@dylans
You point out that the president elect is cutting deals, except how did he cut those deals? Oh yeah, that's right, tax incentives. That means that he basically gave a company a few million dollars not to move. He paid them to stay. So what happens when another company wants to move? You have to pay them to stay as well. And so on, and so on, and so on. He has unfortunately started another cycle and set a precedent for his administration.
It will be very difficult to run the government like a business because there are certain functions of government - public safety, education, criminal justice (the court system) and infrastructure immediately come to mind - that will never generate revenue to match their costs. In business, you would just cut those programs due to underperformance. You can't really do that in government.
Without public education, there is no way to train a large workforce. Many countries are still struggling today because they lack basic education infrastructure that allows for the training of their workers on a large scale. I've been to a lot of countries. The ones that lack good public education struggle mightily because there's no economic mobility. We have already seen changes to public education funding here in this country create a system of haves and have nots. Are we ready to experience that on a much more widespread level?
Without public safety (talking about fire protection, health care and things like building codes, etc.) you can't keep the nation functional. One of the things that stunted the growth of the US throughout the 1800's was the outbreak of illness. Vaccinations and the availability of health care made the US much more productive and elevated this country to its current status as a world leader. Do we really want to undo that. We have already seen what wildfires do in this country with our current public safety regime. Do we want to test that out if we start to dismantle it?
Without infrastructure it is impossible to build an economy. Things have to move from place to place, so we need roads. People need water and electricity. Want to throw our country back 100 years? Just dismantle the infrastructure and say hello to the 1900's again. And before you argue for cuts, remember, the best way to make infrastructure most efficient is to focus the infrastructure on the areas that have the most people, and away from the areas that are more sparsely populated. Guess what, densely populated areas tend to be blue, sparsely populated areas tend to be red. If the president elect uses his business acumen, the very people that voted for him will likely be left out in the cold when infrastructure improvements come, while large metropolitan areas receive those benefits.
And then there is the court system. Yes, the prison system needs to be reformed, but much of the money that currently flows into an inefficient prison system really needs to go into the court system anyway. There's simply a lack of available court time to take up all of the cases in a timely manner. That means delays for months or, in civil cases, even years, leading to eroding memories, lost or cold evidence, etc. Cutting that budget would only make those problems worse.
I agree that cuts need to happen, but the where is not as easy as it may seem on first glance, and I think the president elect is starting to discover that as he works more with his transition team.
