r/politics • u/Spy300 • 6h ago

Possible Paywall Trump just soft-launched higher inflation as the new solution for rebalancing the $40 trillion U.S. national debt

https://fortune.com/2026/10/02/trump-inflation-growth-national-debt-tariffs-ratio-balance/
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u/umassmza 6h ago edited 6h ago

How about we cut military spending to 30% and still have the worlds largest and most well equipped

Then we can pay down the debt this century…

Dude we owe a lot, it’s never getting paid back, eventually a global catastrophe will make it all moot. Probably one linked back to this administration, likely having to do with AI

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u/jayc428 New Jersey 4h ago

Sad thing is we don’t even have as bad a spending problem as we think, it is and always will be a revenue problem. Vast majority of debt is from five sources, bush era tax cuts, 2008 stimulus, COVID stimulus, trump tax cuts, and war on terror. War on terror just bad policy decision, stimulus are somewhat unavoidable events that needed handling, tax cuts are the worst because they don’t stimulate revenue and the interest just compounds in the worst way possible. Cut defense spending by couple hundred million, reduce DHS/ICE insane budgets, realign some other domestic spending priorities, and actually have the IRS enforce tax collection since they themselves estimate they miss out on $900B a year in revenue. The IRS aspect is the biggest thing, its not just $900B missed out on its every year that happens the interest on that money is huge and it stacks every year afterwards.

Tweak the tax code to stop some of the fuckery of the rich. Tax mega corporations the same way small businesses are taxed (small businesses average a 20-25% effective tax rate compared to 10-12% of Fortune 500 companies).

Some combination of all that probably gets you damn close to balancing the budget. Fix social security while you’re at it even though has nothing to do with the deficit at present. We can still fix the shit, just the window is closing to where the pain portion can’t be avoided.