At least officially, the stated goal is to eliminate the deficit, which at least...

pjc50 · 2025-01-22T16:28:24 1737563304

I expect a lot of noise about it, then an expansion of the deficit for tax cuts, followed by more noise about how evil the deficit is.

avgDev · 2025-01-22T17:23:05 1737566585

If we look historically since Nixon, Biden had the smallest deficit growth of 17%. Trump had 34%.

https://www.investopedia.com/us-debt-by-president-dollar-and...

Republicans do not bring up deficit when they are in power.

tstrimple · 2025-01-22T19:36:22 1737574582

On the contrary. Republicans universally "bring up" the deficit when in power. They only ever talk about it during Democratic administrations though.

avgDev · 2025-01-22T19:43:08 1737574988

Many republican candidates talked about deficit, including Trump. Then in power introduced budget cuts.

kristianbrigman · 2025-01-22T18:55:33 1737572133

Interesting… I had looked here: https://www.thebalancemoney.com/us-deficit-by-year-3306306

(quick google search, first result)

Which seems to show a different story. But looks like there is a lot of analysis on the numbers which can be done? (Eg I saw something in your article about ‘Biden will contribute 1.9T to the debt by 2031’.. even if he hadn’t gotten reelected, he wouldn’t be in office in 2031, so this includes the long-term effects of policies?)

surgical_fire · 2025-01-22T16:23:42 1737563022

I wonder if I would be happier if I was as naive as a this.

kristianbrigman · 2025-01-22T16:32:32 1737563552

Maybe, but it’s not like it hasn’t happened before… Clinton (yes, a democrat!) campaigned on balancing the budget, and iirc it actually was for a few years. In his case I don’t think taxes changed much either direction.

surgical_fire · 2025-01-22T20:25:02 1737577502

Oh I was talking specifically about tax cuts because of a more efficient government.

Budgets can be balanced, of course. In some contexts it may be harder to do.

ianburrell · 2025-01-22T21:34:21 1737581661

Clinton made tax increase in 1993 with 39.3% top tax rate. It was a big part of the budget balancing that resulted in surplus.