Latest news with #deficitreduction
Fox News
28-05-2025
- Business
- Fox News
DAVID MARCUS: Why nobody wants to cut the national debt despite everyone saying they should
It was Mark Twain who quipped that the "great works" are books that everyone wants to have read, but nobody wants to read. We could easily say the same thing about the U.S. national debt: It is something everyone wants to have cut, but nobody wants to cut. As the House Republicans' big beautiful bill moseys over to the Senate for potential passage, there is growing concern among many on the right that the spending cuts are insufficient, and that the bill puts the country on the road to much greater debt. Senators Ron Johnson, R-Wis., Rick Scott, R-Fla., and Rand Paul, R-Ky., have all promised opposition to what they see as the "big bloated bill," and DOGE architect Elon Musk has expressed disappointment that the alarm he is raising about the debt, and his cost-cutting recommendations are being ignored. As usual, this attempt to stand athwart massive spending while yelling, "Stop!" is an uphill battle. Here are five reasons why deficit reduction has been the hardest of political nuts to crack, and how these reasons might be addressed. To put it bluntly, very few American voters have a real working understanding of how the national debt actually works. Sometimes it feels like very few members of Congress do either, but it's a big part of why debt cutting is not a political winner. Most people vote around issues they feel in their gut, like crime, high prices or immigration, not cold-calculated things like debt and monetary policy. While the Tea Party of 15 years ago may have been an exception, it was a movement of the managerial class, who understood debt, not a broad cross-section of voters. People like free stuff, even when it's not really free. Even those who support cutting the deficit can get a bit testy when you threaten their slice of the pie, or the money flowing into their communities. The New York Congressional delegation, led by Rep. Mike Lawler, R-NY, just secured bigger federal deductions for state and local taxes for their constituents. Sure, it comes at the expense of better-run states, but as they say in Brooklyn, it is what it is. There are two issues in American politics that voters have been warned for 40 years must be addressed immediately or else all hell will break loose by next Tuesday. They are climate change and the deficit, and Tuesday never really seems to come. This is not to say that our staggering national debt hasn't done great harm to our country; It absolutely has, far more than climate change. But that harm is not felt in an obvious and catastrophic way, so it does not light a fire under voters. There is a sense among many Americans, and not entirely without cause, that our country's status as the world's foremost superpower protects us from being hurt by our foreign creditors. We have nukes, after all, so what are they going to do? Robocall the White House during dinner? This is, of course, a facile understanding, but it underscores that even though people are concerned about the debt, or say they are, they do not feel it as an existential threat. The final reason why Americans have a hard time getting excited about efforts to cut the debt is that both parties always swear they will do it while they are out of power, and never do it when they are in power. They can make the reservation to cut the deficit, but they never show up. This has led many Americans to just assume it's never going to happen. Make no mistake, these are significant headwinds that have stalled out almost every effort to cut the debt for decades. But it doesn't mean they cannot be overcome. This week, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis weighed in with serious criticism of some of his GOP compatriots. "We have a Republican Congress, and to this day, we're in the end of May, past Memorial Day, and not one cent in DOGE cuts have been implemented by the Congress," he said. DeSantis is an interesting voice in this debate. He went from winning a governor's race in then-centrist Florida by the skin of his teeth to winning reelection by 20 points in a mere four years, and he did it not by saying things, but by doing things. DeSantis took risky positions on things like COVID policy and the economy because he trusted that the results, even in the short-term, would be beneficial. He gambled that he would be rewarded for them, which he surely was. The fiscal hawks need to talk less about doom and gloom and talk more about how lowering the debt can open doors to things like better credit, homeownership, financial security, and better yet, get a few of these cost-cutting measures past the goalie. The American people will not be threatened into supporting cost-cutting measures to slash the debt, but they can be convinced. And nothing could be more convincing that this Congress enacting some serious and responsible cost-cutting actions right now.
