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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 2, 2025

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But these days it feels like the budget can only explode, and if anyone tried doing something crazy, like balancing it, the whole system would collapse.

If we wanted to reduce healthcare spending's share of the economy back to where it was in 2000 under Bill Clinton (Most of the increase occurred under George W. Bush. Obamacare just froze it in place.), we'd have to cut it by 25%. This would cause a drop in GDP roughly equivalent to the 2008 recession.

Health spending is especially troublesome because it blows up government budgets and private spending largely draws from the same middle to upper-middle class taxpayers (If we wanted to be elegant, take the SALT caucus as avatars of this.) whose taxes would need to increase to balance the budget.

Even otherwise decent red state GOP governments have done nothing to address health spending in their locales.