Problem is, there’s a lot of needs that private industry will not fill (or cannot be trusted to fill well). We’ve seen this play out repeatedly. If you want a functioning society, a certain degree of government spending is unavoidable.
Now there is something to be said for making sure that spending is effective, but this must be engaged with in good faith; that is, changes should be made with a scalpel after gathering plenty of data supporting the change in question. Proclaiming ineffectiveness without data to ground the claim and then using that as an excuse to make broad cuts is a great way to make any dysfunction even worse.
FY2024 federal spend 6.75 trillion. FY2019 was 4.4 trillion. FY2009 was 3.1 trillion. Twice the growth in half the time.
Was there so much more that private industry "will not fill" in 2024 vs 2009? How about vs 1999? (1.7 trillion budget). We can't attribute the difference to inflation: the US government's inflation calculator says 1.7 trillion in 1999 is 3.3 trillion today.
No one is arguing that the federal government doesn't need to spend some money. But this truth has no relevance to the absurd out of control spending we're witnessing today.
I don't think _deficit_ is at all a useful metric about the appropriate level of spending by the federal government-- Outside of emergencies deficit is merely a measure of gross financial incompetence in our elected officials.
It's a neoliberal scam. Claim government programs are ineffective, destroy the institutions behind those programs, and point to the resulting chaos as proof that the initial claims are true. Rinse and repeat.
Now there is something to be said for making sure that spending is effective, but this must be engaged with in good faith; that is, changes should be made with a scalpel after gathering plenty of data supporting the change in question. Proclaiming ineffectiveness without data to ground the claim and then using that as an excuse to make broad cuts is a great way to make any dysfunction even worse.