How are we going to pay for all this shit?

Compare your statement with the One Big 'Beautiful' Bill...

What party pushed the OBBB thru?
What are the tax implications for the 'rich and businesses' of the OBBB?

Hint...it's not the Democrats. Originally Posted by RX792P

Too think there is a difference between Democrats or Republicans is what people don't understand. When the next Democrat President gets in there the spending packages will just be bigger and bigger.

a bit off thread, but my opinion is we have become a three party nation.
Democrat
Republican (often called RINOs...which really translates to Republicans in Normal Operation)...an endangered species
MAGA

Some of the Republicans actually believe in spending restraint.

Three political parties? We only have one political party, It's called the Uniparty. Deficit spending has bankrupted this country. Americans will realize it sooner or later while most will never understand because they've been indoctrinated.

a bit off thread, but my opinion is we have become a three party nation.
Democrat
Republican (often called RINOs...which really translates to Republicans in Normal Operation)...an endangered species
MAGA

Some of the Republicans actually believe in spending restraint. Originally Posted by RX792P

i would love to agree with you wholeheartedly, but the historical evidence suggests that Republicans only care about a balanced budget when a Democrat sits in the Oval Office.

i do agree tho that maggies are on a whole nother level of fiscal fuckery. Trump cares absolutely nothing about the future fiscal health of this country. he's totally fine with driving it into bankruptcy so long as he and his fellow robber barrons can party now like it's 1999..

We’re almost to the point where we’re going to have to take some calamitous actions to rectify our problems. A good first start is solving our Social Security funding so that it will continue to last for the foreseeable future.

Secondly a serious debate on raising taxes up to same levels as before the first bush tax cuts.

Thirdly a straight up 5% to 10% spending cut across the board for every single government program except SS.

We’re going to have to get serious people to work out these issues and come up with a solution that the majority of congress can live with. Originally Posted by txdot-guy

+1

Good post Txdot!

1. I would leave your #1 as is. The formula needs to be changed to fix social security since the birthrate has decreased in the USA.

2. In addition to going back to the tax tables before the Bush43 tax cuts in 2000, I would move the corporate tax rate from 20% to 25%.

3. In addition to leaving Social Security alone, I would not touch The ACA (Obamacare), Original Medicaid (signed into law by LBJ in 1965) and Medicare Part D (signed into law by Bush43). The healthcare system in the USA is complicated but with the addition of the ACA 90% of the USA population has some type of medical coverage. If you make cuts to this you will end up with less people covered. Plus, as Tiny would say cuts to the system would lead to less favorable outcomes.

If the rolling debt for the USA is 35 trillion, we will need one trillion dollar surpluses for 35 straight years to clear the debt. Going back to the tax tables before the Bush tax cuts is a good place to start.

https://www.tax-brackets.org/federaltaxtable/1999

If the rolling debt for the USA is 35 trillion, we will need one trillion dollar surpluses for 35 straight years to clear the debt. Going back to the tax tables before the Bush tax cuts is a good place to start.

https://www.tax-brackets.org/federaltaxtable/1999 Originally Posted by adav8s28

I asked Claude.AI, "Looking at the current economic environment, which would be better for the country, reversing the George W Bush tax cuts or reversing the One Big Beautiful Bill?"

## The Current Fiscal Reality

First, the baseline you need to understand how dire things are:

The FY 2025 deficit was $1.8 trillion — the result of $5.2 trillion in revenue and $7.0 trillion in spending. Interest payments on the national debt hit $970 billion, surpassing national defense and becoming the third-largest federal expenditure behind only Social Security and Medicare.

Under current projections, debt held by the public will rise from 100% of GDP today to 120% of GDP by 2035, with deficits totaling $22.7 trillion over the next decade and net interest payments rising from $1 trillion in 2025 to $1.8 trillion by 2035.

Net interest payments are projected to rise from 3.2% of GDP in 2025 to 6.3% in 2054 under current law — far exceeding the previous historical peak of 3.2% in 1991. Rising interest payments alone account for more than 100% of the increase in the unified deficit through 2054.

In plain English: **interest on the debt is now the engine driving the fiscal crisis.** The hole is compounding.

## The Bush Cuts Don't Exist Anymore — Practically Speaking

This is the crucial catch: the Bush tax cuts were **already substantially absorbed into current law.** Most of them were made permanent in 2012 (the "fiscal cliff" deal under Obama), and then the 2017 TCJA further restructured the tax code on top of them. Reversing the Bush cuts now would mean clawing back income tax rate structures that have been baked in for over a decade — politically nearly impossible and economically disruptive in a different way than simply not passing a new law.

