You’re conflating two different points: what’s true in reality, and what voters thought they were voting for. Trump’s platform is aimed at people who don’t understand that deficit spending leads to inflation. (It didn’t under Reagan or Bush.) Or, alternatively, they thought there was trillions of dollars of fat in the budget that could be cut without affecting services they want.
It’s like how Democrats think you can balance the budget and expand social spending by “taxing the rich a little bit more” (hand gesture). Counting on Americans to be innumerate is winning politics.
Things are kept vague so people can create their own narratives. But in 2024 he continued to used terms like “Drain the Swamp” that directly refer to downsizing government. So your argument is basically he had no intention of carrying though when he’s doing exactly what he said he would. Perhaps you may want to rethink what exactly you are basing that assumption on.
As to Democrats it’s not a hand wavy standpoint. Historically, taxing companies and wealthy represented a much larger fraction of the overall tax burden. ~Half of federal revenue came from companies in the 1950’s today it’s vastly lower. Changing that means lower taxes on yourself and or much lower deficits.
> But in 2024 he continued to used terms like “Drain the Swamp” that directly refer to downsizing government.
In this context, "drain the swamp" refers to downsizing the Democrat-voting civil service. It's chiefly an objection to the fact that, even when a Republican wins, the actual government is controlled by people who hate Republicans and try to undermine the elected administration's policies.
RCP has Trump at 45% approve, 51% disapprove, which is where Obama was for much of his second term. Biden was significantly below that for all but two short periods after 2021. So if people voted for Trump thinking he'd cut Social Security and Medicare and now are disappointed about it, it's not showing up in the polling.
> As to Democrats it’s not a hand wavy standpoint.
You could double the federal tax burden on everyone from Facebook program managers up to Mark Zuckerberg and not come close to closing the deficit, much less making room for universal healthcare and free college. But "we'll have generous government services and the rich people will pay for it" is the same sort of innumerate fantasy as "we'll build a wall and Mexico will pay for it."
Every European country today pays for its welfare state with heavy, broad-based taxes on the top 60%. If you're telling people that you can have a European-style welfare state without European-style middle classes taxes, then you're in RFK Jr. anti-vaxxer levels of denying reality.
> ~Half of federal revenue came from companies in the 1950’s today it’s vastly lower.
It was never more than about 30%, during World War II and immediately thereafter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_taxation_in_the_Uni.... It was back below 20% by the mid 1960s. But it's 2025, not 1955. The U.S. doesn't have the leverage to tax trans-national corporations the way it did when Europe's economy was obliterated by World War II.
The massive reduction of corporate income tax as a source of tax revenue has happened across the entire developed world.
> The total income of people in the top 1% that year was $3.3 trillion, and they paid $560 billion in income taxes
3.3 trillion * actually paying the current top tax 37% is an additional ~700 billion in revenue or roughly half the nominal deficit. I don’t think making the effective tax rate 37% vs nominally 37% is particularly unpalatable. (We can also quibble about the income definition used but that’s a separate issue.)
So 50% from wealthy + 50% from companies doesn’t seem ludicrous on the surface.
However actually balancing the books nominally means inflation on the 37T national debt is effectively paid off each year. That 700 ish billion @2% in ‘hidden’ revenue meaning just from wealthy tax payers we are breaking even in real terms. Debt then shrinks with growth in the overall economy.
> It was never more than about 30%
Corporate income taxes are only one category. Companies pay tariffs and fees etc. Ultimately all taxes are coming from individuals or organizations which is a meaningful distinction due to foreign stock ownership. When created half of payroll tax came from companies as essentially a tax on workers the other half reduced employe paychecks. Every time they increased the rate the same thing happened where employe paychecks shrank by half the increase.
Excluding 1/2 of payroll from corporate taxation actually makes the reduction in their tax burden much larger. This is really bad for the US population because of foreign owners.
> The massive reduction of corporate income tax as a source of tax revenue has happened across the entire developed world.
Lobbying works. However, companies do still pay quite a bit in taxes and can be forced to pay significantly more. Asian countries for example get about double from corporate income tax vs OECD. It’s a political choice not some impossible goal. https://www.oecd.org/en/data/datasets/global-revenue-statist...
It’s like how Democrats think you can balance the budget and expand social spending by “taxing the rich a little bit more” (hand gesture). Counting on Americans to be innumerate is winning politics.