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I’m not a mathematician or anything, but it seems like this adds up to Republicans dramatically increasing the deficit while the wealthy pay a lot less in taxes. No wonder Trump wanted to eliminate the debt ceiling during his presidency. pic.twitter.com/XUiQuO7CCt

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) February 12, 2025

 75% of federal spending (according to the Secretary of the Treasury) goes to 5 areas, in descending order:

Social Security 

Defense 

Health

Net Interest 

Medicare 

The rest is about $1 trillion of the $6.75 trillion in federal spending; Income security; Veterans benefits; education and training; natural resources; transportation; “other.”

So what do we cut? Transportation? (No more air traffic controllers? No NTSB to investigate accidents? No more highway funding?) VA? Natural resources (abandon all the national parks and public lands? What, then, of “Drill, baby, drill”?) Eliminate every bit of it, and you still don’t hit $1.5 trillion. So, what, the interest? Default on government bonds? How ‘bout public health? Cutting that would be popular.

IIRC, Social Security is part of government spending, but not of the budget, as it is funded by the social security tax, independent of any other government income. So that really can’t be part of the budget reduction. Although the House still might want to claim it as part of the spending reduction (see Clay Higgins, below). Yeah, that’ll happen.

Back, then, to the six categories and the other $500 billion. Cut it from defense? Fat chance. Medicare? They don’t call it the third rail for nothing. I can’t be sure,  but I don’t see how agriculture subsidies fit into one of the five categories. That means those have to be eliminated, along with the entire Department of Agriculture, just to get to $1 trillion. I don’t see that working, anymore than I see Katie Britt voting to eliminate health research funding (which I assume would have to come out of “Health”).

In other words, I don’t see this House budget plan surviving its first encounter with reality. And the Republicans will, as Ron says, end up doing what they always do: increasing the deficit. While making the rich richer, richer.

In the meantime, Speaker Johnson needs all the votes he can get:

Clay Higgins is pissed off at Mike Johnson tonight. pic.twitter.com/9PeelekYoH

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) February 12, 2025

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*Yes, I’m aware Higgins thinks $1.5 trillion is not a big enough cut. That just means Johnson can’t get there from here. Or Johnson saw Higgins’ post and  accommodated him. But $1.5 trillion is certain to lose GOP senators, as well as some GOP House members, whether or not it keeps Higgins. 😈