The OBBBA, by contrast, was signed in 2025. **It is current, active, and has not yet compounded.** Much of its fiscal damage is still in front of us.

## What Reversing Each One Would Mean RIGHT NOW

### Reversing the OBBBA

CBO estimates the OBBBA will add $3.4 trillion to primary deficits, $718 billion in interest costs, and a total of $4.1 trillion to the debt through 2034. Reversing it now — before those costs fully materialize — would mean that projected trajectory never happens. You'd be stopping a bleeding wound before the blood loss compounds.

Under an alternative scenario where OBBBA's temporary provisions are made permanent and interest rates stay elevated, debt could reach 134% of GDP by 2035. Reversal would prevent that worst-case scenario.

Additionally, OBBBA would add $500 billion to the deficit in 2026 and $635 billion in 2027 alone. These are near-term hits that reversal would stop almost immediately.

### Reversing the Bush Cuts

The honest answer here is that the opportunity cost of those cuts was enormous in historical terms — they turned Clinton-era surpluses into structural deficits. But reversing them *today* would essentially mean raising income tax rates back to pre-2001 levels on brackets that have been legally in place for 13+ years. The revenue recovery would be significant on paper but the political and economic disruption would be enormous, and much of the damage to the debt trajectory has already happened and compounded through two wars, the 2008 financial crisis, COVID, and years of interest on accumulated debt.

## The Bottom Line: Which Reversal Would Benefit the Country More *Right Now*?

**Reversing the OBBBA would be more impactful for the country's current financial health**, and here's why:

**Timing:** The OBBBA's biggest costs are still ahead. Reversing it now is like stopping a dam from breaking rather than trying to drain a flood after the fact. The Bush cuts' damage is largely already baked into the existing debt mountain.

**Interest compounding:** CBO estimates that a $1 increase in the federal deficit reduces private investment by 33 cents, and average long-run interest rates increase by 2 basis points for every 1 percentage point increase in debt as a percentage of GDP. Every dollar of deficit the OBBBA adds now triggers a multiplying interest cost for decades. Stopping it stops that compounding.

**Scale at current debt levels:** With debt already at ~100% of GDP, adding $4.1 trillion more is far more dangerous than it would have been in 2001, when debt was around 32% of GDP. The same dollar of deficit does much more damage now because it piles onto a much larger and more fragile base.

**Practical feasibility:** Reversing a law passed months ago is far more politically and legally realistic than re-litigating a tax structure that's been law for 13+ years and is deeply embedded in financial planning across the economy.

**The caveat:** Supporters of the OBBBA would argue its growth provisions — particularly business investment incentives like 100% bonus depreciation — could stimulate enough productivity to partially offset costs. But as NBER researchers note, even optimistic productivity growth scenarios (0.5 percentage points above forecast annually) only reduce the 2054 debt-to-GDP ratio from 199% to about 158% — still catastrophic. The math simply doesn't work in the bill's favor.

In short: the Bush tax cuts were a more consequential historical mistake, but reversing the OBBBA would do more good *today* because you'd be preventing future damage rather than trying to undo the past.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^

That's surprisingly good. Better than I expected....

.

I asked Claude.AI, "Looking at the current economic environment, which would be better for the country, reversing the George W Bush tax cuts or reversing the One Big Beautiful Bill?" Originally Posted by Turner2099

Considering the size of the deficits the Federal Government has been running since 2001, I would say the tax table needs to change. The 7th tax bracket should have a tax rate percentage of at least 40%. We are never going to see a surplus again if we don't change the tax tables.

The only way to reduce the rolling debt is to have Federal Government budget surpluses. The last one was in 2001 for $130 billion.

https://economicsinsider.com/us-fiscal-deficit-by-year/

^^ya, you gotta go back to what worked. we weren't standing in bread lines during Clinton II while we were finally running a surplus and paying down the debt. anything else is nothing more than smoke and mirrors.

The AI synthesis in post #1791 is interesting, as it outlines a summary historical narrative of how we got from FY2000 to where we are now, comparing the expected long-term compounding effects of the debt accumulation trajectory baked into the pie by the 2003 and 2017 tax cut bills, respectively.

However, all of that is water over the dam. The germane issue now is where we are and what we are likely to do about it in the near future. (Short answer: Nothing!)

