A bigger hole: Trump has already spent $155bn more than Biden. Musk now claims DOGE only saved $150bn
Trump talked a big name, but other than creating chaos in Washington, chaos on the stock market, chaos throughout the business world and removing the United States from the position of leader fo the free world in these short months in office he has really done very little.
Trump is using the power of the executive branch to "get even" with his past enemies, detractors and non-supporters.
He acts like a classless bully with other world leaders and thinks the journalists of the world exist soley for the purpose of singing his praises.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The Trump administration has already spent $155 billion more than former President Joe Biden did over the same period of time after their inaugurations, according to Treasury Department data . And Elon Musk is now claiming that his Department of Government Efficiency has only managed to save $150 billion.
That means that despite tens of thousands of government workers being fired, agencies shuttered, contracts cut and federal services dramatically reduced, the current administration has already racked up an additional $5 billion of debt than the Biden administration in the same space of time.
And it’s not clear that DOGE has saved anywhere near $150 billion. Every time Musk posts “receipts” to show off DOGE’s savings, they’re riddled with errors .
He initially vowed to save $2 trillion by slashing government agencies and social benefits, than halved that to $1 trillion. Now he claims he has only cut a fraction of that.
The increased spending by the Trump administration was discovered in an analysis by the Wall Street Journal of daily financial statements issued by the Treasury Department.
Costs are continuing to climb even as Trump and the Republicans aim to negotiate a $5 trillion tax cut that’s expected to add an additional $5.7 trillion to the government’s debt over the next decade. The current debt is already $37.3 trillion.
Many of the government’s costs are fixed social benefits that continue to climb. Social Security is now paying a cost-of-living boost and an increase in the number of retiring baby boomers. Another huge cost is servicing the federal debt.
The highest payments in 2024 were Social Security at $1.5 trillion, interest on the debt at $881 billion, the Department of Defense at $807 billion and Medicare at $865 billion.
Social Security payments are $32.7 billion higher since Trump took office. The U.S. has also paid out $25.5 billion more in interest on the debt since Trump returned to the White House than in the same period last year, the Journal reports.
Total mandatory costs, like Social Security, ate up $4.9 trillion last year, while total discretionary costs (like defense spending) cost $1.8 trillion.
DOGE impacts have been mixed and will be impacted by Republicans’ planned tax cuts, which would slash government income. Some firings and cuts have been blocked by court orders. In some cases job buyouts may have raised costs, at least in the short term.
“I think the net effect of DOGE on federal spending, at least insofar as we can track it in the daily Treasury statement, has been pretty small,” Don Schneider, deputy head of U.S. policy at investment bank Piper Sandler, told the Journal .
“It will take time for those savings to accumulate, but it will also be dependent on the administration prevailing in court over some of these actions.”
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Debate the points of the article (1) Trump is not living up to his campaign promises to quickly bring savings to the federal government (2) DOGE has been all flash and no cash so far and (3) Trump is spending voernment money like the democrats he slanders daily
Be firm, but be civil to each other
Obey the NT rules
The Trump administration has already spent $155 billion more than former President Joe Biden did over the same period of time after their inaugurations, according to Treasury Department data . And Elon Musk is now claiming that his Department of Government Efficiency has only managed to save $150 billion.
The reality behind the blather and bullshit that spews daily from the Trump administration.
They ruining the lives of many people and little in return is being realized
As I think back to the promises Trump made during the campaign, this thought comes to mind
... still think america would be worse off with harris in the white house, robert?
in different ways and areas it might be as bad or worse but it would have been gradual and there would not have been the chaos and hate that we have seen with the current clown show.
I stand by my assertion that she would have been a terrible president, but it is hard to imagine worse than what we have now isn't it
We have had a dozen terrible Presidents who did no harm to the country.
Whether or not they "did no harm" is highly debatable but I do not disagree that there have been multiple terrible presidents in our history.
We should be able to do better than two terrible candidates for POTUS
Yup. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. MAGA won a handful of shit.
I'm sorry, but does comparing spending levels from 4 years apart, based in large part on a spending bill passed in 2024 supposed to reflect on Trump?
This might be the most bullshit argument I've seen in a bit. It's completely dependent on not having a clue how the budget operates.
Of course, if you are trying to manipulate the narrative, they are the same, it's almost like there wasn't any inflation over the last 4 years.
