Home/Recent kwiples > Issues >

budgets (government)

Wednesday 21st of January 2026

Aging In 2020 the share of people 65 or older reached  17 percent, according to the Census Bureau. By 2034, there will be more Americans past retirement age than there are children. … By 2053,  more than 40 percent of the federal budget will go toward programs for seniors, primarily Social Security and Medicare  — but those programs are not designed for or prepared to handle the new demographic reality. New York Times, October 6, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Budgets I want to thank him because we're trying to cut down our payroll and as far as I am concerned I'm very thankful that he let go of a large number of people because now we have a smaller payroll. Donald Trump, thanking Vladimir Putin for expelling 755 members of America's diplomatic mission in Russia © 2017 Kwiple.com
Budgets Show me yur budget and I'll know your values. At the federal level in 2020, American taxpayers put $72 billion into educating our children, less than 2 percent of all federal spending. That's soup to nuts, everything from preschool grants to funding for special education to helping our kids make it through college. Elizabeth Warren, Persist © 2021 Kwiple.com
Bullshitters say We are no longer going to measure compassion by the number of programs or the number of people on those programs. We're going to measure compassion and success by the number of people we help get off of those programs to get back in charge of their own lives. We're not going to measure our success by how much money we spend but by how many people we actually help. Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Budget and Management, substituting “help get off” for “push off” and “actually help” for “make disappear” while commenting on his and Trump's proposed 2018 federal budget © 2017 Kwiple.com
Dead-in-the-heads say Amend the Constitution to require a balanced federal budget ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), Donors Trust, the Koch brothers, and anonymous wealthy right wingers © 2016 Kwiple.com
Dead-in-the-heads say I would find half a billion dollars of that right out of Planned Parenthood's budget. And the rest of it could come out of food stamps and the entitlements that are being spread out for people that haven't worked in three generations. Steve King, Northwest Missouri State University dropout, chickenhawk who falsely claimed he's Latino, says “I'd like to see an America that is just so homogenous that we look a lot the same,” and Republican Congressman from Iowa's 4th congressional district, explaining where to get an additional $5 billion to build the border wall with Mexico © 2017 Kwiple.com
Government For decades we have attacked it, redirected it, outsourced it, and filled it with incompetents and cronies. Yes, it still works well enough when we need it to blow up some small country, but those branches of it designed to help out Americans of “lower socioeconomic status,” as the scientists would put it, are now bare. Thomas Frank, Rendevous with Oblivion © 2018 Kwiple.com
Kwiple dictionary cost cutting (kôst kut'ing), n. Euphemism for firing people. © 2015 Kwiple.com
Kwiple dictionary dynamic scoring (dī nam'ik scôr' ring), n. The process used to find the assumptions needed to “prove” that lowering taxes on the rich, lowering spending on the non- rich, and increasing spending on the military will benefit more people more than any other possible set of policies. © 2015 Kwiple.com
Kwiplers say Prohibit public spending on colonizing or traveling to Mars by humans © 2017 Kwiple.com
Lotteries Today, according to the National Conference of  State Legislatures, lotteries bring in, on average, about one per cent of state revenue per year. Like all money, it matters, but whatever difference it makes is offset by two problems. The first is that lotteries have made it harder than ever to pass much-needed tax increases, because, thanks to years of noisy campaigning followed by decades of heavy promotion, the public wrongly believes that schools and other vital services are lavishly supported by gambling funds.  The second is that the money raised by lotteries comes largely from the people who can least afford to part with it. Every state lottery is regressive, meaning that it takes a dispro- portionate toll on low-income citizens. Kathryn Schulz, The New Yorker, Oct. 17, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Military spending [T]he 2020 federal budget for  the Department of Defence is $738 billion. Homeland Security soaked up $47.7 billion;  the State Department got $41 billion. By comparison, the appropriation for the  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2020 was $7.7 billion. The federal budget for planning and enforcing our environmental regulations was $9.4 billion. In other words, for every dollar it spends on defense, the federal government spends a little over two cents on public health and protecting the earth combined. Elizabeth Warren, Persist © 2021 Kwiple.com
Military spending If the average profitability that was negotiated in a firm fixed-price contract was typically between 12 and 15 percent, so a company could make 12 percent. … Based on what they [Lockheed Martin and Boeing] actually made [on the Patriot weapons system], we would have received an entire year's worth of missiles for free. Shay D. Assad, former Director, Defense Pricing/Defense Procurement and Acquisition Policy [A formal review by the Army revealed that total profits made by Lockheed and Boeing approached 40 percent] © 2023 Kwiple.com
Military spending The US may account for half of global defence spending, but how much use is its military hardware in a software age? US aircraft carriers, which can cost up to $13bn to build, can be easily sunk by one of China's DF-26 missiles, costing a few hundred thousand dollars. John Thornhill, Financial Times, April 2, 2020 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Moderate Republicans say Deeply cutting spending on healthcare after four years instead of three is change I believe in © 2017 Kwiple.com