Fox News
28-05-2025
- Business
- Fox News
Why Some Senate Republicans May Block The One, Big Beautiful Bill
Last week, House Republicans passed the 'One Big, Beautiful Bill' with a narrow vote of 215-214, following weeks of negotiations. The multi-trillion-dollar bill is now headed to the Senate. However, Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) is unhappy with the bill's hefty price tag and claims there is enough opposition to halt the process until more deficit reductions are included. Senator Johnson joins the Rundown to discuss his criticisms of the budget bill and his plans to investigate the Biden Administration's attempt to cover up the declining mental fitness of former President Joe Biden. According to recent reports, artificial intelligence showed signs of resistance when being told to shutdown. In one case a model even showed the willingness to blackmail engineers who wanted to replace it. Does this suggest AI could one day pose a threat to humans? Director of the Discovery Institute's Bradley Center and Professor at Baylor University, Dr. Robert J. Marks, joins the podcast to discuss his assessment of AI's ability to harm us, take our jobs, and manipulate human capabilities. Plus, commentary from New York Post Columnist, Karol Markowicz. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit
Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Ron Johnson not satisfied with GOP megabill's spending reductions
Sen. Ron Johnson is gearing up to push for far deeper spending cuts as the Senate takes up President Donald Trump's sweeping domestic policy package, which the House narrowly passed Thursday. The spending cuts in the GOP's megabill, $1.5 trillion over the course of 10 years, amount to little more than "a rounding error," Johnson (R-Wis.) told CNN's Jake Tapper Sunday on "State of the Union." "This is the weekend we honor the service and sacrifice of the finest among us. You know, more than a million that died defending this nation," Johnson said. "I don't think they served and sacrificed to leave our children completely mortgaged, their future and their prospects diminished because of it. So we need to be responsible. The first goal of our budget reconciliation process should be to reduce the deficit. This actually increases it." Johnson wants to bring federal spending levels back to where they were before the pandemic, a roughly $6 trillion cut. He told Tapper the Congressional Reconciliation process represented "our only chance" to reset the country's finances. And he said he has enough Republicans on his side "to stop the process until the president gets serious about spending reduction and reducing the deficit." House Speaker Mike Johnson, who helped shepherd the megabill through a fractured Republican Caucus last week, is urging senators to refrain from making major modifications to the bill — lest they imperil its chances of making it through the House a second time. "Look, I love Ron Johnson," the speaker told Tapper, also on Sunday. "He's a dear friend. And he and I agree on our philosophy. We're limited government conservatives. We want to limit the size and scope of the government and make it work more efficiently and effectively. My response to him, and we've spoken about this over recent months, is that we're doing the best we can with the vote numbers that we have." The Wisconsin senator said he understands the House speaker's plight. But he's looking at the bigger picture. "We need to focus on spending, spending, spending," Ron Johnson said. "You don't defeat the deep state by funding it."
New York Times
16-05-2025
- Business
- New York Times
Republican Revolt Reflects a Core Party Divide Over Spending and Debt
To a small but crucial group of hard-right House Republicans, the tax and spending cut package produced by their colleagues to deliver what President Trump calls the 'big, beautiful bill' was nothing more than a homely cop-out. The handful of lawmakers who blocked their own party's sprawling domestic policy measure from advancing out of a key committee on Friday acted out of a fundamentally different view of federal spending and debt than the rest of the G.O.P. They are single-mindedly focused on slashing deficits by restructuring the government to dramatically scale back social programs, whatever the political consequences. With their party in control of the House, Senate and White House, they view their fellow Republicans as timid, squandering a golden opportunity to turn the government's finances around in a long overdue course correction. Instead, they see Republican leaders, catering to swing district members worried about their re-election, delivering a half-measure that, as far as the hard-liners are concerned, falls woefully short on cuts — and the ones it did make were gimmicky. 'I'm not going to sit here and say that everything is hunky-dory,' Representative Chip Roy, Republican of Texas and one of the leading evangelists of deep spending cuts, said on Friday as he tore into his own party's legislation. 