Americans Want the U.S. to increase spending in almost every category

[RileyG]

SMH

 

[Always in His Presence]

I am sitting in a VA clinic right now and the nurse just said the VA has had to cut back on community care because of cuts. That could hurt those with lower ratings. My husband has a high rating so he will get priority.

There have not been any cuts to the VA

Good grief.

 

[BPPLEE]

There have not been any cuts to the VA

Good grief.

They plan on cutting 80,000 jobs

https://apnews.com/article/veterans-affairs-cuts-doge-musk-trump-f587a6bc3db6a460e9c357592e165712

 

[wing2000]

I am sitting in a VA clinic right now and the nurse just said the VA has had to cut back on community care because of cuts. That could hurt those with lower ratings. My husband has a high rating so he will get priority.

Unconscionable.

If they want to find savings, go kill a major weapons, ship or aircraft program or the numerous DoD contractors. Stop firing the people who support our veterans!

 

[Bradskii]

There have not been any cuts to the VA

Perhaps you should have checked. From here: Chaos at the V.A.: Inside the DOGE Cuts Disrupting the Veterans Agency

'Among the 2,400 employees fired from the V.A. since Mr. Trump’s inauguration are workers who purchase medical supplies, schedule appointments and arrange rides for patients to see their doctors. Many are veterans themselves. All were “probationary” employees, meaning they were relatively new on the job and had fewer legal protections.

James Stancil, an Army veteran who stocked supplies for emergency and spinal injury care at a V.A. hospital in Milwaukee, said he and nearly half his shift of supply technicians lost their jobs last month.'

Now if someone had said: 'There should not have been any cuts...' then that would have been more accurate.

 

[wing2000]

They plan on cutting 80,000 jobs

https://apnews.com/article/veterans-affairs-cuts-doge-musk-trump-f587a6bc3db6a460e9c357592e165712

"That would require terminating tens of thousands of employees after the VA expanded during the Biden administration, as well as to cover veterans impacted by burn pits under the 2022 PACT Act."

Veterans have been waiting decades for the coverage provided under the PACT Act.....

 

[Fantine]

Perhaps you should have checked. From here: Chaos at the V.A.: Inside the DOGE Cuts Disrupting the Veterans Agency

'Among the 2,400 employees fired from the V.A. since Mr. Trump’s inauguration are workers who purchase medical supplies, schedule appointments and arrange rides for patients to see their doctors. Many are veterans themselves. All were “probationary” employees, meaning they were relatively new on the job and had fewer legal protections.

James Stancil, an Army veteran who stocked supplies for emergency and spinal injury care at a V.A. hospital in Milwaukee, said he and nearly half his shift of supply technicians lost their jobs last month.'

Now if someone had said: 'There should not have been any cuts...' then that would have been more accurate.

I was at the VA today and the nurse said they were told not to offer community care. Community Care is local outsourcing for specialists. Where I live, that means driving my husband 70 miles to see a specialist. He needs a test that requires an overnight stay. Because he doesn't drive, I would have to stay in a motel and possibly board the dog.
I'm OK with day trips...but last month this test could have been done locally.
Multiply what I said by 9 million vets.

 

[Bradskii]

I was at the VA today and the nurse said they were told not to offer community care. Community Care is local outsourcing for specialists. Where I live, that means driving my husband 70 miles to see a specialist. He needs a test that requires an overnight stay. Because he doesn't drive, I would have to stay in a motel and possibly board the dog.
I'm OK with day trips...but last month this test could have been done locally.
Multiply what I said by 9 million vets.

How could anyone with a moral conscience or a heart support this? If there's one group of people that should be immune from cuts to its services it's vets.

There's a club that my wife and I go regularly a short walk from where we live. It's effectively our local. It's run by the Returned Services League. I guess it's like the VFW Bars in the US except that you don't have to be a vet to join. The walls are covered with photos of those who didn't make it back from Afghanistan or Iraq or various other war zones. It's right on the beach so late afternoons on a weekend it can get packed. Young people, families with kids and babies, older vets...it's really buzzing. But at 6:00pm, every day, they dim the lights, turn off any music and everyone stands in silence and faces the eternal light burning in the corner. One of the staff says a few words and we stay silent for a while remembering the sacrifices that have been made.