Here is the concise and straightforward way I prefer to look at it.

Federal government spending in FY2000 was about $1.8 trillion. The CBO's recent estimate of the FY2026 final tally weighs in at approximately $7.4 trillion, or 23.3% of GDP. (Note that FY2000 spending approximated 18% of GDP.)

My quick back-of-the-envelope take on a fair estimate of the additional revenue obtainable by returning all tax brackets to Clinton-era levels is that it would raise about $500 billion annually, thus covering only about 25% of our current level of deficit spending.

This should effectively point up the utter enormity of the gap, and make it easier to realize that there's no way to return to fiscal sustainability, let alone balance the budget, without taxing the American middle class at rates much closer to those levied by European social democracies.

While everyone else was wresting with the question, "How are we going to pay for all this shit?" Bernie Sanders stepped up with the solution, as was reported yesterday.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/busin...idential-race/

That's the ticket! An annual 5% wealth tax on billionaires, which will supposedly raise $4.4 trillion over 10 years.

(That's probably no more than 15% of the amount of projected deficit spending over the next 10 years if nobody does much to correct course, but never mind. That's just math. There are elections to be won, dammit!)

This will supposedly not only pay for restoration of Medicaid and SNAP cuts, but a bunch of new Medicare benefits to boot.

And, as the pitchmen used to say in those cheesy late-night TV ads, there's more!

Sanders envisions payments of $3,000 to every member of a family with a household income of less than $150K, which includes a majority of Americans. The article notes that's $12,000 for a family of four(!)

Progressives also seem oblivious to the fact that knock-on or second-order consequences of such a "billionaire's tax" would significantly harm middle-class savers and investors, but they undoubtedly count on the public to not notice such details.

Here's the full piece:

Sanders pitches $4.4 trillion tax on billionaires, in 2028 marker
Jeff Stein
6–7 minutes

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) on Monday will unveil new legislation that would raise $4.4 trillion in taxes from America’s roughly 1,000 billionaires, aiming to roughly halve their fortunes.

The plan is a nonstarter in the current Republican-controlled Congress, but could become a litmus test for candidates in the 2028 Democratic presidential primary, much like Sanders’s Medicare-for-all plan was during the 2020 presidential cycle.

Sanders’s new legislation, which expands on his prior efforts, calls for an annual 5 percent wealth tax on America’s billionaires. Revenue from the tax would be redirected to social spending programs, including $3,000 cash payments for Americans earning less than $150,000 per year, a $60,000 minimum salary for every public school teacher, and an expansion of Medicare to cover dental, vision and hearing care, among other measures.

While Sanders, 84, is not expected to run for president for a third consecutive time, the proposal could prove divisive among Democrats who do run. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, widely viewed as a top Democratic presidential candidate, has objected to a billionaire tax currently being proposed in his state. Sanders’s proposal is being introduced in the House by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-California), a co-chair of Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign who supports California’s proposed billionaire tax — and who has been testing the waters of his own presidential bid.

“This is Senator Sanders’ defining vision for our age,” Khanna said. “It is the most ambitious and transformative legislation for our times to tackle inequality in the New Gilded Age.”

The legislation comes amid a substantial increase in billionaire wealth during the first year of Trump’s presidency, driven by strong stock market gains. The total wealth of America’s billionaires rose last year by roughly 20 percent, according to Americans for Tax Fairness, a left-leaning organization. Billionaires’ political influence has risen along with their economic clout.

Sanders argues that the measure is an essentially conservative compromise that would leave most billionaires’ fortunes intact. Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s holdings, according to estimates from Sanders’s office, would go from $833 billion to $792 billion. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s would go from $220 billion to $209 billion. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s would shrink from $218 billion to $207 billion. (Bezos also owns The Washington Post.)

The amount of revenue raised would be substantial, however, and in addition to the aforementioned initiatives, would be used to provide home health care to seniors and people with disabilities through Medicaid. It would also reverse the GOP’s Medicaid cuts. The $3,000 checks would apply per person for households earning under $150,000, which would amount to $12,000 for a family of four.

Sanders’s revenue estimates were provided by Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, two economics professors at the University of California at Berkeley. The economists assume a 10 percent rate of “tax evasion/avoidance,” and argue that the existing “exit tax” for renouncing American citizenship would make doing so unattractive for the targeted billionaires.

