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Some Basic Math: The Federal Budget is 25% of the Economy [1]

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Date: 2025-02-25

The federal Budget is $6.75 trillion. Our gross domestic product is $27 trillion. That makes federal expenditures 25% of our national economy.

The result of slashing spending on 25% of the economy will be:

1. Massive increases in unemployment, and not just federal workers. Many companies hold federal contracts. The entire nonprofit industrial complex is far too dependent on federal funding. Higher education institutions rely on federal funding. Local school districts rely on federal funding. If you slash this funding so Elon Musk can get a tax cut that makes him the world's first trillionarie, the results will be laid off teachers, 100 kids to a classroom, increased poverty, increased homelessness, and Economic malaise.

2. The main mission, and main line item of the federal government, is health care and protecting seniors economically. If you slash federal funding to nonprofits, you slash meals on wheels programs. You slash subsidized senior housing. You slash support for people who struggle to afford power bills. You slash supplemental nutrition assistance programs that keep seniors and families from starving. You slash Section 8 vouchers that keep landlords from going bankrupt. You slash road funding that keeps potholes from forming on the freeway. You slash public transit funding for people who live in areas (like New York, Washington DC/Baltimore/San Francisco/Chicago) where driving isn't feasible due to population density. You slash funding for VA medical centers that treat the wounds of veterans who literally stared down bullets for this country, you slash rural hospital funding, and on and on.

3. The third main function of the federal government is our national defense. You slash that funding and you make us less safe. We've already seen how the stress of the past month negatively impacted aviation safety. It may take longer to be seen, but it also isn't helping units that prevent terrorist attacks and stop them before they occur. Cuts to military spending make America look weaker in the broader world. We've already seen the results of that in Ukraine, where Trump wants a ceasefire but Europe appears to not really care what the US says. You cut national security funding for long enough and deep enough and it's a matter of time before America is attacked.

Everyone loves idiotic stories about $1 million toilets. Government does go wrong (usually they wanted to build something much bigger than a toilet, dumped a ton of staff hours into planning and then settled for a toilet, resulting in a misleading price tag). But the reality is 99.999% of what the federal government does is mundane stuff that keeps us safe and economically thriving. You hollow the federal government out, you weaken, not strengthen America. And you cause massive human suffering to the millions of people who work for the federal government and for companies and nonprofits with federal contracts.

None of this makes any sense unless you're a Ketamine addicted sociopathic jerk who believes we are all ones and zeros.

The end result of this rampage will be a depression, not a recession. You simply can't cut 25% of a nation's economy without sparking a depression. Of course Musk and his acolytes will argue that businesspeople will reinvest the savings and create more jobs. But do we really believe that will happen when they've been hoarding wealth for a generation and all seem to be in a race to be the world's first trillionarie?

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/2/25/2306321/-Some-Basic-Math-The-Federal-Budget-is-25-of-the-Economy?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

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