Trump's 2021 Budget Drowns Science Agencies in Red Ink, Again (sciencemag.org) 413
It's another sea of red ink for federal research funding programs in President Donald Trump's latest budget proposal. The 2021 budget request to Congress released today calls for deep, often double-digit cuts to R&D spending at major science agencies. From a report: At the same time, the president wants to put more money into a handful of areas -- notably artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum information science (QIS) -- to create the new technology needed for what the budget request calls "industries of the future." Here is a rundown of some of the numbers from the budget request's R&D chapter. (The numbers reflect the portion of each agency's budget classified as research, which in most cases is less than its overall budget.)
1. National Institutes of Health: a cut of 7%, or $2.942 billion, to $36.965 billion.
2. National Science Foundation (NSF): a cut of 6%, or $424 million, to $6.328 billion.
3. Department of Energy's (DOE's) Office of Science: a cut of 17%, or $1.164 billion, to $5.760 billion.
4. NASA science: a cut of 11%, or $758 million, to $6.261 billion.
5. DOE's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy: a cut of 173%, which would not only eliminate the $425 million agency, but also force it to return $311 million to the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
6. U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA's) Agricultural Research Service: a cut of 12%, or $190 million, to $1.435 billion.
7. National Institute of Standards and Technology: a cut of 19%, or $154 million, to $653 million.
8. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: a cut of 31%, or $300 million, to $678 million.
9. Environmental Protection Agency science and technology: a cut of 37%, or $174 million, to $318 million.
10. Department of Homeland Security science and technology: a cut of 15%, or $65 million, to $357 million.
11. U.S. Geological Survey: a cut of 30%, or $200 million, to $460 million.
1. National Institutes of Health: a cut of 7%, or $2.942 billion, to $36.965 billion.
2. National Science Foundation (NSF): a cut of 6%, or $424 million, to $6.328 billion.
3. Department of Energy's (DOE's) Office of Science: a cut of 17%, or $1.164 billion, to $5.760 billion.
4. NASA science: a cut of 11%, or $758 million, to $6.261 billion.
5. DOE's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy: a cut of 173%, which would not only eliminate the $425 million agency, but also force it to return $311 million to the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
6. U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA's) Agricultural Research Service: a cut of 12%, or $190 million, to $1.435 billion.
7. National Institute of Standards and Technology: a cut of 19%, or $154 million, to $653 million.
8. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: a cut of 31%, or $300 million, to $678 million.
9. Environmental Protection Agency science and technology: a cut of 37%, or $174 million, to $318 million.
10. Department of Homeland Security science and technology: a cut of 15%, or $65 million, to $357 million.
11. U.S. Geological Survey: a cut of 30%, or $200 million, to $460 million.
More money for the military... (Score:5, Insightful)
No doubt a chunk of these budget cuts will be redirected to the military to buy yet more toys they don't need so they can fight wars that should never be fought against enemies that only exist because of past US actions (Iran is only a threat because the US and UK acted to overthrow a democratically elected leader in order to protect a UK oil company after said leader decided to kick the UK oil company out)
Re:More money for the military... (Score:5, Informative)
No doubt a chunk of these budget cuts will be redirected to the military ...
Some of it is earmarked for the border wall. From Trump hits Medicaid, food stamps in push to slash domestic spending [politico.com]:
The budget request will ask Congress for an extra $2 billion for border wall construction, in addition to billions in funding hikes for immigration enforcement.
The request for an additional $2 billion comes on top of nearly $1.4 billion that congressional leaders agreed to provide this fiscal year, and after Trump diverted $6.7 billion from military construction and other accounts to build a wall.
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No doubt a chunk of these budget cuts will be redirected to the military ...
Some of it is earmarked for the border wall. From Trump hits Medicaid, food stamps in push to slash domestic spending [politico.com]:
The budget request will ask Congress for an extra $2 billion for border wall construction, in addition to billions in funding hikes for immigration enforcement.
The request for an additional $2 billion comes on top of nearly $1.4 billion that congressional leaders agreed to provide this fiscal year, and after Trump diverted $6.7 billion from military construction and other accounts to build a wall.
