Despite aggressive cost-cutting by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, federal spending has reportedly climbed by $154 billion since Donald Trump returned to office.

Government spending is significantly higher under Trump’s second term compared to the same period in 2024 under Joe Biden, according to the analysis by the Wall Street Journal, citing the Treasury Department’s daily financial statements.

The increase—$154 billion—comes even as DOGE, led by Elon Musk, touts $150 billion in cost savings through job cuts, contract terminations, and the rollback of diversity and aid programs.

  • @Red_October@lemmy.world
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    1014 hours ago

    It’s almost like cutting spending was never the actual plan, and they were more likely using that as a smokescreen for ideologically guided attacks on institutions they disagreed with.

  • @selkiesidhe@lemm.ee
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    818 hours ago

    I am shocked. Shocked! It’s almost like they lied just to get more rich like greedy MFers…

    But that can’t be right. Right, MAGAts? Right, scumbags who didn’t bother to vote?

  • @yarr@feddit.nl
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    318 hours ago

    Sure, are you going to believe the numbers out of the Treasury? Probably fake news by the Democrats and things are better than ever under DJT!

    • @andallthat@lemmy.world
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      515 hours ago

      it’s so sad that I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or not… this sounds too much like a real thing that would now come out of official government communications.

      • @yarr@feddit.nl
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        28 hours ago

        That’s part of the problem with this administration. It’s not that I disagree with their reasoning or their use of facts or figures. It’s that they don’t have any solid reasoning and facts and figures are misinterpreted or deliberately ignored. Even worse, they have taught their fans that if any facts aren’t convenient, you can safely ignore them. Basically, the perfect recipe to make our country a joke.

  • @MehBlah@lemmy.world
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    502 days ago

    Its what the gop always does. Republican in charge spending soars. Democrat in charge spending decreases. Its been that way as long as I’ve been alive.

    • @Boddhisatva@lemmy.world
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      81 day ago

      Longer than that, I bet. This report from EPIAction doesn’t specifically mention spending increases and decreases, but all other economic indicators have been better under Democrats than they have under Republicans for at least 75 years.

      Since 1949, there has been a Democratic advantage in the average performance of key macroeconomic indicators measuring economic health, including:

      • Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth

      • Job growth

      • Unemployment rate

      • Growth in inflation-adjusted wages

      • Growth of market-based incomes per capita

      • Inflation

      • Interest rates

      The US economy has performed better when the president of the United States is a Democrat rather than a Republican, almost regardless of how one measures performance…The superiority of economic performance under Democrats rather than Republicans is nearly ubiquitous: it holds almost regardless of how you define success. By many measures, the performance gap is startlingly large.

    • @turnip@sh.itjust.works
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      2 days ago

      When did it decrease under the Democrats?

      Clinton perhaps, after the USSR folded, I can’t recall any other times spending fell.

      I am curious given the money supply grows at 10% a year whether spending can fall relative to the past 4 years. It seems mathematically impossible given just the inflation in salaries and goods prices.

  • @60d@lemmy.ca
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    312 days ago

    So, they cut tons of services and research to give the money directly to DOGE and Elon. Cool.

    • @ameancow@lemmy.world
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      418 hours ago

      Nobody in this kind of website will be at all surprised.

      I would be screaming at liberal America that they’ve been duped and they need to mobilize if they want to still retire or have social security or medicaid or medicare…

      But reddit and google have shadowbanned me across all their platforms for doing that. Four times now.

      We’re in the dark timeline guys, this doesn’t end until there’s news reports showing flames.

  • @solsangraal@lemmy.zip
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    2212 days ago

    when is every media outlet going to stop playing along with this stupid “saving money” narrative? it was never about saving money, or efficiency, or literally anything any trumpistan official says it’s about

    shift the conversation around the fact that they are deliberately destroying the country, and maybe something productive can happen. this whole “hey waitaminute!?! they’re nOt SAvInG aNy MoNeY!!!” is such a fucking waste of time

    • The Quuuuuill
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      432 days ago

      it’s all theft baybay. this is a kleptocracy and a kakistocracy at the same time

    • @GreenKnight23@lemmy.world
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      162 days ago

      when is every media outlet going to stop playing along with this stupid “saving money” narrative?

      when the tech oligarchs are dead or no longer in power.

    • @nomy@lemmy.zip
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      72 days ago

      I can’t help but wonder who the fall guy is gonna be when the guillotines finally come out. When the rich (enough) have felt enough pain for it to trickle-up to their betters. fElon? Trump? Big Balls?

      Who’s going to be the albatross around the neck keeping America from being Great Again?

      • @Ledericas@lemm.ee
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        12 days ago

        its going to be DOGE/elon, + any billionaires/cabinet members he will throw under the bus, its exactly like whats putin does, minus the Defenestration.

      • @schema@lemmy.world
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        82 days ago

        Don’t think it’s going to be Trump. Their power hinges on him and his cult. Plus, he is very easy to manipulate, so the perfect marionette.

        Elon seems to be a better candidate to take the fall. His cult is somewhat fading.

        But honestly they might just prop up one of their goons.

        • Cethin
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          22 days ago

          I think that’s exactly why it’s going to be Trump. His cult has too much power, which they want direct control over, and also he’s old and will have served his purpose. If they can get his cult to ditch him for something more stable and under their control (The State or The Party probably), then that’s what they’ll want.

          • @Sanctus@lemmy.world
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            52 days ago

            That has never happened in history. When Trump dies, MAGA falls. Thats the crux of cults of personalities. They fall apart without The Guy.

