I got a laugh out of Obama introducing Joe.
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I got a laugh out of Obama introducing Joe.
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IF HIS LIPS ARE MOVING HE'S LYING! :mad0176:
I havent' had time to post on this topic, obviously it hits home to people here and elsewhere who are my friends.
The boiled down version is that what DOGE and Trump are doing will cause pain, just as big corporate layoffs and plant closings cause pain, and they way they are doing it definitely is a machete not a scalpel.
Historically though the scalpel approach to government growth and waste has never worked, not even a little, and there is no doubt there is vast waste and yes fraud in the system.
Every POTUS on both sides has pledged to reduce government waste since probably George Washington, but certainly every POTUS in my lifetime. THe problem is government is set up to not allow you to do much b/c of all the protections and checks and balances, so very little ever got done. Reagan had efforts like the Paperwork Reduction Act, but it had almost no impact beyond making every agency have another floor of people writing the regs to address that act. It sure didn't reduce the paperwork.
No doubt DOGE will also cut off and stop programs most people would support, there will be collateral damage. The question is whether there's really any other way to deal with the problem.
B/c every POTUS has at least mouthed support for this action, and Reagan in particular really tried, and even Clinton at times, to no avail. The question then becomes how much pain and collateral damage is acceptable if we can trim hundreds of billions from the budget and potentially avoid bankruptcy?
At the end of the day this country is going bankrupt. Musk is right about that. We spend more on debt service now than anything else. It has to stop.
At the end of the day this country is going bankrupt. Musk is right about that. We spend more on debt service now than anything else. It has to stop.
The above is undoubtedly true and I am not talking about economic failure happening in 5 or 10 years, I am talking about a time frame of months. If corrections are not made soon, we will be witnessing millions of unemployed people bankrupt, and living on the streets, not just possibly 50,000 to 100,000 people under forced unemployment or taking jobs that pay less than their current standard of living requires.
People aren't getting how bad it is, and how we are spending ourselves into oblivion.
The simple truth is that yes we will lose programs we like and support. I like big 70" 8K tvs and dish subscriptions and fancy cars and big dinners at Jeff Ruby's too, but if I can't afford it I guess I'll eat ramen and drive an old car, right?
It's just reality that we are in huge debt, and it has to stop. It will mean painful cuts, that is a given, but the alternative is becoming a 2nd world power, which is unacceptable.
No one can do it if the Chief Executive in whom all all executive branch authority lies, constitutionally, then no one can and the bureaucracy aristocracy is the only branch of the four branches that matters.