It's simple math. These folks have 200 million "feels" and only about 200 legitimate complaints in which to fit them. It just doesn't work, so they have to make other shit up to house all the feelings.
Oh... hang around for a few minutes.
Not at all.
It also depends on the belief that Elon Musk either owns a Tardis or has some other means by which to bend the space-time continuum and accomplish $1trillion worth of cuts in 90 days.
Increased spending was baked into the cake by He Who Cannot Be Blamed. The previous administration managed the creation of an additional $8.5 trillion Federal debt in only 4 years.
Servicing the Federal debt costs more because there is more debt and the yield on Federal Treasuries have increased over the last 5 years. Today's bond yields are still not as high as the last administration experienced.
The fastest growing and largest Federal budget expenditure is for health care. The five largest budget expenditures are now healthcare, pensions, defense, servicing debt, and various programs to alleviate poverty. Those five budget categories are consume 90 percent of the Federal budget. All the political theater and divisive politics used for political campaigns are about 10 percent of the Federal budget.
The squirrels are fighting over peanuts. DOGE is just a distraction to divert attention away from the real problem that can't be addressed by cutting government.
I don't believe for a second that the purpose of DOGE was ever to save money. From the beginning, it has been a wrecking ball, indiscriminately smashing essential social services. The lies about saved money are a red herring, to keep us from thinking about what they're actually "accomplishing".
2025 plan and agenda in a nutshell
It's all about impoverishing the American public so that we are forced to work in the jobs the immigrants were doing. They need bodies to man the "manufacturing" jobs trmp is bringing back. But wages will be low, no benefits, no health insurance, no pension.
yeah, but with abortion and birth control outlawed, all the resulting little rug rats can can get jobs because child labor laws will also be abolished ...
exactly!
But you forgot to mention the biggest attraction for conservatives. Those are jobs that don't require an education past the eighth grade!
"Hey China! We're going to take back all those jobs screwing tiny screws into things! At least until we can build enough robots to do it for us! And once we build the robots that build robots, we'll have reached our Utopia where white conservative Christians no longer have to work at all!"
No wonder Harris lost, who could survive being sat on by those three?...
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We may actually be able to get the democrat base off of welfare? the only people who think that is a bad idea are those that are on welfare or use welfare dollars to buy votes.
giggle snort
"We won with poorly educated. I love the poorly educated." - Donald J Trump
Please do show the actual report you claim exists and when it was done. Just saying "the last time it was measured" and then making some spurious claim without a lick of support only goes to prove my point.
you completely avoided my question, unsurprisingly. Why do Democrats hate their own voters so much? Is it because they are disproportionately minorities?
Just saying "the last time it was measured" and then making some spurious claim without a lick of support only goes to prove my point.
I've provided it to you many times before when you attack a group that is made disproportionally of minorities, Hispanics and American Indians in particular. Why you enjoy mocking them so much and why it angers you that Trump doesn't hate the poorly educated like you do are questions only you can answer.
Here, again, is the last time exit polls broke this group out. If you can find something more recent, go ahead and show your work.
64% of those who lack a HS degree voted for Obama. They provided him with his biggest margins of any educational group.
That's because it didn't warrant an answer. It was moronic and dishonest and nothing but a "When did you stop beating your wife?" attempt at a "gotcha question" that really only seem to work on poorly educated Trump voters.
Right, an exit poll survey from 2012 when the majority of the country overwhelmingly voted for Barack Obama. Good job pulling something out of the internet's ass that has absolutely ZERO relation to today's political field of voters and allegiances. Trump hadn't stepped in to politics at that point drawing all the dim bulbs towards his girthy gravity. He is now the center of the universe for the least educated white conservative Christian bigots and Trump loves wallowing in their mind-numbingly stupid support.
Those I mock are poorly educated by choice and have been ridiculing education. Those who are getting left behind through no fault of their own and wish they had better access to higher education are not the Trump voters in question. Those who call Democrats "elitist" because more of them have college degrees are the dumb fucks I'm calling out. They are intentionally ignorant which means their ignorance has become stupidity. You can fix ignorance with education and facts, but you just can't fix stupid. It's also hilarious that I clearly hit a nerve.
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Or because you misread it.
They certainly didn't do that by a 64% margin, did they?
I'm guessing you don't see the enormous irony in that phrase.
