Politics With Friends - Part I.

Seek first to understand.

Recently, I was talking with a friend about the 2024 election and mentioned I would be keen to here is political opinions. He shared them with me as such:

1. Reduction of Government and Government Spending.
2. A Stronger Border Policy and Having a Wall.
3. Term Limits.
4. Trans Stuff.

I would like to discuss these in a a series of posts, that I will link to as I complete them.

Intention

First, a few words about my friend, who I greatly admire: He is a patient, kind, and caring father, husband, and friend. Thank you for allowing me to have this discussion.

My intention is not to pick an argument or question him, but to better understand some of the points that I may not currently understand about his opinions and beliefs.

I would like to articulate my thoughts and current understanding in a series of posts

1. To contribute to my own edification
2. Give these complex and nuanced topics the respect and thought they deserve.

I want to have thought provoking discussions that respect the necessary nuance of these topics, and clarifying my own thoughts via long-form writing seems like a good idea.

Reduction of Government and Government Spending

I see two points:

1. Reduction of Government
2. Reduction of Government Spending

I’m going to write first about Reduction of Government Spending. Why? Becuase it is something quantifiable, and data is involved, and I like data.

Reduction of Government Spending

Is this a problem? Let’s find out.

I think it is important to have a solid understanding of the current state of Government Spending if we are going to discuss what to reduce.

I think USA Facts ^{1 2} is a great resource for this information, and as such will be using their information. All figures are relative to the time of writing in March of 2025, and may or may not have been updated if you’re reading this in the future.

• How much does the government spend per year?

  • In 2024 approximately $6.8 Trillion.

• How is it spent? ³

• How much does the government take in per year?

  • In 2024 approximately $4.9 Trillion.

• Where does the income come from?

  • Taxes

The rest are various other things like Federal Reserve Earnings, Railroad Retirement Taxes, Estate and Gift Taxes, Sale of Resources, etc. and are largely inconsequential sources of revenue.

Now that we have a foundation, I would like to revisist the concept of Reducing Government Spending and ask:

Where should we make cuts?

Where, and specifically, how much, should we reduce?

I think the more salient question might be how should we get the deficit reduced, or ideally, even to a surplus? That could be through cutting spending, it could also be through raising additional revenue.

I intend to look into potential solutions to balancing the budget and attempt to address them in future posts.

Presidents

As this conversation was sparked by a discussion of support for different prediential candidates, I would like to provide the data of debt added for several of the most recent presidents. ⁷

Debt and deficit are complex topic (e.g. madatory vs/ discretional spending, and publicly held vs foreign held debt) and it certainly deserves a more, thorough analysis. Anecdotally, (and counter-intuitively to my previous beliefs), Republican administrations end up adding more national debt than Democrat administrations.

I have long heard of the Republican Party as the party of the “Fiscally Responsible” - Perhaps that quip deserves more thorough analysis. My gut says that tax cuts end up increasing the debt under Republican administrations, but I have not researched it…

Footnotes