Of course the new leading message from the Democrats is that Trump and Republicans have massively cut social programs in order to fund tax cuts for billionaires. Would that the first part were true. This is one of the most ancient lies spewed by the Dem party and dutifully amplified by the media. In fact, as usual, social spending, including Medicaid and food stamps, has not been reduced at all, the rate of growth in spending has merely been slowed. There will be little impact on those who truly need support and the amount of fraud and waste will continue relatively unchecked. A few slackers may have to actually work to pay for shelter, food and medical care, instead of sponging off the taxpayers. Republicans never fail to disappoint by their reckless refusal to acknowledge fiscal reality and actually reduce spending.
And other than retaining the existing tax rates, which are highly progressive, the main provisions in regard to taxes benefit low-income people, such as eliminating tax on tips and reducing, almost to nothing, the amount of social security payments subject to federal income tax. There were multiple opportunities to eliminate some of the egregious tax scams available only to the very rich, like the use of private foundations, but Democrats were strongly opposed to them, as billionaires are actually one of the two main pillars of financial support for the party.
Absurd stories were written about a supposed federal budget surplus in June and linking it to increased tariff revenue. There was no budget surplus in June, the timing of certain payments made it appear that revenues exceeded payments but they didn’t, there actually was likely a $100 billion plus deficit and we are on track for another $2 trillion budget deficit for the year, with an equivalent amount of debt added to the near $40 trillion dollar pile. Nothing has changed about the impending fiscal disaster.
Marco Rubio, who would and will make a wonderful President some day, laid off a few State Department employees to much gnashing of teeth from the media. Everyone of those laid off, as far as I can tell, is a whacked extremist Dem. Federal government employment has risen at an alarming clip and these few layoffs still leave far more employees in the department than existed even five years ago. As far as I am concerned, this is not nearly enough layoffs, we need more like 20,000 to 30,000 layoffs in that Department alone. And if you want to puke about where your tax dollars go, just take a look at the sub-agency org chart, look at all the offices of this and offices of that, all with a head making hundreds of thousands a year and getting fat pensions. Federal government employment has come to be nothing more than a feeding trough for Democrats–whackos are hired with the understanding that they will implement every bizarre policy they can think of and with the certainty that they will recycle a large portion of their excessive compensation to the Dem party. Good riddance to every one of them.
All people should look at the monthly treasury statement. It gives a YTD report along with the monthly report.
The YTD for the June report shows an income of $1,349 billion under the heading of social insurance and retirement – I assume this is from the social security tax of 12.4% with split responsibility between employee and employer while self-employed pay the full 12.4%. Upper income limit when tax is no longer collected is $176.100. Medicare tax is 2.9% with split responsibility between employee and employer and no upper income limit. I believe this collection is mainly for part A.
Expenses YTD for what I consider entitlements are $1,181 billion social security, $723 billion Medicare and $715 billion for health – not sure what falls under health expenses.
It will be hard to address this, to many people have a net gain from this spending and not enough people realize the harm it is doing.
I did see reading farther in the report it does give a breakdown under heading of social insurance and retirement receipts, which I am not well versed to understand all the sources.
Yes, that is a great report. the other health is the Obamacare subsidies