Replying to myself after some quick math. The Trump Administration wants to use $10.1 billion for the border wall and the science spending cuts listed above total $6.06 billion.
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I thought the Mexicans were paying for that....
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And yet, oddly, one of the 100% line item cuts is for "Military Construction." I don't know what this encompasses though.
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No misappropriation of funds at all [npr.org].
It doesn't say that, you liar.
It only says the appeals court reversed the temporary restraining order, saying that if the funds are going to be misappropriated, you have to sue afterwards, you can't stop it in advance.
My goodness, you missed that one by more than a mile.
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I'm not. Don't get triggered by the term I use and apply reading comprehension. Parent tried to deny that there was an emergency and claimed that Trump was abusing his powers declaring one.
I pointed out that his own side clearly saw what was happening as an emergency, and used the same language that his side used to delineate a specific example of what would clearly qualify as an emergency.
Meaning that parent has to either retreat from his initial claim of abuse of power by Trump, or start denying that his
Probably not (Score:3)
No, these are likely real cuts. That $1 trillion dollar tax give away has to be paid from somewhere. We're 6 years away from when the middle class tax cuts expire.
Re:More money for the military... (Score:5, Informative)
Realistically who could hope to attack the US and survive it, let alone overthrow you? You have more nukes than you could ever need, you have enough conventional weapons to reduce entire countries to rubble.
Do you honestly think that if you slashed the military budget by say 50% some other country would think "hey, we can invade America now!" ?
By the way if you did slash the budget by 50% it would still be 30% more than China, and everybody else is an order of magnitude lower.
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Nice. We'll pull out. When Russia decides to finish steam-rolling through Ukraine, we'll go ahead and let you guys deal with it.
What, exactly, are you doing right now to protect Ukraine?
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No one who wants to cut military spending wants to cut the military completely. Military spending is out-of-control and needs to be dramatically reduced. This can easily be done without compromising our safety in any way.
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Ask the Kurds how our military is doing.
Holy crap (Score:3)
173% budget cut, an obvious typo!...
Nope!
Jerk signaling (Score:4, Funny)
As opposed to "virtue signaling"
Typical (Score:5, Insightful)
Gotta cut 'em all! Need to pay for the tax cuts somehow!
DOE's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy: a cut of 173%, which would not only eliminate the $425 million agency, but also force it to return $311 million to the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
Well sure, why do advanced energy research when we have all this amazing clean coal!
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Hilariously, one of the typical heads-I-win-tails-you-lose arguments for this cut given by the Trump admin is that ARPA-E gives out grants that are "small and have little effect."
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The ARPA-E projects are typically nuclear weapon research. Not really necessary anymore in today's world.
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Gotta cut 'em all! Need to pay for the tax cuts somehow!
You know, if they actually did pay for the tax cuts, meaning at least hold the deficit constant rather than increasing it, I might be okay with the cuts. But no.
Let's also cut the CDC. Oh, we already did! (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, look! We've already done this!
In 2018, Trump tried to cut $65 million from this budget – a 10% reduction. In 2019, he sought a 19% reduction. For 2020, he proposed to cut federal spending on emerging infectious and zoonotic diseases by 20%. This would mean spending $100 million less in 2020 to study how such diseases infect humans than the US did just two years ago. Congress reinstated most of this funding, with bipartisan support. But the overall level of appropriations for relevant CDC programs is still 10% below what the US spent in 2016, adjusting for inflation.
Re:Let's also cut the CDC. Oh, we already did! (Score:5, Informative)
But since it was evidence-based, i.e. scientific in nature, it had to go. Spending $1 million per year was simply too much. Unlike the tens of millions of taxpayer dollars the con artist spends when he goes golfing every weekend.
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The CDC just got a virtual cut by not getting an increase this year so all of it's expenses will go up with inflation but it's funding didn't.
Almost everything in Health was the same except for the NIH which got hit with a 7% decrease and the Administration for Children and Families, whatever that is, which saw it's budget go from $5M to $4M.