Nukes Based on a Pentagon report cited by the Arms Control Association and Bloomberg News, the government will spend roughly $100 billion to build the weapon [a new nuclear missile] which will be ready to use around 2029. …  To put that price tag in perspective, $100 billion could pay 1.24 million elementary school teachers for a year, provide 2.84 million four-year university scholarships, or cover 3.3 million hospital stays for covid-19 patients. It's enough to build a massive mechanical wall to protect New York City from sea level rise. It's enough to get to Mars. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, February 8, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Racism You start out in 1954 by saying “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can't say “nigger” – that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, “forced busing,” “states' rights,” and all that stuff, and you're getting so abstract. Now, you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a by- product of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites. … “We want to cut this” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.” Lee Atwater, 1981 © 2019 Kwiple.com
Republicans say  Budgeting based on magical thinking is change we believe in © 2017 Kwiple.com
Republicans say  Buzz cutting where trimming would do is change we believe in © 2017 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Cutting funding for national parks is change we believe in © 2017 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Cutting funding for rental assistance is change we believe in © 2017 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Cutting funding for statistical agencies like the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Census Bureau is change we believe in  © 2016 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Defunding Planned Parenthood is change we believe in © 2017 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Defunding programs opposing racism and extremism is change we believe in © 2017 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Defunding programs providing legal assistance to women trying to escape domestic violence is change we believe in  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Enlarging Fortress America at the expense of the non-rich is change we believe in © 2017 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Giving away or selling public lands is change we believe in © 2017 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Gutting support for the disabled to make up for tax cuts for the rich is change we believe in © 2018 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Nobody will notice if you vote for a bill to appease public sentiment and then vote to prohibit the funding needed to implement it © 2016 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Slashing funding for food stamps is change we believe in © 2017 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Taking money away from public schools to fund private schools that discriminate against LGBTQ and other students is change we believe in © 2017 Kwiple.com
Republicans say The winners deserve more wins; the losers more losses © 2017 Kwiple.com
Surely you jest Saying, “Beat their plowshares into swords  and their pruning hooks into spears,” Trump proposes increasing the budget for military spending by $52.3 billion to facilitate killing foreigners and quelling domestic dissent An alternative fact [he tweeted, “A budget that puts #AmericaFirst must make safety its no. 1 priority—without safety there can be no prosperity.”] © 2017 Kwiple.com
Surely you jest Saying budgets will be balanced by cracking down on tax avoiders and eliminating waste © 2015 Kwiple.com
Surely you jest Saying, “Let them eat munitions,” Trump administration officials defend increasing military spending by $50+bn by eliminating or severely reducing anti-poverty programs, including programs providing after-school food aid to low-income kids and Meals on Wheels for seniors An alternative fact [White House Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said, “We can't spend money on programs just because they sound good” and reducing anti-poverty programs is “one of the most compassionate things we can do” because they are an onerous burden on taxpayers] © 2017 Kwiple.com
Taxes Contrary to Mr. Trump's claim that the United States is one of the most heavily taxed nations, only South Korea, Chile and Mexico, among [the 35] O.E.C.D. countries, collect less in tax revenue  as a share of the economy. That means the American budget for things like prenatal care, low-income housing and worker training is simply not up to the task. Eduardo Porter, New York Times, October 11. 2016 © 2016 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say We control the budget, we control the power of the purse. If Speaker Johnson supports Trump like he claims, he should stop the special counsel Jack Smith and he should be using the power of the purse to hold New York accountable for the sham convictions against President Trump.  The entire thing is political, it’s outrageous, and our country has completely turned a corner. Marjorie Taylor Greene, calling for an end to investigations of Trump and for withholding federal funds for social pograms in state whose citizens uphold the rule of law in the face of threats to themselves and families © 2024 Kwiple.com
 
Television Most people look at Sesame Street and they see a show that educates children. Trump sees a show where a landlord is being forced to rent to black people. Bill Maher, March 17, 2017 on Trump's proposal to defund PBS © 2017 Kwiple.com