We honour our vets like you do in the US. If someone was to make cuts here like they are making to the services that you had...there'd be uproar. I hope that someone who has the power to change what's happening has the guts to stand up and say 'No. Not on my watch'.

 

[SimplyMe]

There have not been any cuts to the VA

Good grief.

As others have pointed out, there have been cuts to the VA with more coming. While I'm sure you'll complain about the source, this article does a good job of highlighting some of the issues going on. It would have been much worse if DOGE had been allowed to cancel thousands of contracts but, when it was found that many of the contracts covered mission critical services, the contracts merely went into "review" by Trump's VA administrator, so they will only cancel those that don't directly impact patient services (you know, things like "community care" like Fantine is talking about).

Listening to the VA Administrator, he's saying that they will start performing the tasks in house for the contracts they cancel -- such as one he highlighted, leadership conferences. The issue is, thousands have already been fired with plans to fire another 80,000 (though none are supposed to be doctors or nurses). My question, since you are already forcing current employees to pick up the jobs of the more than 15% of people who are losing their jobs, where will these left over people find time to do the extra jobs to do the work from the contracts that are cancelled? And this, again, after the VA had expanded the number of veterans served by 37%, about 800,000 veterans, because of the PACT act, and it is the people hired to handle the increase in work that are being terminated.

As someone that was also at a VA hospital today, this seems to be a recipe for disaster.

 

[mark46]

according to You.Gov

https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/Government_Spending_poll_results_aM0fEtB.pdf

The big disconnect is why they vote for the people who are least likely to do what they want. It's totally perplexing, but hopefully a sign that they will wake up.

See Question 2 in this poll.

72% want increased health care services. 71% want increased veterans services. 70% want increased mental health services. 72% want more disaster relief. And so forth, and so forth.

And in Washington, billionaires Musk, Trump, Lutnick (Commerce) and Bessent (Treasury) are slashing and burning, saying it will only be "short term pain," even though none has even the foggiest idea of what it's like to be one of the 40% of Americans who are "one paycheck away from poverty." To these Americans, a crisis is the check in the mail arriving a day late. Missing a paycheck could mean a car getting repossessed, an eviction, etc.

We need to have leaders who understand the impact of their decisions on the 99%. Instead, we have leaders who would consider it a hardship to fly first class because their private jet is in the shop for repairs.

40% of Americans only one missed paycheck away from poverty

Many otherwise middle-class people are "liquid-asset poor," meaning they can't withstand even a brief financial shock

www.cbsnews.com

The vast majority
1) want more services
2) believe that the federal government is very wasteful
3) want to pay lower taxes

Is the answer to vote for those who want to spend more and more, and who will continue to waste more and more (given the current governmental structure) AND end up with our debt going up and up and up,
============
The answer REALLY IS what Clinton and Gingrich and the other wanted so long ago. The goal should be to balance the budget and retire the debt. We need a balanced budget, with exceptions for exceptional circumstances. Clinton's commission (with Gingrich pushing all the way) cut 377,000 federal jobs, balanced the budget and had a 10-year plan to retire the debt and solidify Social Security and Medicare for the next 50 years.
========
The people elected the party that they thought might reduce the size of the federal government.

OBVIOUSLY, the people didn't want Musk-led destruction of the federal government. However, if some stand their ground and prevent reduction in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the people might accept what is happening.

IMO, the most domestic harm is coming from Trump having been forced to accept the idiotic anti-science positions of his base, He needed to get elected. The largest negative domestic effect of Trump will be from the results of the the anti-vax and anti-research and science agendas. The MAGA movement is setting this country's health care back at least 20 years. Measles was considered conquered in 2000, after the development and use f the safest and best vaccine we have. Rural areas will be hardest hit with the spread of measles, polio and whatever else. We can only HOPE that Kennedy will ALLOW the US to have annual flu shots without 5-10 years of testing.

Just BTW, this is NOT Trump. He and Kushner just wants to be part of the rich and powerful. Trump was responsible for the one of the greatest health miracles in my lifetime, forcing companies to develop the COVID vaccine in record speed. Recall when Trump campaigned in FL and told folks to be vaccinated? He was roundly booed.