Source: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/ap_17_research_fy21.pdf [whitehouse.gov]
-100% funding for the Secret Service? (Score:2)
In the linked budget proposal, the SS is listed under DHS with what appears to be an already miniscule budget, which is proposed to be eliminated altogether. I assume this is just a liason office under DHS?
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The proposal is to transfer it back to Treasury.
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The proposal is to transfer it back to Treasury.
That makes sense. With the massive costs of Trump's golf outings to cover, the Secret Service needs direct access to the government's money supply.
Might as well cut NIH funding... (Score:2)
...since calling people out for bad behavior is so damn triggering these days. What's the point of more research when citizens demand we make shitty lifestyle choices fashionable?
Stop shaming me with your facts, Dr. Asshole! I'm not morbidly obese, you just don't know what thicc is.
Presidential budgets are fantasies (Score:5, Interesting)
Presidential budgets are simply red meat fantasies for their partisans. Obama's budgets made liberals salivate. How much of that stuff got passed after congress was done with it? None. This is going to be the same way. Trumps budget is a right-winger's wet dream. And it will stay exactly that. Nothing more. There's plenty of real stuff to criticize Trump about. Let's not get all worked up about fluff like this.
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Exactly, you've said it 100% correct. Congress sets the budget and the President passes it (or not). The President has no say on the budget other than signing his name on the document.
So many people (including politicians ) have no understanding how the constitutional form of government works. This is even more obvious among presidential candidates promising things that will never happen nor could ever realistically be signed into law. Universal health care? Free college for all? If you are a Senator
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Congress seems to have abdicated a lot of their responsibility to the Executive branch over the past few decades.
It's the same argument I have about people complaining about Trump's handling of illegal immigration - he is enforcing the law as written. If you have an issue with it, lobby your Representative and Senators to change the law and allow more avenues of legal immigration.
No, they're wishes (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Presidential budgets are fantasies (Score:4, Insightful)
Except... when you have a Senate majority leader that won't allow a bill to come to a vote unless it already has the White House's blessing, the President's "proposal" is treated more like "marching orders" for Republicans. The House can pass all the bills they want, but the Senate majority is going to treat this like a holy writ.
Reframing the story for anti-Trump sentiment (Score:4, Insightful)
In FY2020:
The National Institutes of Health (NIH), received a 7% boost
The National Science Foundation (NSF) a 2.5% increase
Department of Energy’s Office of Science grew 6.3%
NASA rose by 3.4%
In FY2021 some of those funds were retracted except for NASA. The main problem was the NSF and NIH internally unable to actually spend that large of an increase in actual grants, NIH for example only planned to spend ~2% more in actual funding in 2019 so it ate 5% in overhead.
Those are the real numbers, what this story is attempting to do is reframing the story by selecting a few programs that got their budgets slashed. ARPA-E for example, nuclear weapons research, should get its budget slashed as nuclear weapons are no longer necessary since we have precision weapons.
The EPA and USDA are a regulatory agency, the only science research they fund is to support their reporting narratives (kind of like cigarette producers funding research), same goes for all DOE, DOD and DHS expenditures into science, those are all expenditures for research into weapons/defense spending.
You're letting the facts get in the way (Score:3)
You're letting the facts get in the way of a good "orange man bad" story.
Re:Reframing the story for anti-Trump sentiment (Score:5, Informative)
Not true cuts (Score:3)
Baseline budgeting means that these aren't actual cuts but reductions in proposed increases to already guaranteed funding.
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Why is it being printed? (Score:2)
I should just go into a revision control system that tracks the president's proposal, the house proposals and the senate proposals, along with the finals numbers agreed on...
Why does anyone care about the President's budget? (Score:3)
It's not like it matters a hill of beans.
Constitution says ALL spending bills must originate in the House of Representatives. Which is controlled by the Democrats. Who are going to ignore Trump.
For practical purposes, his "budget" is a suggestion to the House, and nothing more. If the House were controlled by his Party, maybe he'd get what he wanted. Otherwise, fat chance....