Given the situation, do you really think mocking other people's education is a good strategy?
For years, many on the left has thought that mocking those with education disabilities is a winning strategy.
Boy have they been wrong.
Is it really wrong to laugh at those who are laughing at higher education and calling those with degrees "elitists"? Am I dumb shaming? Two Trump supporters fell in a hole, one said "It's dark in here, isn't it?" to which the other replied "I don't know, I can't see anything". My point is there is only one side in this partisan divide that ridicules education and elevates religious belief over science and calls those who have studied the most who are experts in their fields "elitists" as if their education is something to be ashamed of. Of course, Trumps loyal swamp people can't help but be pissed off at what they see as "elitists" because in comparison to many of them, not having your working TV sitting on top of your old non-working TV is considered "elitist". Besides, Trump supporters are completely sane, safe and rational and can take a joke and aren't the type to get violent like those "leftists" they hate so much, so what could be the harm in mocking them a bit?
Oh, wait. I thought you guys said the other side were the violent ones?... I think this lady might have been one of the Trump supporters who fell in the hole...
I'm sorry. Had I thought about it more, I should have realized being born in a rightwing conservative Christian household is an education disability so I should not have been so harsh. I apologize for mocking those with disabilities.
Depends on the degree, and depends on the common sense (or lack thereof) demonstrated by the holder.
They do. But we're not going to pretend they haven't been given plenty of reason.
We're not going to pretend that a fair few of those degreed people haven't spent more than a few years condescending to "common folk" with fewer degrees but far more knowledge.
We're not going to ignore the fact that these supposedly educated people can get multiple degrees without ever taking a serious math class.... which means they're not actually very well educated at all.
We're not going to ignore the fact that some of these degreed people hide behind those degrees to push their obviously idiotic left wing agenda and then try to claim both intellectual and moral superiority over those who point out how ridiculous they are.
A t-shirt now constitutes "violence"? You're making their point for them.
It's rather hard not to offend a bunch of brain-dead religious conservative bigots who attack anyone who refuses to bow to their self-proclaimed superiority.
Religious conservatives seem pretty fucking good at pretending; it's just about all they do. They pretend to get educated, they pretend to know facts, they pretend to be superior and pretend to talk to some invisible wizard in the sky that they pretend exists and pretend that invisible wizard gives them some special rights over others.
It appears you're now pretending that any knowledge other than math doesn't count as education. That's just weird.
No one is hiding behind a degree to push leftwing policies; it's just people actually getting educated and then applying that knowledge in the best way they can to the world around them. Just because that often ends up tearing down the status quo of inequity and inequality that many white rightwing conservatives are fighting tooth and nail to conserve in no way makes them "superior". They just pursue a policy of equality and justice for all, not just those who have been declaring themselves, their God and their white conservative culture and heritage superior since our nation's founding.
The facts continue to prove rightwing violence is on par with Islamic extremists while radical acts by leftwing causes are "less likely to be violent".
I'm sure that doesn't seem to make sense to many rightwing Fox News loyalists who have been subjected to a constant stream of the same half dozen video clips of violent leftists or antifa to scare the shit out of their old stupid poorly educated conservative viewers, but what they show isn't reality, those aren't the norm, they're outliers. And if those viewers were better educated, they would likely be able to see the bullshit they're being fed. But alas, it is not to be as they've been convinced that a better education is a bad thing by those who know keeping them stupid makes them easier to manipulate. Poor dumb bastards.
Not any harder than not offending the brain-dead religious liberal bigots who attack anyone who refuses to bow to their self-proclaimed superiority. Don't kid yourself that liberal politics isn't a religion.
Like pretending gender isn't a thing or that taxing the rich solves all our problems? Oh... wait.
Sort of like angry liberals pretend to get educated, they pretend to know facts, they pretend to be superior and decide among themselves that gives them some special rights over others.
I'm sure you think so. An education without mathematics is utterly incomplete. It is impossible to understand science without math, so the problem exacerbates.
You're just not paying attention.
Correct. But they claim that. Look at your own points in this post. The idea you don't see that you're doing that right now is a phenomenal level of delusion.
It's a t-shirt. Do you hear yourself?
The fact that you have convinced yourself that this is solely a conservative phenomenon is a better point than any I could make. Thanks for the demonstration.
Your education never included anything on the concept of irony, did it?
