Gm.

The attempt to cut the fiscal deficit was largely performative.

The 2024 GOP platform explicitly said they wouldn’t cut Social Security or Medicare. They also said they wanted to modernize the military, so that makes cuts there unlikely (and every Congress person will fight for DoD pork in their district). Veterans benefits are not easy to cut (should have thought of that before sending so many of them abroad for frivolous reasons; now we owe them). High interest expense is the result of accumulated debt. Those are the big spending areas. All hard to cut.

That leaves the little areas. The small slices on the pie chart. Those areas were where DOGE was digging around in when the Big Beautiful Bill came and began slowly running them over. Even before the bill, federal spending has been higher here in the first half of 2025 than the first half of 2024.

Nothing stops this train. Most of the debates are just about whether to toggle it 10% faster or slower, basically.