Looking at the 2020 budget (Score:3)
If you flip to the first tab of that link, you see that interest on the national debt is approaching 2/3 of defense spending and half of social security. Which is horrifying considering that we're in a period of record-low interest rates. If the debt isn't reined in, it could easily become the largest single budget item when interest rates go up. Something to keep in mind for those of you opposed to any cuts at all.
Trumps Budget Drowns (Score:3)
Someone better pay attention asap or this is going to blow up on us all.
Just my 2 cents
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I really wish this was a bigger issue. Trump's tax cut alone, which no one but corporations asked for, burnt a 1 trillion dolar hole in the deficit last year.
The US is one recession away from a serious debt/deficit crisis.
Reminds me of the Muslim Intellectual Collapse ... (Score:3)
... as explained by Neil deGrasse Tyson [youtube.com].
Neil deGrasse Tyson lectures a crowd on how religious fundamentalism is the root of the collapse of the Islamic Golden age of Science and Mathematics in Baghdad. An Islamic scholar named Hamid Al-Ghazali deemed Mathematics evil.
Meanwhile this is what house republicans proposed (Score:3)
Looks like congress has other ideas:
https://republicans-science.ho... [house.gov] Legislative Framework.pdf
Large increases to a variety of science programs, including most of what the president proposes to cut.
Many on this list... (Score:3)
Many of the agencies listed here have been openly criticizing the administration at every turn since day one. No surprise they are high on the list for cuts. Even personally Iâ(TM)ve stopped contributing to many environmental organizations and stopped dealing with certain retailers in recent years because I was tired of their anti-Trump propaganda. Itâ(TM)s just where we are as a country.
What the NIH is (Score:3)
The NIH is a biomedical research agency with an annual budget that (depending on the year) is about equal to the total amount of VC money invested in the USA.
Think about all the startups in the USA over the last 40 years. These are the companies that drive the economy today. Everyone knows what entrepreneurs and private investors have accomplished.
What are the accomplishments of the NIH? If you ask them, you'll get a long list of publications, a bunch of BS that really makes no sense, and is probably not reproducible anyway.
This, despite the fact that every major healthcare, mental health, medical, and pharmaceutical advancement of the last few decades spent some time as an NIH project. How many people are alive today because of the NIH? How much has the economy benefited by increased productivity and health due to the NIH? Those would be pretty important numbers, and should be plastered on the NIH homepage.
The problem here is that we as scientists (I am a scientist) are horrible at communicating with the public, and often unwilling to connect our work to quantitative public good at all. There are plenty of scientists with twitter accounts talking about their recent research to other scientists, and plenty of cool youtube channels with neat-o experiments, but very little serious talk about the dollar value of our work to society and to individual people's lives. These conversations, about the economic value of science, are much more common outside the scientific community than inside it.
Several people will point out here that the NIH very, very rarely actually gets it's budget cut. There is very little chance that the proposed cuts here (for the NIH) go through. However, why is the NIH a safe political punching bag?
Re: Good (Score:2, Informative)
oh, and never mind that the government is drowning in red ink and cuts must be made, accross the board in my opinion.
Re: Good (Score:4, Insightful)
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Did I miss the cuts to the FDA or something?
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Re: Good (Score:4, Informative)
Re: Good (Score:5, Informative)
Under old rules, as a pig was “disassembled,” government inspectors were required to be present to monitor the process, rejecting live animals that seemed sick or parts of a carcass that looked sketchy. That is no longer the case under the new rule, where pork companies can hire their own people to inspect the pork
Re: Good (Score:5, Interesting)
the government is drowning in red ink and cuts must be made, accross the board
Yet Trump is increasing military spending by $54B, which is ten times more than all the science cuts combined.
Which is more likely to threaten the future security of our country?:
1. Falling behind in science
2. Not having enough tanks
Re: Good (Score:2, Informative)
This is why the cuts
https://www.forbes.com/sites/a... [forbes.com]
This article is just another anti-trump article for slashing wasteful spending
Re: Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Good (Score:2)
Re: Good (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Good (Score:4, Insightful)
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No, he only read the half of the words that superficially supported his point. That's not a "Constitutional Argument" it is just "right wing spewing."
