The Budget: A Balancing Act

I don’t know why I’m sitting around during the summer writing about the United States budget but it has suddenly become interesting to me (Iran war, new ballroom, etc) so I guess I’m gonna do it.

There is already a Congressional standing committee on the budget, the chairman of which used to be Lindsey Graham. I had half a mind to call him up and find out what that committee has been doing for the past two years, but I missed the window, while the interest on the debt has gone up to $1 trillion and the debt itself has spiraled to approximately $39.34 trillion— a figure that fluctuates daily based on federal borrowing and spending.

That averages roughly $114,653 per citizen.

Don’t they realize most Americans don’t make $114,653 a year? Did you get $114,653 of benefit from your government last year?

Republicans talk a lot about the budget and fiscal responsibility. Democrats don’t even bother talking about it. Unfortunately, Republicans have to contend with Donald Trump, the billionaire builder whose ballroom, reflecting pool, and arch are not in line with any austerity measures.

Yes, but we got rid of all those people in the Deep State! That should have saved us some change.

Doge did get rid of 378,000 federal employees. Roughly 83% turned out to be voluntary resignations or retirements, but we still have many fewer employees than during the Biden administration.

In theory this is a good thing because, as you may know, any big organization has to “right size” every once in a while. (See Microsoft, Oracle, or Meta.)There are always poor performers, or people who were temporarily hired while somebody else was on maternity leave and then were never let go. Big corporations always can spare some employees. So can government.

However, the government also had to hire 127,000 new people. It probably needed people with skill sets that didn’t exist when the Boomers got their Civil Service jobs, or people who were essential even though Elon Musk’s troops didn’t know why.

So the federal workforce netted out to be about 250,000 employees less. A few agencies took really big hits, like the Department of Education, which lost 45.6% of its workforce, the Small Business Administration (37%), the General Services Administration, and of course USAID, which went into the wood chipper whole hog (mixed metaphor).

At the same time we cut all these people, we managed to raise government spending, which went up 4% in 2025. According to official sources, the key drivers of the increased spending were Medicare, Medicaid, and other safety net programs. Really? What about Iran, Venezuela, Israel?

The Treasury has merely said that spending was up $142 billion in 2025.

We dumb libtards froth at the mouth over expenditures like $500 million in a no-bid contract for the ballroom, and $16 million in another no-bid contract for the reflecting pool, and so on. (The reflecting pool is full of algae, and has already been vandalized.)

At this point in our government’s life we should not have nice things. We don’t deserve them. I’d rather replace the SNAP benefits we cut from Arizona’s children than build a ballroom.

Still, nobody seems to attack the real problems: Medicare, Medicaid, and Defense, which has now been aptly renamed War. What did we do with our War budget? We did a half-assed regime change in Venezuela and we started a war in Iran. Nobody wanted either one of those things. I believe we could have held them off for another year or so and gotten the budget under control.

Like all taxpayers, I have theories about Medicare, Medicaid, and national security. I think I’ll give you the benefit of some of them even if they’re wrong. They very well may be, because what do I know? I’m not supposed to know. That’s why I vote. But shouldn’t somebody somewhere in Washington know how to run a government?

In lieu of any activity inside those hallowed halls, there is a movement among ordinary citizens to balance the budget, and a volunteer committee is convening to seek donations for a public relations/lobbying campaign that will make voting for a balanced budget more palatable.

Imagine. We are actually doing donations, think Go Fund Me, for balanced budget efforts. Maybe next week I’ll have a link to the campaign so we all can contribute.