The idea never made sense, the government isn't particularly wasteful, and the entire premise is based on bad math that misunderstands how much money the federal government actually spends on things, especially salaries.

On top of that, the premise was based on defying congressional appropriations. Congress decides how money is spent. When the Clinton administration undertook this, they went through Congress to enact legitimate and lasting reform. [1]

The federal government has a much lower employee to citizen ratio than it used to have, it's quite efficient.

[1] https://www.npr.org/2025/03/12/1237991516/planet-money-doge-...

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parineum 4 days ago | parent [-]

The issue now is that, at the time, the Clinton admin was looking at a political reality of cuts happening in a Republican congress and chose to work with them to make those cuts align more with his party's agenda than it would have before.

That reality isn't something either party seems to be willing to deal with today. The only time changes happen in the federal government are when one party controls the whole thing. Which is why there's such a fight for these mid-terms. If Republicans lose either house of congress, the last 2 years of the Trump admin will be stalemate.

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dangus 2 days ago | parent [-]

I don’t think it’s party willingness to deal with government efficiency, I think it is more accurate to say that neither party thinks that government efficiency is a significant problem.

In other words, it’s just something Trump wanted to do. The GOP is very firmly under his control.

The other policy that’s like that is tariffs. Nobody in the GOP wants tariffs except for Trump. You could see the lack of cheers at the SOTU.

The other truth of the matter is that the Republican Party has become addicted to cutting taxes without replacing revenue. It seems to me that there’s a desire to create a debt crisis to justify cuts to social programs. In reality, social programs would be highly sustainable if taxes on corporations and wealthy individuals weren’t continually being reduced.

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parineum 2 days ago | parent [-]

> I don’t think it’s party willingness to deal with government efficiency, I think it is more accurate to say that neither party thinks that government efficiency is a significant problem.

That wasn't the point I was making. The point I was making was that Bill Clinton was able to balance the budget _and_ keep the programs he wanted to not because it was something he originally wanted to do.

He did it because the Democrats lost power in the midterms to Republicans who ran on balancing the budget.

He was looking at either not being able to do anything he wanted and possibly vetoing a Republican agenda that the American people just voted for or changing his own agenda to more closely align with that and work with the Republicans to make sure programs that Democrats really wanted weren't cut but still balancing the budget. He did the latter and it's largely used as a point of pride for the democratic party but they ignore the fact that it was only achieved through compromise.

A more modern opportunity/example for this would have been if Biden, after the midterms, chose to work with yhe Republican congress on immigration reform and get something done that everyone could live with.

Instead he doubled down and made the situation worse, supercharging the issue in the next election leading to the election of Trump on largely that platform.

I'm not blaming just the Democrats for this, neither party would do it, it's just the example that came to mind.

> In reality, social programs would be highly sustainable if taxes on corporations and wealthy individuals weren’t continually being reduced.

There's not really a good example of this in practice. Healthy social programs in other countries are typically funded largely through pretty substantial middle class taxes.

There simply aren't enough rich people and corporations to yax to fund the rest of the country.

The desire to tax the other to fund my benefits is the problem. Instead of looking at poverty and wanted to do something about it, we look to other people and tell them they should do something about it.

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dangus 17 hours ago | parent [-]

I totally understand what you were saying with the Clinton era, I’m mainly saying that the Trump administration is making cuts that Congress didn’t ask for while Clinton was working with Congress to make cuts that hi Republican Congress already wanted and made it align with his own priorities as well.

Nobody in the GOP was asking Trump to make cuts at (e.g.) the FAA, that was just the incompetence of the administration at work.

As far as whether taxes can pay for social programs, I’m just going to go ahead and disagree with you on that. We know this because we have math to tell us that the tax cut and jobs act and the big beautiful bill added to the deficit while still making cuts to social programs and increasing tax burden for the poor/middle class.

In addition, Social security is not a wealth transfer program at all and has always been self-funded. Its funding issues could be resolved overnight with modest reforms.

Medicare is funded by the same people who use the program, it’s not a wealth transfer program either.

Social programs like Medicaid, food stamps, and welfare are at their most cynical evaluation society’s pitchfork insurance. If you let people go hungry you will get societal and political instability, it is in any regime’s best interest to keep the poorest people in society fed.

	▲	parineum 16 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> In addition, Social security is not a wealth transfer program at all and has always been self-funded. Its funding issues could be resolved overnight with modest reforms. > Medicare is funded by the same people who use the program, it’s not a wealth transfer program either. > Social programs like Medicaid, food stamps, and welfare are at their most cynical evaluation society’s pitchfork insurance. If you let people go hungry you will get societal and political instability, it is in any regime’s best interest to keep the poorest people in society fed. We're way off topic and really don't disagree much but I was mostly thinking of actual wealth transfer programs. The "social safety net" type programs you see in some European countries, and most iconically, Nordic countries. Anyway, genuinely good chat but, seeing as we're so off topic, I'll probably not reply again (but I will read yours).