This started long before Trump. Ironically things quite stable under Clinton. 2nd term Bush not so great, 2nd term Obama not great, Trump post covid not great, Biden was terrible, Trump 2.0 terrible.

The only real solution is to enforce the actual debt ceiling, the begin lowering it a few hundred billion each year, destroying things we don't need. Require all new spending be funded by the 2.5x destruction of existing spending and departments.

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cosmicgadget 13 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Why is it ironic that Clinton balanced the budget?

Second term Bush not so great? Can you think of anything in his first term that maybe impacted the deficit for, say, two decades?

	▲	JKCalhoun 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I'll guess: imaginary WMD?

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pstuart 19 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I loathed the actions of DOGE but believe that "government efficiency" (yeah, lily oxymoronic) should be baked into everything the government does, most importantly, even the programs that one supports.

That has been one of many failures of the Dems to both pursue and socialize.

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_djo_ 19 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The Democrats have, in the past forty years, been the only party to have consistently been able to reduce the deficit, even creating a surplus by the end of Clinton's presidency.

They've also been the only party to have successfully reduced the cost of government and made it more efficient in the process. Clinton's bipartisan National Partnership for Reinventing Government was what DOGE claimed to be, as it sharply cut the number of federal government staff without affecting delivery. [0][1]

Obama and Biden were less effective than Clinton, but still drove the deficit down toward the end of their terms, and Obama in particular tried to implement a series of reforms to improve efficiency such as creating 18F which saved a bunch on government software contracts in the years it was active. The Republicans have not seriously done anything similar, and DOGE doesn't count because from the start it was clear it wasn't a serious attempt to reduce actual waste but an ideologically-motivated exercise run by unskilled and inexperienced people.

This isn't to say Democratic administrations have been all good or that the Democratic Party hasn't also loved its pork, but overall at least when in control of the presidency the party has tended to stabilise America's finances, improve tax revenue collection, make government more efficient, and reduce deficit spending far more than the Republicans have.

The Democrats retain at least some elements of their technocratic side, but the Republicans have gone all-in on populism and thrown theirs out.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Partnership_for_Reinv...

[1] https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/ls1088

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rhelz 19 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The federal government is actually quite efficient in what it does. For example, the overhead for Social Security is between 0.5% and 1%. I.E, less than the mutual funds in my 401k charge per yeah for "administrative fees."

When people talk about government waste, what they really are talking about is things the government does which they don't approve of. E.g. ICE--is that wasteful spending? Depends upon whether you like ICE or not. Aide to Israel? Same stuff.

That's why DOGE got nowhere. There is no mythical mammoth waste, fraud, and abuse in the government.

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_djo_ 19 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Correct. It's also often forgotten how much the National Partnership for Reinventing Government (NPR) had done to make government more streamlined and efficient between 1993 and 1998. That took care of pretty much all the low-hanging fruit that those behind DOGE falsely believed was still there.

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watwut 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

DOGE achieved their goal - take the info and speed up destruction of the state, of public service.

Oh, and stop or limit research into anything not centered at white men.

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qzx_pierri 19 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

>The federal government is actually quite efficient in what it does.

This has to be bait

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preg_match 16 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This isn't a refutation or even an argument. If something was obviously incorrect, you would think it would be trivial to prove wrong. But, evidently not.

The idea that the government is inherently inefficient is an idea that GOP just made up ~50 years ago to justify tax cuts for the rich. Tax cuts which, by the way, got us into this debt mess. This all started with Reagan, who royally fucked our government fiscally.

The only people who have been able to control the deficit are, surprise surprise, democratic administrations. Just look at the numbers, ignore the propaganda. This stuff is cut-and-dry.

	▲	armitron 13 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The Department of Defense has never received a clean opinion on a full financial audit. Since starting comprehensive yearly reviews in 2018, the Pentagon has failed eight consecutive enterprise-wide audits due to scale, missing records, and untrackable assets. Federal Government Made $236 billion “Improper Payments” Last Fiscal Year: https://www.gao.gov/blog/federal-government-made-236-billion... The only propaganda I see here is coming from those who are so out of touch of reality that they firmly believe there's a chunk of the uniparty that doesn't increase the deficit.

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abenga 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

A team of outsiders got carte blanche to find and kill waste in your government. How much did they find?

	▲	qzx_pierri 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Quite a bit, actually https://doge.gov/savings

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fragmede 19 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

When things are monitored to such a degree that a startup I was at couldn't bring doughnuts to a meeting because NASA was gonna there and that could possibly be a bribe, I don't know about efficient, but there's a reason why DOGE couldn't really find any waste.

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0xy 19 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Democrats support the exact same pork barreling.