> And the US Gov is in so much debt, drastic measures are absolutely required. Any argument to the contrary ignores the fiscal situation.

When your household expenses are 38% higher than your household income, you don't fix it by eliminating the 3% you spend on refuelling your car.

The USA federal budget in 2024 was 38% higher than its income, DOGE claims to have saved about 3%: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/49/Fy2024_f...

When "your household" is a metaphor for "a government", the obvious other things they can do include:

• Just directly ordering itself more income (taxes)

• Literally printing more money to reducing the burden of existing interest payments that are 4 times what DOGE claims to have saved

• Increasing the pension age, broadening the tax base and reducing the expense for whatever the USA's federal pension is. Every year of increase to the federal pension age makes about as much difference as DOGE claims to have made.

• In the USA's case sorting out the mess that is how Medicare (12.7% of federal spending) and Medicaid (9% of federal spending) spend more per person than the UK spends on the NHS despite Medicare and Medicaid being in addition to all that private healthcare and also despite the combination of public and private American health spending giving worse average life expectancy. This would free up by far the largest amount of money in the overall economy, but you may have to pretend in this already hypothetical scenario that the federal government first nationalised all the insurance payments before you see it impact the combined budget of taxes-and-insurance.

• Even just shrink the armed forces (12.5% of federal spending) from "biggest by a large margin" to "biggest by a smaller margin".

• Encouraging as many working-age foreigners as possible to come and do work while being registered as taxpayers.