 

[Fantine]

You forget that we had the biggest deficits under Trump due to tax cuts overwhelmingly tipped to the wealthiest and corporations.
Tax cuts have never delivered widespread prosperity and lower deficits. Never. Not once. Not in our 250 year history. Never.
So if we want a balanced budget, when should we lower income taxes? Never.

 

[Fantine]

Reducing corporate and businesses tax rates from a high rate of 35% down to around 20% proved to be very, very helpful for a significantly strong majority of all Americans. Consequently, revenue grew from almost all of the different sources and types of federal taxes.

I just fact-checked your incorrect allegation.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act Failed To Deliver Promised Benefits

Benefits of the business tax changes in Trump’s 2017 tax bill were costly and did not trickle down to workers and families.

www.americanprogress.org

 

[Pommer]

Unconscionable.

If they want to find savings, go kill a major weapons, ship or aircraft program or the numerous DoD contractors. Stop firing the people who support our veterans!

Geee, if we only hadn’t exported war for the past 100 years!

 

[Oompa Loompa]

Wow, 10% is a significant majority? Or less. Most went to stick buybacks.
What improved the economy? Biden's infrastructure plan. Student debt relief. Lower prescriptions. Ending Trump's executive orders.

I think you forgot about the pandemic. I don't blame you. But Trump's economy was booming so well that Democrats tried to give Obama credit for it even though Obama policies only brought 8 years of stagnant to mediocre growth.

 

[Nithavela]

How could anyone with a moral conscience or a heart support this? If there's one group of people that should be immune from cuts to its services it's vets.

US veterans have been shafted for way longer than the current or last administration.

They are a small group, they already have given their service and are only a drain on ressources with their physical and mental health needs, their difficulties of adjusting to civilian life and their bad reputation.

Ideally, soldiers die at the end of service after giving their worth in training and equipment, so that their drain on ressources is minimised.

 

[Akita Suggagaki]

But Trump's economy was booming so well..

By what metric and how did they try to take credit for it?
If a president simply maintains an upward trend should he "get credit" for it?

Well, we wont have to think about it much in this term.
We are witnessing a devastating turn downward in almost every metric thanks to Trump and Musk and their callous, thoughtless decisions.

 

[Vambram]

I just fact-checked your incorrect allegation.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act Failed To Deliver Promised Benefits

Benefits of the business tax changes in Trump’s 2017 tax bill were costly and did not trickle down to workers and families.

www.americanprogress.org

The analysis in your article is faulty and not factual in my opinion. My assertions regarding those various tax cuts are well known by what myself and the majority of businesses know we experienced.

 

[Oompa Loompa]

Democrats take credit when economy is good.

democrats take credit for trump's economy at DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo. Privacy, Simplified.

duckduckgo.com

Democrats blame Trump when economy is bad.

democrats blame trump for economy at DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo. Privacy, Simplified.

duckduckgo.com

The lesson learned is that Democrats deserve credit for anything that is good, and Trump is to blame for everything that is bad. The American voters are tired Democrats shifting blame and not taking responsibility for anything. It is all just white noise that very few are paying attention to anymore.

 

[Fantine]

The analysis in your article is faulty and not factual in my opinion. My assertions regarding those various tax cuts are well known by what myself and the majority of businesses know we experienced.

Important research first published in 2022 by authors affiliated with the Joint Committee on Taxation and Federal Reserve Board that matched corporate tax returns with information returns for firms’ shareholders and workers found that the benefits of the TCJA’s corporate tax reductions did not trickle down.10 In fact, the study found that “earnings do not change for workers in the bottom 90% of the within-firm distribution, but do increase for workers in the top 10%, and increase particularly sharply for firm managers and executives.” The economists further noted that executive pay hikes were only weakly correlated with sales, profits, or sales growth and “are not clearly linked to stronger firm performance.” ....
Other analysts’ findings echo the IMF study. The Congressional Research Service notes:

Although investment grew significantly, the growth patterns for different types of assets do not appear to be consistent with the direction and size of the supply-side incentive effects one would expect from the tax changes. This potential outcome may raise questions about how much longer-run growth will result from the tax revision.15

These quotes are from the article I provided. They are based on statistics from the Federal Reserve Board and the International Money Fund. Your alternative facts are based on campaign statements from a president who has been found, statistically and historically, to have made thousands of inaccurate claims during his first term.

 

[Vambram]

My facts are based upon reality, not campaign statements.