The plan is unlikely to be backed by any Republicans, but its support even among Democrats, who have a range of opinions about taxing billionaires, remains unclear. During the party’s last contested presidential primary in 2020, several leading candidates embraced far-reaching ideas to restructure the American economy with new levies on the rich and major new spending programs. Those ideas fizzled in Congress under former president Joe Biden, who supported many of them but failed to persuade Sen. Joe Manchin III, then a Democrat from West Virginia, to go along with even a small fraction of what Sanders and many other Democrats called for.

The defeat of Biden’s ambitious “Build Back Better” agenda — which included many of the ideas Sanders is now attempting to revive — paved the way for passage of a smaller bill focused on climate and energy subsidies, after which Democrats lost control of both Congress and the White House.

Since then, the party’s policy agenda has been mostly up for grabs. Democrats appear largely unified on reversing the more than $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid and food stamps approved by Trump and congressional Republicans as part of last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill. But the party’s priorities beyond that appear unclear. Sanders’s proposal attempts to provide one potential blueprint.

Newsom has been a prominent advocate for a different approach. The governor has warned that the wealth tax currently being pushed in California would hurt his state, driving companies to flee and suppressing the innovation that has helped make Silicon Valley among the richest regions in the world.

“This will be defeated — there’s no question in my mind,” Newsom said last month of the billionaire tax. “I’ll do what I have to do to protect the state.”

Other Democrats who are cautious about raising taxes on billionaires believe the party moved too far to the left during the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, alienating potential business allies and driving them into the Republican camp.

Sanders and Khanna have taken the other side of that debate, and last month Sanders held an event with Khanna in California at which both called for passage of the measure.

“The billionaire class no longer sees itself as part of American society,” Sanders said in Los Angeles last month. “They see themselves as something separate and apart, like the oligarchs of the 18th century, the kings and the queens and the czars, they believe they have the divine right to rule and are no longer subject to democratic governance.”

i would love to agree with you wholeheartedly, but the historical evidence suggests that Republicans only care about a balanced budget when a Democrat sits in the Oval Office.

i do agree tho that maggies are on a whole nother level of fiscal fuckery. Trump cares absolutely nothing about the future fiscal health of this country. he's totally fine with driving it into bankruptcy so long as he and his fellow robber barrons can party now like it's 1999.. Originally Posted by pxmcc

Here's a notion, Ronald Reagan outspent the USSR and drove them into the dust bin of history. Clinton failed to follow up giving rise to Putin. But...that money spent wrecked an enemy which should have resulted in a smaller, less expensive, military.
Trump is spending money freely but he is starving Russia and forcing the Chinese into a corner economically. Hopefully, when the Chinese 100 year plan is defeated and Putin crawls back to Moscow we can see the payoff.

Here's a notion, Ronald Reagan outspent the USSR and drove them into the dust bin of history. Clinton failed to follow up giving rise to Putin. But...that money spent wrecked an enemy which should have resulted in a smaller, less expensive, military.
Trump is spending money freely but he is starving Russia and forcing the Chinese into a corner economically. Hopefully, when the Chinese 100 year plan is defeated and Putin crawls back to Moscow we can see the payoff. Originally Posted by Schwarzer Ritter

The timeline you gave is a little hard to follow. The Soviet Union fell apart in 1991, but Clinton didn't enter office until 1993. Putin didn’t become president until 2000 after rising to power under Boris Yeltsin.

I'm not clear how Clinton was supposed to "follow up" with someone who wasn't really in charge of Russia yet. That's a different conversation if you're talking about post-Soviet policies toward Russia in general. However, the order you're talking about doesn't really fit with the historical timeline.

The Reagan point is also a little more complicated than the "spent more than the USSR and went bankrupt" myth that keeps coming up. Most historians agree that a number of things led to the breakup: the Soviet economy had been stagnant for years, the mid-1980s oil price crash hurt their export revenues, and reforms like perestroika and glasnost under Mikhail Gorbachev showed flaws in the system that sped up the breakup.

There was definitely military pressure from the U.S. throughout the Cold War, but it wasn't the only thing that mattered. Historians like Vladislav Zubok, who wrote Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union, say that the main reasons the USSR fell apart were difficulties with its economy and politics.

^^ya, you gotta go back to what worked. we weren't standing in bread lines during Clinton II while we were finally running a surplus and paying down the debt. anything else is nothing more than smoke and mirrors. Originally Posted by pxmcc

Clinton added 1.3 trillion to the debt overall and it was Newt Gingrich and republicans who forced Clinton to agree to a balanced budget.