▪️Only in fantasy land has the deficit been slashed. In reality, the deficit is already over $1.6T for FY2023, more than double where it was at the same time last year. It could easily hit $2T by October.
▪️Meanwhile, treasury yields continue to surge. Over 5% for short term bills and well over 4% for 10 and 30 year bonds. With a national debt of almost $33T, that means just the interest payments will soon be close to $2T/yr in perpetuity. Which means the deficit will likely surge in the coming years no matter who’s in the White House.
It’s bizarre to see them seesaw back and forth that Trump is totally clueless and aloof, just golfing all day, then all of a sudden he’s a dangerous king/dictator who’s diligently plotting to seize absolute power.
▪️This one is frustrating because, while it’s nice to see the vigor and speed that DOGE is acting with, they’re also sloppy with some of their findings. This is not some bombshell, millions of dead people’s SS numbers aren’t being paid out to fraudsters.
▪️This problem has been known for some time, you can read an inspector general’s report from 2015 about millions of names on the SS “numident” not being correctly annotated for deaths, even though they were older than 112 (the oldest known American at the time).
https://oig-files.ssa.gov/audits/full/A-06-14-34030_0.pdf
▪️There are innocent explanations for some of these. Expatriates that died outside the country, for example. Or immigrants given temporary work permit who returned to their country, people issued new numbers for various reasons, etc. However, most are simply due to the govt not diligently keeping track of deaths.
▪️It’s embarrassing that the govt has millions of numbers on the numident that are ...
