Originally published at: ‘No State’ Can Afford To Mitigate GOP Budget Cuts, and ‘That’s the Point’ - TPM – Talking Points Memo
When issues such as abortion were raised on the 2024 campaign trail, President Donald Trump would often wave away his allies’ hardline anti-abortion stances, hiding behind his professed belief in states’ rights to make their own decisions about whether to maintain or restrict access to reproductive health care. Post-election, the truth came out: Trump was…
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Republican members of congress, both house and senate, should throw themselves a damned ‘mission accomplished’ parade right down Pennsylvania avenue.
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OH, They will have a celebratory parade alright. The American public is just not invited.
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VIP invitations to pootie, kim jong-un, and the bone saw prince. They can be guests of honor on the reviewing stand.
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At the end of the day it’s the lying that riles me most. The stand up there, put on that smug grin and lie right in the faces of your own people, those you say you represent, hypocritical bullshit lying.
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Anybody want to bet there’s a major budget increase for GOP congressional member’s security tucked inside the Big Bogus Bill?
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That’s just them channeling St. Ronnie.
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And they are not done yet. Leave no humanity, kindness, empathy, Jesus-y thing standing.
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Time to let MAGA counties sink or swim
on their own. No more subsidies from blue cities/counties. You voted for loss of medicaid and education spending? You got it.
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This whole shit show is actually a really good illustration of the structural deficit.
If the Federal budget was in any way close to balanced, the cut in the Fed payments for these programs could be picked up by the states, but of course we’re running massive deficits.
Total Fed spend in 2024 is $6.75T, total revenue $5.0T, so the deficit is already ~$1.8T, or 27% (which is of course already absurdly large). TSF cuts a chunk out of the revenue, by cutting taxes, and less out of spending, because every bullet is sacred and deficits don’t matter if you’re a Republican.
So he’s chucking already unfunded mandates at the states, who can’t run a deficit, so can’t raise taxes enough to cover both the spend that was thrown at them and the implicit deficit contained in those costs.
If the Fed budget was closer to balanced, and the spending cuts and tax cuts were more aligned, CA could increase state taxes to offset (even though we already ship $83B out of state in net transfers to the Feds). But we can’t make up that huge deficit spending without insane tax increases (as the USA is borrowing 27 cents out of every dollar we spend). In theory, Federal tax cuts should reduce the net transfer out of CA to redneckistan and reduce the overall combined tax rates on Californians.
Of course, the last time the Fed budget was close to balanced was in 2001, so all this is in the unicorns and rainbows category of wishful thinking. Plus the CA uniparty rule is staggeringly incompetent so it’d cost more to run these programs locally than the Feds spend, anyway. And it also handwaves away the huge reliance of CA tax revenue on a handful of large liquidity events each year, as it’s mostly income tax.
The deficit is for sure too damn high - the budget doesn’t need to be balanced but the deficit should be a lot less, as a smaller one (under 7-10%) you can inflate/grow your way out of, but one this large just compounds especially as the cost of borrowing will start to dramatically increase (this has absolutely nothing to do with the Fed rate, and everything to do with the perceived reliability of the US to repay bonds, as the cost is set over time from T bill auctions, not the fed rates that TSF will slash to 0% by a flick of his tiny Sharpie)
So economics in action.
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A key consideration here is that federal taxes are graduated (the higher the income, the higher the tax rate) while most state income taxes are not. High income earners and investors avoid paying when the government expense moves from the federal to the state budgets.
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It’s the golden rule; he who has the gold makes the rules. The US is becoming a full-fledged kleptocracy.
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This period reminds me of something that Gen. Grant said when he took over leadership of the Union Army. (Roughly paraphrased) “I’m tired of hearing people worrying about what Bobbie Lee might do to us. I want him worried about what I’m going to do to him.”
We don’t beat the slime balls by wringing our hands, we beat them by fighting for our constitution. (Happy 4th of July everyone!)
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