First, what are the correct numbers?
The numbers I find show that it would require less than $300 billion to bring down the current deficit to the level of last year's, or lower. Why shouldn't this be possible?
Straight from
www.whitehouse.gov. The Budget Of The United States - Fiscal Year 2023 - Summary Tables
Discretionary spending $1.639 trillion
Non-miiltary. Spending. $ .837 trillion
Mandatory Spending. $.5.625 trillion
Deficit $1.176 trillion
The above doesn't seem to be in the source you cite, and $1.176 seems incorrect. It's good to first get the numbers correct. It's confusing about the different sources.
The 2023 deficit is somewhere between 1,414,407,000,000 and 1,580,776,000,000 trillion, according to
https://www.usdebtclock.org/ , not 1.176 trillion, which would be a decrease of the deficit from the previous year. You're saying Biden's 2023 budget REDUCES the deficit. I think that's incorrect.
The increase of the current deficit could easily be eliminated by doing modest spending cuts or tax increases. No one is giving any reason why it's not possible to do that. Saying it won't happen is beside the point. It could be done, and then there'd be no serious reason to not raise the debt ceiling enough the pay this year's budget. At least we'd be going the right direction, with the deficit decreasing by a small amount.
Biden's 2024 budget deficit will be still higher.
This 2023 deficit is higher than 2022, which was about 1.38 trillion (
https://www.google.com/search?q=usa...j0i22i30l7.6133j0j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 ). No one is giving a reason why we need to increase the deficit beyond what it was a year ago. Maybe the thinking is that "incrementalism" is a way to slowly keep raising the debt higher and higher, without it being noticed in each step along the way. There is no legitimate reason to adopt this incrementalist higher-debt crusade. The reasonable spending cuts (or tax increases) to prevent that incremental higher and higher debt are possible.
Probably .5% across-the-board cut on every spending program would be more than enough. The sky would not fall.
The Budget is not the Koran. Some of it can be changed without Allah sending fire from Heaven or a lightning bolt to strike us dead.
How much? The GOP Congress members have all signed the Grover Norquist oath to never raise taxes, no matter what. Google Grover Norquist oarh for that. The GOP, despite very recent disclaimers, wants to slash Social Security et al deeply. Each Trump initial budget plan slashed all safety net programs deeply. Trump could not sell that, and neither did many Norquististas on the GOP side.
Let's get real. Look at the pretty numbers. And read the GOP room. You can sit there and bellow cut spending and raise taxes, now, do the numbers for us.
Our deficit for 2023 is $1.176 trilions. And then we have the $31 trilion National Debt.
At $1 trilion a year, it would take 31 years to eliminate that.
Where is the "$1.176 trillions" from? It doesn't seem to be in your source above. And nevermind the "eliminate" National Debt rhetoric.
Future deficits are projected at ~$ 550 billions IF BIDEN GETS HIS TAX RAISES ON THE WEALTHY. Meanwhile the GOP wants to make Trump's massive tax cuts, due to expire in 2025, permanent. Do you SEE the problems with balancing the budget now?
Stop with that "balancing the budget" nonsense. That's not the issue. It's about reducing the deficit.
We don't have a deficit problem, we have a GOP problem. How do you propose to deal realistically with that?
How do we bell that cat?
By not raising the Debt Ceiling.
From there we'd have 2 choices: somehow raise the revenue to pay the bondholders, by Executive Order, which is a real possibility (like Nixon impounded funds which had been allocated). Nothing prevents it from happening again.
But if instead we then let the bondholders get shafted, there'd be no more deficits for many years, and we'd have to cut the spending by 30% or 40% --
massive meat-ax
in order to stay within the tax revenue raised. You can't pretend that we could pay all the budget spending demands even if there's no added debt. There would be FORCED spending cuts, by Executive Order, but also maybe the President can force some kind of revenue increase, even tax increase, without Congress. Even though it's illegal. He'd have to do it anyway.
It would be far preferable to have modest spending cuts or tax increases or both.