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Re: Good (Score:4, Interesting)
There's a much more powerful kind of "cut" that the US could to do the military budget, but that one would probably lead to the president getting shot.
Basically removing all the monopolistic bullshit that companies like lockheed martin passed to guarantee their overpriced monopolistic bullshit.
I bet if there was real competition on this market, you would be able to slash the budget by half and receive double the tanks and guns and planes etc..
Re: Good (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of America's scientific progress comes from its entrepreneurial endeavors by private sectors.
Beg your pardon, where does this notion come from? Is this sarcasm without the tag? Virtually all scientific progress comes from academia, industry merely commercializes the last step. I can't think of any scientific field where this is not the case. And most academic scientific research in the US is funded by grants from NIH or NSF.
This is objectively false (Score:5, Informative)
Private organizations make products. They don't do research. Research is too expensive and takes decades to pay off.
As for the red ink, there's barely any. Go look at the Post Office & Medicare. Both have significantly less overhead than their private equivalents. Usually 15-20% less. Government is very, very efficient when it wants to be. The red ink is in the Military and it's there on purpose. The Military is basically a jobs program. The waste is on purpose. If we fired everybody the Military didn't need our economy would collapse.
Not really (Score:4, Insightful)
Most of America's scientific progress comes from its entrepreneurial endeavors by private sectors.
That's simply not true for any country. Certainly, the most visible technological progress almost always comes from private enterprise because these are the people who use scientific discoveries to make better widgets and then sell them to the general public. But for them to do this you need the underlying, fundamental science to exist. If you stop funding that then you can kiss goodbye to your private enterprise applied science in a few decades.
Of course, that timescale is well above the career half-life of politicians so they won't care but when all your bright students are heading off to Europe, Asia, Canada etc to get graduate degrees researching the fundamental science that the US no longer does you might just care but by then it will be really hard to catch up.
Re: Good (Score:4, Insightful)
Most of America's scientific progress comes from its entrepreneurial endeavors by private sectors.
No, most of the scientific progress --- in the form of basic science --- comes from Federally-funded work. The applied, or engineering progress comes from the private sector. Do you think that Musk, Beezos, and Branson could even have thought about starting space-faring private companies without NASA having paved the way over the last 50 years?
Of Federally-funded research, one of the interesting facts about the NIH in particular is that each $1 spent in supporting basic science generates, ultimately, over $2 in GDP on average. That is an awe-inspiring up-side to investing in research. If you prefer your analysis in financial terms, the ROI is 200%. Two. hundred. percent. I dare you to find another investment that gives that sort of return, consistently, on the tens-of-billion-dollar scale.
Now, why is Trump proposing this sort of slash-and-burn budget? If we assume that he behaves with budgets as he does with every other interaction (and has done before with the budget), his first salvo is over double what he wants to achieve, just to set the tone. It's a standard dirty-tricks negotiation tactic: if you'd be happy paying 80% of asking price, make your first offer be 60%, so that when you split the difference, you're right where you want to be. Except that Trump takes it to extreme, and his first offer is closer to 40% so as to scare his counterparts.
Thankfully, the US Congress is full of people who understand both of my major points above, and we've enjoyed a solid increase in federally-funded research since Trump took over.
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You have to first pay taxes in order to receive tax cuts. The top 1% overwhelmingly pay the lion's share of income taxes [taxfoundation.org], about double their share of income. So why would you be surprised they'd see a larger dollar cut?
Because.. It makes good press and supports their narrative that evil rich folks need to pay more taxes or it's not fair.
Problem is, the "progressive tax rates" we have now can be argued to be not fair, in that they tax some folks at higher rates than others. But again that's not how the rhetoric goes, especially during an election year when all the hyperbolae and silly statistics are brought out to fool the weak minded and misinformed into supporting you getting back into power..
Re: Good (Score:5, Interesting)
2. I would be more in support of a flat income tax (@10%) or a consumption tax (@20%). It think it's the most fair. I do not think that the rich should pay more as a percentage of their wealth than the poor. "All men are created equal under the law" should mean it. I would also be in favor of correlating the tax rate to the prior years spending, so Americans know when they vote on a bill how much it will hurt their wallet in the next fiscal year.
