Another No-Bid Contract to Gild Horses on DC Bridge

Servus said:

Is that due to what's being done for the sesquicentennial? Because those are the peanuts I was referring to.

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essentialsaltes said:

What has become of all the obscure waste that was allegedly exposed? There would be room for the peanuts.

But instead, for some obscure reason, the deficit is still going up.

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durangodawood said:

You compared this party prep waste to the entire Biden fiscal situation. So its reasonable to bring up the overall Trump fiscal situation - which is even worse!

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• Skyrocketing Interest Costs: Because the national debt is so massive and interest rates remain elevated, the government is spending hundreds of billions of dollars just to pay interest to investors.
• An Aging Population: Roughly 10,000 Baby Boomers retire every day. This creates automatic, legally mandated increases in spending for Social Security and Medicare.
• Rising Healthcare Costs: The per-person cost of providing medical care via Medicare and Medicaid continues to climb faster than the overall economy is growing.
• Tax Code Limits: The current U.S. tax system is simply not designed to bring in enough revenue to match federal spending commitments. Recent policies like the One Big Beautiful Bill Act tax cuts have further widened this gap, though some of it is being partially offset by a large surge in tariff revenue.

Servus said:

Since I'm not an economist I resorted to asking my buddy AI about that.

Why is the deficit still going up?

The federal budget deficit keeps growing due to a permanent structural mismatch—the government legally spends far more than it collects in taxes.

Four main drivers are pushing the numbers higher:

• Skyrocketing Interest Costs: Because the national debt is so massive and interest rates remain elevated, the government is spending hundreds of billions of dollars just to pay interest to investors.
• An Aging Population: Roughly 10,000 Baby Boomers retire every day. This creates automatic, legally mandated increases in spending for Social Security and Medicare.
• Rising Healthcare Costs: The per-person cost of providing medical care via Medicare and Medicaid continues to climb faster than the overall economy is growing.
• Tax Code Limits: The current U.S. tax system is simply not designed to bring in enough revenue to match federal spending commitments. Recent policies like the One Big Beautiful Bill Act tax cuts have further widened this gap, though some of it is being partially offset by a large surge in tariff revenue.

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Pommer said:

Capitalism is failing?
Whhhaaat?

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