INSTRUMENTS OF CRUELTY; FUTILE COST-CUTTING. By Gene W. Edwards. Posted 2/20/2025.

Let’s start with this, because no one will tell you the truth. Trump/Musk, via their “government efficiency commission” (DOGE) template, dodgily (DOGEly) want to cut the government’s budget by a total of “1.5 trillion dollars within the next 10 years.”

Yeah, but the national debt is now in arrears by 36.5 trillion dollars ($36,500,000,000,000) and growing. See usdebtclock.org. This year — and for the foreseeable future — we will continue to run a national budget deficit of $2,000,000,000,000 a year (2T) . . . so that within 10 years (10 X 2T) we will have added 20 trillion dollars or more to our national debt = $56,500,000,000,000!

If we reduce our national debt by a total of 1.5 trillion dollars within 10 years, which is by 150 billion dollars a year, that’s a cut of 15%, 1.5T out of 20 trillion dollars, whereas we need to cut deficit spending by two trillion dollars each year (yesterday!) for the next 10 years . . . and forever, OR ELSE!

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Our national debt, in short, is a runaway train — and the only really fix it is to TAX and cut sending at the same time, the sooner the better!

Tax? The Republicans hate tax. President George Herbert Walker Bush (Bush Sr.) promised “No new taxes” and then taxed, thereby losing his bid for another four years in presidential office. Trump has never uttered the word tax and neither has Musk.