[CSMastermind]

There's simply no balancing the budget without both raising taxes and cutting social services.

We should, of course, be efficient with our money. Any dollar we can save is a good thing but until I hear someone talk about raising taxes and cutting social spending I'm not going to take serious the idea that we're trying to balance the budget.

[watwut]

They are cutting social spending and healthcare spending. It wont offset tax cuts for the rich, but the cruelty is the point and watching people suffer is fun to republicans.

[c0nducktr]

What social spending do you want to cut?

[CSMastermind]

Social security, Medicare, and Medicaid are ~60% of the federal budget.

Interest payments are another ~15% and there's no way to reduce those.

You could cut literally every penny of the rest of the budget, including all of defense, all of transportation, all of education, and every single program being discussed here. We'd still have a deficit.

So unless a politician is going to propose a way to spend less on those three programs, then they're not talking seriously about reducing our deficit.