I have never forecast things. Most economists are bad forecasters too. That is based on decades of reading their opinions. When they are wrong, they update their narratives.
There is a huge difference between waste and fraud. Sadly, both of those things do exist in our government. The first step to fixing that problem is to admit it exists.
I agree, but nothing substantial is being done about either. It's performative. It's pretty easy to measure - if spending is increasing then the problem isn't being solved.
100%.. this is a baby steps issue, first we have to admit there is a spending problem.
In addition, they haven’t pointed DOGE in a serious way at the real source of unaccountable spending: the Department of Defense. To the contrary, they want to increase that budget to $1 trillion. So clearly they were not serious about reigning in the debt and deficit. “Hello money printer” to pay for it all and keep the party going.
When you see astronomical changes in the economy and geopolitics, it's only natural to expect major shifts. Such extremes usually signal a big move—either for better or worse.
Gilded Age of American prosperity is delusional. Most likely recession.
Nothing substantial being done? I suggest the news you watch is choosing not to report what DOGE is finding and acting on, and the billions of dollars being saved, with receipts provided. Combination of asset sales, contract/lease cancellations and renegotiations, fraud and improper payment deletion, grant cancellations, interest savings, programmatic changes, regulatory savings, and workforce reductions. Even if it were half of what’s reported it’s a huge amount of money and a great start.
Nailed it. The problem is that those currently in power don't really give a care about the budget deficits or national debt even though they like they do. We need to keep taxes at their current level or increase them and reduce spending (but smartly, with a scapel and not a chainsaw).
Stop making sense!
I don’t understand why you quoted my comment.
I'm all for eliminating waste and cutting budgets so even the small amount they've done is better than nothing but it's not significant. Receipts posted by DOGE have been fact checked over and over and shown they're often false. There's only one news franchise that is still claiming DOGE is saving significant money and that same franchise has repeatedly claimed in court that their shows are for entertainment purposes only and are not to be taken as factual. Even Elon has admitted that there haven't been any significant savings and will be a small, small fraction of their target. These cuts, while worth doing, are a smokescreen to allow large tax cuts that will increase the deficit.
Whether DOGE results in savings or will cause harm is highly questionable. I agree with ivinsfan that this discussion may not be appropriate for this thread.
With what we're facing, $155 billion seems paltry. This is going to be much harder than we think
Attention to out of control spending and fresh outside look at controls and practices appears warranted.
