Democrats may have shifted the American mindset on healthcare,

The only negative people have on the tax cut is how much it'd drive up the deficit

but Republicans have now forever changed how Americans think about taxes

If the deficit for fiscal year 2018 really will be only $176 B like the treasury report says it is, the we've got some amazing news on our hands

I think the federal shutdown may have had something to do with the surplus

Anyways, if stuff like this keeps up alongside the bonuses and the cuts in taxes, CRUMBS act, then there's absolutely nothing they can do with the stock market to fuck over Trump.

I'm having a good day

https://www.atr.org/list

@FLanon when was the last time we ran a surplus ?

under Clinton

so, on a month by month basis, it's never been a surplus since then ? I know it was a surplus on a yearly basis under Clinton

@🎃Boo-ton🎃 I'm not sure about that on a month to month basis

Yearly, yeah, it was Clinton. I think between then and now we must have had one month which was a surplus.

Trump's not really fiscally conservative tbh

he thinks the debt can go away by increasing revenue,
but it will never enough for that, he'd have to make significant cuts to the healthcare programs

Unfortunately

Looked it up, Sept. 2017 was a surplus month

We definitely have to be much more efficient on healthcare programs, that's the main issue with the system

Medicare Part D bars the government from negotiating with drug companies to lower prices

I wish Trump would look more at these kind of budget issues more closely, and cut in the military as well, but it's a small issue for me.

Probably going to get shat on for this, but running a federal surplus is going to be very harmful to our economy

Clinton helped set up the stage for the financial crisis by running up huge surpluses, leaving the private sector to run a deficit. Bush brought that back down when his deficit helped us grow like around 5% of the GDP, but the private sector moved back to taking on deficits due to lender fraud.

You have to look at this politically. Even if your theory is correct, the thing is the idea of a tax CUT making the debt lower is optically a victory. I personally don't believe in the idea of having large debt being okay because I don't trust the fed to handle our money and interest benevolently. We can theorize all we want about this, and I'll read more about economics to make myself more educated on this kind of stuff, but as it stands, I'm in this for the social and political issues. My idea of winning the economics battle is making it so where single-income families can be viable again so someone can stay and take care of the kids.

Politically, having large public debt isn't the problem. Having large private debt is. If you want single-income families or double-income families to be viable, then you want them to save and invest more. I agree that tax cuts on the lower and middle income class is great but so is increasing government spending.

@snickers one of the big drawbacks of having the Government spending stimulate the economy is that the government wastes more so it's not as effective.

Waste on what

Stimulating the economy

No like what does the government waste money on

Like everything it does is usually more expensive then the private sector. Money is also sent to thing with very low return on investment

Either way, my point is that government spending into the economy is what helps drive the private sector savings, and it is up the congress to appropriate the budget so that the money is used for the public good rather than just a few people

Like when Obama gave tens of billions of dollars to that Solaris (Spelling?) company and it was all embezzled or waisted then shut down a year or so later

@Snickers you have a very interesting theory. I never heard it before. There may be something to it

It's not a theory really

But if you're interested in it, search up Modern Monetary Theory

What about inflation though? Since the government is just printing money doesn't this result in $ being worth less?

Inflation is a problem and that's what we should be focused on, not deficits or balancing the budget. However, inflation usually isn't a problem if the money being spent out in the government is used to reinvigorate idle capacity like human resources, goods, services, etc.

That's a quite simple explanation but if you want to read up on what MMT thinks of inflation, just read this article (unfortunately its kind of long) http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=10554

I'll talk to you more about this later since I am busy atm

https://www.axios.com/midterm-migraines-for-the-democrats-1518994813-bff84c4c-4e3c-4f46-a63b-84db98847614.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=organic

>Republicans have the wrong agenda

what the fuck does that even mean