Unlimited spending will never cease as both parties are heavily incentivized to spend, pork barrel and defer desperately needed reform.

Social Security hurtles towards a cliff while it has a 'fix everything easily' button because no large scale reform is possible until it's the very last minute or far too late, then a sloppy and terrible solution is rammed through full of more pork.

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jghn 19 hours ago | parent [-]

This is correct yet also obscures an important point.

The popular narrative is that one party is the party of fiscal responsibility and the other is fiscally wasteful. But the data don't really bear that out, and it's arguable that the opposite may be true.

I'd contend that yes they both need to be incentivized as such, but also a necessary but not sufficient step is to halt the narrative that one party is the one who cuts the waste.

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0xy 19 hours ago | parent [-]

The spending floodgate cannot be turned off or reduced, only directed towards the current admin's pet projects and away from the previous admin's pet projects. This is true for both parties.

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solid_fuel 19 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You are conveniently ignoring the other half of finance - one party includes plans to actually pay for what they want to spend while the other cuts revenue to make rich people happy.

This is not the same, even though it may be tempting to cry “both sides” and throw your hands up.

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0xy 15 hours ago | parent [-]

Biden's infra plan was $550bn in new spending, which was offset in only $50bn of new revenue and $110bn of spending reductions. So, on net, it was massively inflationary and toasted the budget.

That was just one proposal with half a trillion.

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solid_fuel 13 hours ago | parent [-]

Would you care to provide a citation for that?

According to any of the reporting I can find, the Inflation Reduction Act: "This bill would raise $737 billion in revenue while spending $437 billion. The remaining $300 billion would go toward deficit reduction." [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Build_Back_Better_Plan#Inflati...

This is pretty much the same story with every major policy proposal from the Biden administration. They all included plans to cover the expected costs.

	▲	0xy 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		You are wrong. CBO. https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57406

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

The “spending floodgates” have not materially changed direction in any of the last four administrations. Social security, Medicare, Medicaid, debt service and the military. Besides those five factors everything else is only a quarter of national spending and I think you will find if you look that those other categories don’t move around from admin to admin as much as you might think either.

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

I don't believe I said otherwise. And yet, your response doesn't at all touch on my other point.

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preg_match 16 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The spending floodgates have been reduced in the past. Under democratic presidents.

	▲	0xy 14 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Clinton made a serious effort to pay down the debt, but none of the Democrats since did. Clinton was also not a Democrat if you compare him to current Democrats. His admin was more right wing than the Trump administration. Clinton's crime bill, serious immigration crackdowns. I mean, Trump did partial criminal justice reform in his first term. That's the complete opposite of the Clinton crime bill, which skyrocketed incarceration. Clinton's IIRAIRA bill laid out the blueprint currently being utilized for rapid deportations. In fact, 'expedited removal' is a core feature of the bill. Also, he architected the concept of administrative warrants currently being used by ICE for deportations.