            • Cethin
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              11 day ago

              Sure, maybe, but he’s old and frail already. They’re going to try to shift it to The Party or something if they can. They aren’t going to sit back and lose everything they’ve got when he dies, which won’t be far off even if no one tries to kill him.

              • @Sanctus@lemmy.world
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                21 day ago

                Theres not a single thing they can do. I can feel Donald’s death from here. Now if I were an opposition party I would be studying the fall of other regimes built around specific people, what happened when those people died? What are the differences between them? What is most like our situation? Theres an unprecedented chance approaching fast. Will they catch it?

            • @Ledericas@lemm.ee
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              02 days ago

              agreed, what will MSM even talk about, if they cant do it 24/7 about trump this goes for resistance grifters too(thier survival hinges as much as right wing grifters do), not the coke fiend don jr, or the psychopath barron. they will have to steer it back to anti-trans for the moment.

  • @technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    932 days ago

    Imagine believing that fascism has anything to do with saving money.

    This kind of credulous reporting is a huge part of why we have fascism.

    • @A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world
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      442 days ago

      Musks only intent, from the get go, wasnt cutting costs/saving money/fixing waste.

      His only intent was to undermind, disarm, and dismantle the agencies that were either actively investigating him, or held power to do so.

    • @Olgratin_Magmatoe@slrpnk.net
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      282 days ago

      My mom’s been bitching about how she can’t pay for her water bill because of immigrants. Meanwhile the city is just trying to play catch up on infrastructure that’s been neglected for decades.

      Her bill isn’t going to get any cheaper, but hey, at least everyone gets to fear for their lives now.

      • @A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world
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        202 days ago

        “God damn immigrants made my local government not do its necessary maintenance and upgrades for over 20 years, making me have to pay 20 extra dollars a month! GODDAMN THEM!”

        • @Olgratin_Magmatoe@slrpnk.net
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          192 days ago

          Pretty fucking much. I’ve been arguing with her about (I know it’s a waste of time but here I am).

          Her evidence:

          • Some dude from the water company 10 years ago said her bills were high because of immigrants
          • Some right wing fuckwad posted a video on rumble interviewing who the fuck knows who, in NYC (we don’t live in NYC), saying that the government was paying for them to have hotels and food

          Mine:

          • 9 fucking audits of the water company’s spending
          • a report from the auditor general of the state examining the neglect of the water system

          But hey, “we each get to have our own conclusion” so fuck me I guess.

          • @A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world
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            2 days ago

            I swear, ever since Obama won the presidency, I feel like the collective intelligence of the country plummeted, cause even the closet racists and “enlightened centrists” gave up any semblence of rationality to lean hard into the racism… Which trump them came in and threw jet fuel on and lit with thermite.

            • ERROR: Earth.exe has crashed
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              42 days ago

              gave up any semblence of rationality

              Its funny to see how even though my brother is a racist that doesn’t like Black People and Mexicans, he still voted Harris out of self-interest. Guess there are still bigots that aren’t totally braindead.

              (For context: We’re non-white Naturalized Citizens and working class)

      • @Phoenicianpirate@lemm.ee
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        92 days ago

        They will make sure that they are overtaxed, too. And make the appeals process cost money, meaning they’ll have far less money and far less time to deal with the bullshit.

      • @aeshna_cyanea@lemm.ee
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        82 days ago

        well, yeah? They have a very simple and elegant strategy called “starve the beast” that they’ve been trying to do for decades and this appears to be it

    • @Zoboomafoo@slrpnk.net
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      62 days ago

      They’re offering a second round of paid-leave-to-quit at the IRS, and a lot more employees are going to take it this time around. There’s not going to be many left.

  • Fingolfinz
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    82 days ago

    Because it was always bullshit in the first place. I guess it’s well deserved for Americans because we prove it right all the time but the media really does assume we all have room temperature IQs and they just have no respect for us whatsoever

  • Only far right politicians (and pundits) can get the numbers over 200% wrong and not just keep their job, but still be lauded as fucking folk heroes 🤦

    • @huppakee@lemm.ee
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      322 days ago

      Their voters seem to only care about what these politicians say, rather than what they actually do.

        • @huppakee@lemm.ee
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          42 days ago

          Proving my point about them caring about what politicians say, instead of figuring out what they do. But you’re right, these people are being indoctrinated by the media they follow.

          • Honestly, though governmental budgets are so beyond the pale for the average citizen and walking them through the downstream effects is probably not doable wih the average attention span.

            • @hovercat@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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              11 day ago

              It’s frustrating because it’s really not fucking hard to pull up the federal budget for any given FY, which is presented in giant labeled blocks showing relative size, and each of them break down into their components when you click on them. When you pull it up, you see the absolutely massive blocks of Medicare/Medicaid/Social Security, and Defense, then everything else, where even a literal child can point and say which blocks are really big and which ones are small.

              • Yes, but cutting a “big block” for instance social security doesn’t give any real sense of what it does economically.

                The average person seems to lack the ability to follow a cut to the social security block reducing payments and/or increasing retirement age much less the other downstream effects when millions of old people are suddenly spending less because they no longer have as much cash month to month. Once it occurs to someone they know, then they see it, once it happens to them then they care.

            • @huppakee@lemm.ee
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              12 days ago

              Totally agree, which is why trustworthy independent media is so important (and taking that away is so effective in dictatorships).

      • It’s not even that. Have you seen what they say? It’s incomprehensible sludge that they contradict the very next day. All they really care about is that there is some consistent underlying tone that the people in power hate others that are “different” as much as they do. That’s it. That’s really all there is to the cult of Trump.