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Wow, #2 would sure change the political landscape and quick... I kind of like it. But it would almost take a constitutional amendment to enforce it.
IMHO - I think we should do away with bassline budgeting, well, mostly. ANY fiscal year where we have a national debt total that exceeds 80% of GDP, there is NO automatic increase in any budget item and last years budget total is the MAXIMUM that can be allocated. So congress can move money around, but they cannot allocate more if the national debt is too high
Re: Good (Score:5, Insightful)
I do not think that the rich should pay more as a percentage of their wealth than the poor.
The greater the benefits you derive from living in a functioning society, the greater your responsibility to pay it forward. That's what's truly fair.
Why not? (Score:5, Insightful)
If that 40% represents good value I don't see the problem. You can say gov't gets too big it'll oppress you, but what about the Robber Barrons? What about Company Towns? What matters isn't whether it's a private or a public jack boot on my neck, I just don't want _any_ boot on my neck.
And I don't think you'll be allowed to shrink the size of government. If you try then all that'll happen is you'll leave a power vacuum the rich will rush in to fill. They'll make a big, powerful gov't for themselves and you'll be left high and dry by yourself.
Re:Why not? (Score:4, Interesting)
They'll make a big, powerful gov't for themselves and you'll be left high and dry by yourself.
You sure you need to use the future tense here? Hmm?
Re: Good (Score:5, Insightful)
2. I would be more in support of a flat income tax (@10%) or a consumption tax (@20%). It think it's the most fair.
You realise that you would never be able to pay for even the basic needs (infrastructure, education, healthcare, defence, public service...) with 10% for everyone, right?
If you want a flat rate it would have to be quite high to compensate the higher taxes for the higher incomes.
So, you would increase taxes massively for those who are already struggeling to have a roof over their heads and food on the table and at the same time give a massive tax break to the ones who already have more money than they can spend.
And you call that fair...
Re: Good (Score:4, Insightful)
Consumption tax is something that hits the poorest the hardest, do you really think we can kick them some more without heads starting to roll?
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Oooh yes! Lets bring back debtors prisons!
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The rich rarely, if ever, pay income taxes. They make their money from investments, which pays the capital gains tax. So your 15% amount might be right. Let's make that across the board. Income taxes are now a flat 15% of income. Treat income and capital gains exactly the same for taxation purposes. No exceptions. I'll make one concession. You get to subtract the amount defined as the poverty rate. So if $10,000 is the amount designated to NOT be in poverty, that's the amount you subtract from you
Re: Good (Score:5, Insightful)
His point is that individuals who have very high wealth don't always have high income - they often don't have any income at all, because they can structure their assets in a 'tax efficient' manner. They may be making their money through trading assets, which means they pay capital gains tax rather than income tax on it. Or they may much keep part of their vast wealth safe from the tax man by not actually owning it directly, instead placing it in the hands of companies or foundations which they own fully. Why would you want to own a mansion when you can rent it for a dollar a year?
Re: Good (Score:5, Interesting)
That's nice, for you. I am not part of the 1% and I got a nice big fat tax increase. Thanks Obama [or something].
Re: Good (Score:4, Insightful)
Was it because of the SALT deductions cap? I think that is one of the main reasons why taxes went up for some.
Personally, I find that cap long overdue. Your SALT shouldn't have a bearing on the federal taxes you pay. If you want to live in an expensive area with high taxes. Good for you. That doesn't excuse your federal tax responsibility.
That deduction mostly hit the wealthy. Isn't that what democrats want? To tax the wealthy?
Re: Good (Score:4, Informative)
Personally, I find that cap long overdue. Your SALT shouldn't have a bearing on the federal taxes you pay.
This would be OK if most Federal grants are also eliminated. It's not fair that Missouri gets way more Federal money in grants (not loans, but straightforward grants) per capita than my state.
Re: Good (Score:5, Informative)
Lol, you what?