I prefer Fe male irony myself, and i also feel compelled to chime inn, though DP will be quite capable of pointing out the bull, with a cape not needed, for the insatiablly gullible, they'll just eat it, ;right; up, to the top the money does flow, just as Reagans trickle down your leg economics, did certainly show.
My contention of that with which you did mention is the comparison of two sides that besides being opposite, you claim somehow the same, and in same, i'll claim insane.
Yes, there of course are some on both ends extreme, who can't root for any, other than their designated team, yet I can not comprehend the equavalent to claiming election fraud withoutn evidence, to claiming a Presidential Election in these 'United' States the loser that he won. With absolutely no credible edible evidence to support, asz just contort, twist , flail, and fail in sixty few Court Cases, yet to this day, Trump and so many other of his dedicated cult following , refuse to do the swallowing, and that is not only sad, that is for US, very very bad. There is absolutely nothing to compare, NOTHING, nothing I've ever seen in my lifetime wet dream, that can prove, without any damn evidence at all, that the one with hands so small, was cheated out of an election he had planned to say he won on day one, and did say, as he lied , and lied in a way that brought US All the joy of Jan 6th, the storming of our Capitol of Trump brought out cause he told them it will be WILD, the fricken man child attempted to take the election by force, and there is no recourse ever, to take away from what we all witnessed that day.
To surmise, open your eyes, they are not equal, perhaps new glasses for the sequel, cause there is not anything to compare, those two parties 'right' there left behind is your 'conservative' loss to any and all, far left or liberal, cause there s, imho, nothing comparable.
High praise, considering the source.
The point stands, those who can only see the twig in the other person's eye and not the log in their own are the problem.
You've convinced yourself that liberal bullshit somehow doesn't smell as bad as conservative bullshit. That RW religious zealots who attempt to control your life are somehow less evil than LW religious zealots who attempt to control your life.
You're kidding yourself.
If DOGE were serious about improving efficiency and reducing wasteful spending we wouldn’t have started deporting people by using the most expensive military planes to do the job. It was plainly obvious that money is no object when it comes to saving money.
we can always defund the secret service after the midterms to make up the difference ...
DOGE has one agenda, it's to make Grover Norquist's dreams come true.
"I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub." - Grover Norquist
I have come to agree totally with that statement
I’m pretty sure most people have no idea what doge is or does.
Big Balls - is that you?
Doge - is a historical figure, the chief magistrate of Venice
Titian lumped them in with other ultra powerful figures
Titian had already painted emperors, kings, doges and popes.—
Washington Post, 20 July 2023
Trump and Musk certainly think of the DOGE (Musk) as an all-powerful figure, without restraints
Trump was NEVER going to "save" money, sending in an unelected billionaire to "save" us with cuts was nothing but a ploy to plunder hard earned American tax dollars for vanity projects and building a dictatorship style court system and a media propaganda machine using Musk's toy via "X".
Musk just wanted our tax dollars for SpaceX contracts and the expansion of his own private global empire. Allowing Musk to install Starlink on the White House was a travesty and no justification has been given.
Since they are cutting jobs and tearing down everything in sight under the guise of " smaller government " then when is the BIG tax cut for the American people happening?
Surely the American people get a 50% tax cut. Right? Our prices will be lower, right?
I keep getting told we'll have to wait and see. I'm not sure how long that will be, but I'm starting to think it will be when the next administration takes over and fixes the mistakes of the current one. Then the MAGA supporters will all come out of the woodwork and say, "See we told you it would work!"
Prices will never be lower. That would be a very bad deression. What we need is purchasing power rising faster than prices.
evilone
You have just described politics - taking credit for the good things that happen and blaming others for the troubles and failures without regard for the truth.
I also think your analysis may be a little optimistic, I am not sure things will ever be the same, or at least not for a long while.
What we need is purchasing power rising faster than prices.
Excellent point
In the current political chaos, I am not seeing that happening for a while
Some will, most won't. Wages were rising, but now with some businesses cutting a recession may actually manifest. Markets will correct eventually. Our biggest worry right now is market volatility and that one will be easily corrected, but not until 2028.
Yes.
I'm a glass half full kind of guy, but yes it will take time. It's so much more simple to tear things down (weeks) than to build them back up (years). It will still happen. I'm hoping the rebuild will insure the next populist uprising isn't so destructive, but I fear it will just more of the same.