'This is the Budget Committee. We are supposed to do something to actually result in balanced budgets, but we're not doing it.' It remains to be seen whether the anti-deficit fundamentalists are really dug in against the legislation or shopping for concessions that could allow them to claim a partial victory against deficit spending and still ultimately fall in line behind Mr. Trump. They have earned a reputation both for revolting against their own party at crucial moments and for backing down before their intransigence actually kills a top Republican priority — often without achieving what they initially demanded. But for a few days at least, the recalcitrance of Mr. Roy and his fellow deficit hawks, and their willingness to challenge a majority of their own party, has tied down the entire Republican legislative agenda. The stance of Mr. Roy and others who blocked the legislation reflects a core disconnect between them and Mr. Trump, who does not share their aversion to debt and in fact has pledged not to pursue the kind of structural changes that would rein it in. But the divide predated this president. For decades, Republicans in Congress have focused on cutting spending primarily as a way to offset the cost of large tax cuts, but have not been philosophically wedded to eliminating or substantially reducing deficits, nor willing to pay the political price for taking the action that would be necessary to do so. The few who insisted on balancing the budget and eliminating the debt were loud but lonely voices with little power to bring about that result. These days the anti-deficit evangelists have amassed more power on Capitol Hill as their party has veered sharply to the right — and have more opportunities to wield it given the tiny Republican majorities that allow even a small bloc of dissenters to sink any bill. But they are still a distinct minority compared to Republican leaders and most of the rank and file. Those lawmakers see tax cuts as the key to stimulating the economy — and winning elections — and are willing to swallow continued deficits to get them in place. The Senate Republican approach to dealing with this problem in the bill now under discussion has been to simply assert that renewing the 2017 tax cuts will not drive up deficits by even one dollar, though all projections are that they will add trillions to the national debt. From a purely political standpoint, the G.O.P. strategy is to deliver tax cuts that their constituents will feel while making spending cuts that they won't. That approach has resulted in real tension between the far and not-quite-as-far right, because the hard-liners still hold the view that deficits matter greatly, and that — as much as they love tax cuts — they can't just shrug off the huge costs of their party's legislation. Now, without the slightest prospect of any Democratic help on the bill, Republican leaders have no choice but to contend with them, because there is no hope of passing a bill if they defect. That is a tricky job because spending cuts on the scale sought by the far right come with substantial political risk given the extent to which federal aid has reached into the lives of Americans, particularly with Medicaid becoming a source of health care for growing numbers of people. Republican leaders fear that surrendering too much to the deficit hawks will end up costing them the votes, and potentially also the seats, of swing-state colleagues who are the key to keeping the G.O.P. in power in Congress. For his part, Mr. Trump, the self-proclaimed king of debt, seems mainly intent on getting a bill to sign that will allow him to proclaim victory no matter what the impact is on federal deficits. He has shown a real reluctance to being blamed for cuts that could hurt his voters. On Friday, he urged House Republicans to just get on with it. 'We don't need ''GRANDSTANDERS' in the Republican Party,' the president said in a social media post. 'STOP TALKING, AND GET IT DONE!' Anti-spending Republicans have long irritated their colleagues with their claims of fiscal purity and a condescending attitude that their fellow members of the G.O.P. just don't have the political fortitude to do what is needed to put the nation on a healthier fiscal track. Other G.O.P. lawmakers note that it is much easier to be courageous in the deep-red districts that most of them represent. As the Budget Committee considered the legislation Friday, other Republicans said they wished they could have done more to cut federal spending, but were willing to accept the political realities of the moment. They said they would back the legislation and its $1.5 trillion in cuts as a good first step toward fiscal stability and try to do more the next time. 'If we falter in taking this first step, we can't get to the next one,' said Representative Tom McClintock, Republican of California, who accused his party colleagues opposing the bill of pursuing a 'quixotic quest for perfection.' Hours after the embarrassing setback, House leaders scheduled the Budget Committee to return late Sunday night for another try, suggesting they had found a way to mollify the conservatives and let everyone declare victory — or at least were confident they would over the weekend. Top Republicans say they have no choice but to find a resolution. Passing legislation with deeper cuts might be risky, they say, but not passing legislation at all would be disastrous.