*checks taxes*. Nope still not in the 1% and still paying less taxes than before the tax cut and that is still very helpful.
This comment is gold. "What you experience isn't true and you are just lying about it because my ideology says so. Look at these journalists that confirm my narrative. They told me what to think. Your personal experience cannot trump my ideological driven narrative. You are too stupid to know what is good for you."
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Who to believe? Who to believe?
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Good point. Who needs "health" or "energy" anyway?
Next you will be complaining that Huawei is dominating 5G because they stole all the American science that's been defunded.
Re: Good (Score:3, Insightful)
Im ok slashing research projects to see if primates get depressed after masturbating. This journalist knows the exact programs slashed. His trump hatred causes him to make it look like useful shit gets slashed. Read THIS article
https://www.forbes.com/sites/a... [forbes.com]
Inflatable games ($42,500), model rockets ($34,000), china tableware ($53,004), alcohol ($308,994), musical instruments ($1.7 million), workout equipment ($9.8 million) and lobster tail and crab ($4.6 million).
$61.2 billion spent by the Pentagon in th
Re:great keep up the cuts (Score:4, Insightful)
No problem, just name a government benefit you enjoy and let's start the cutting with that agency.
Re: great keep up the cuts (Score:2)
this budget doesn't matter anyway as the president doesn't dictate the budget, the house does.
Re:great keep up the cuts (Score:5, Informative)
You won't see a balanced Budget as long as there are Tax-Cut and Spend Republicans in Office.
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You're not wrong... But it would be nice to see a whatever-percent-is-required cut across all accounts to balance the budget.
Then we can fight it out for which things are worth funding.
I don't think it's good to reduce some things (science) and not others (defense) rather than first fixing the whole problem.
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Thankfully.
I like funding for science and education.
I like trains -- Amtrak rocks!
I like funding for the arts and theatre.
Better than just paying to send our military all over the world on killing sprees.
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You are thinking in terms familiar to private householders, who often make a budget to see what they can afford to spend. But this is government, and notably, Federal Government where the concept of "afford" does not exist.
In government, budget is what the office thinks it is going to spend the next year. Appropriation is what Congress gives them permission to spend, and authorization is what Congress gives them permission to spend it on.
At this point, the three concepts are pretty thoroughly detached fro
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Watching this from outside the US, it was clear to me that the Democrats had nothing to gain politically from the impeachment. In fact it's done a lot of harm, and will almost certainly cost them the election. The fact that they did it anyway speaks to how serious the President's abuses have become. The outcome would definitely have been very different if the vote was secret.
This is going to be a watershed moment in American history and politics. Every administration in the last few decades has taken mor
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Re:inb4 (Score:5, Insightful)
The US spends more on defense than the next seven countries combined (and most of those are our allies): https://www.pgpf.org/chart-arc... [pgpf.org] .
And yet the proposed budget slashes science spending, while slightly increasing defense spending. I believe you were mouthing something about "evaluating efficacy in budgets"?
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The US also defends half the world.
Yep that's why they saved Ukraine and the Syrian people OH WAIT
They're not defending half the world, not anymore at least. Even if they were, they could still cut the military way, way back. The size of the US military, relatively speaking, is insane. It's sized to occupy an entire planet - to "defend" ALL the world, or much more specifically, to single-handedly put a stop to a second outbreak of WW2. There is no rational reason for it to be so huge. Americans could have "socialized" medicine, well-maintain
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Fucking bullshit. We already KNOW he's a anti-science moron. This just proves it. All those pesky nerds do is call him out on his BS anyway, so "Something is going to "happen" to them.".
We well and truly deserve what we have wrought at this point.
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He's taking back some of the increases he gave last year. Last year budgets for NIH and NSF were increased 7% and 6% respectively, but the agency, despite giving out grants like candy (they had a program to basically give away money to anyone who asked) was only able to increase actual grant funding 2%. That means they ate 5% of their budget in overhead.
The rest of the budget cuts are across regulatory and defense agencies, not science research. But hey, don't let facts get in the way.
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Re: suck it libs (Score:3)