 trillion or by 7.8 trillion. While Joe Biden started with 27.75 trillion and ended with 36.2 trillion or an increase of 8.4 trillion.
Great, raise taxes and cut spending even further. But taxes never get (meaningfully) raised.
Exactly. Any discussion about US debt as a barrier to economic process when there are so many other avenues for the state to make revenue is either ignorant at best or disingenuous at worst.
What is disingenious about it? It is a recent phenomena that states have this amount of debt. The debt of the US specifically is backed by its military and economic output. If one collapses, there will be a severe hyperinflation.
Tax payers are slowly and increasenly burdened by said debt.
I think the problem is that people that are constantly ranting about the debt (for instance Republicans), pass measures like the one they’re about to that raise the deficit even further while cutting taxes. If they were really concerned about the debt, they’d cut spending on defense (lol) and raise taxes to say the Clinton era.
Haven't you heard? Republicans have decided that all those deficit calculations for the new bill are wrong. See "How a GOP accounting maneuver hides $3.8 trillion in red ink from Trump's 'big, beautiful bill'" [1].
They are basically saying that when some current law is expiring (such as some of the 2017 Trump tax cuts) a bill that extends that law or makes it permanent should count as having zero cost.
If this goes through it means any party that gets a majority in the Senate can pretty much get anything through via budget reconciliation (which is supposed to only be allowed for deficit-neutral things) which cannot be filibustered by simply putting a time limit on it and then later making it permanent.
For example, Democrats pointed out that next time they have a majority they could pass universal free healthcare with a one year expiration with enough taxes and/or spending cuts elsewhere to make it deficit neutral for that one year, and then next year pass a bill making the universal healthcare permanent part permanent and letting the taxes or cuts expire.
This bill making the healthcare permanent would have zero cost under the new Republican rules and so could also be done via budget reconciliation, and so just need a majority to pass.
[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/how-a-gop-accounting-maneuver...
That kind of sounds amazing TBH. As an American I’m only now waking up to the depths of narcissism this country has, and Trump got it. Americans are either socially liberal and fiscally conservative (few), or socially liberal/conservative and fiscally liberal. They’re just giving the people what they want, let’s just give it to them faster and reset the whole thing sooner.
Yeah; best not to let them reach adulthood. The BBB takes away a bunch of their health care and food. That’ll thin the numbers!
Oh wait, were you being serious?
Look at which programs are being cut vs expanded, and their relative cost vs benefit.
Basic arithmetic says this bill is designed to do maximal damage to the future of the US.
For instance, the energy star program saves an average taxpayer 1000x what they pay in taxes to fund it, and is supported by industry, consumer, environmental groups, democrats and republicans.
So, of course it’s getting killed.
This is good and all. But if they were to remove all of the bits aimed at giving up on the United States, chopping it up, and giving away the pieces to corpos, there would be nothing left. So maybe it's just better to stop trying to pass any of this big ugly spending bill, and start coming to terms with having put a con artist in the White House who doesn't have the first clue of how to actually solve any of the problems he campaigned on.
If congressmen never voted on double edged swords or poison pill legislation out of principle, they'd all be labeled do-nothing grandstanders like Thomas Massie. While it may work for Massie, as his constituents are smart enough to know voting no on every bill is better than voting yes on a bad one, most congressmen would not survive that for long.
It is, solely, the fault of disinterested constituents that congress get away with passing laws for special interests and corporate lobby rather than the country at large.
It might have something to do with the systematic dismantling of our education system and associated propaganda campaigns convincing the now-uneducated masses that education is evil brainwashing, everyone except white billionaires are actual, literal monsters, voting is pointless, and there's no chance at ever changing anything for the better.
Or maybe several hundred million individual Americans are each bad, lazy people. That sounds more likely.
The Way is to build another high-speed rail line connecting Tucson to the new [Brightline West high-speed rail] station in Las Vegas (stopping in Bullhead and Henderson), then a new segment from Vegas up to SLC. The Brightline West line under construction now should also be extended down from Rancho Cucamonga to Phoenix (stopping in Temecula and San Diego). A Boring Company loop is also badly needed to connect Temecula and Irvine (underneath the Cleveland National Forest), maybe meeting Brightline in Temecula and Metrostink in Irvine. It's probably also possible to do something like close the existing freeways during certain hours, like the Silver State Classic Challenge does annually, and run 200mph (Tesla) cars and 100mph electric semis, so Brightline doesn't need to be involved, but it's really not that hard to just lay e-train tracks out.
Why?
Because connecting existing cities with 220-250mph trains will maximize the current US Southwest infrastructure so we do not need to develop new federal lands.
[PS: The BLM and non-BLM region between Phoenix and Vegas is laced with Naturally Occurring Asbestos and the BLM region between Vegas and Tonopah, East to California is largely still radioactive or in active use by the federal government, so unsuitable for new city development.]