It doesn’t matter if you are a Republican or Democrat: Math is math Don’t blame Ken Paxton for saying privately he is ready to cut “mandatory spending,” which means Social Security and Medicare. The Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Texas was recorded saying “we have to suck it up” and make cuts — “reasonable cuts” — to mandatory spending, according to the Texas Tribune on Thursday.
Paxton is only saying what most Republican politicians believe, although they are usually careful not to say it publicly (or maybe even privately). They will need to cut Social Security and Medicare to pay for their tax cuts. I am not saying that because I am out to get the Republicans.
I am saying it because I can do math. You can have tax cuts, or you can have the Social Security and Medicare spending you expected. Don’t Short Yourself offers weekly money tips to help you earn it, stack it and grow it.
I would like to receive updates and special offers from Dow Jones and affiliates. I can unsubscribe at any time. All this talk about waste, fraud and abuse, about some mythical trillion-dollar pot of gold at the end of the DOGE rainbow that will pay for everything, is just baloney.
The sad thing about this is that the people who most need to hear this will dismiss it as “fake news.” Apparently even math is fake news if you don’t like the numbers. I was recently reading a company earnings-call transcript, and the CEO was talking as if the federal government consisted entirely of bureaucrats who were all fly-fishing in Idaho when they were supposed to be working. The myth dies hard, and in the internet age, when everyone can find their own echo chamber, it can go on for a long time.
So give Paxton some credit for admitting, at least in private, that the budget math doesn’t add up. I went through this learning experience way back when I was a libertarian youngster and I read “The Triumph of Politics” by President Ronald Reagan’s libertarian budget director, David Stockman. He described his attempts to cut the federal budget to match the early Reagan tax cuts.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
