You don’t make meaningful progress when you focus on a rounding error part of the budget. It’s like targeting private jet use for climate change. It’s for the feels so you can pretend you’re on the right side of things while doing absolutely nothing that matters in final effect even if 100% successful.

If you want to solve the budget deficit you need to go after the things that matter which is mandatory social spending these days. That and the revenue side combined are all that matter. Even the military is starting to become more and more irrelevant as social spending and debt service eats up all the air in the room. You could end it entirely tomorrow and you’d still have a deficit. It’s not the 1990s anymore.

Anything else can be immediately written off as unserious action brought by unserious people. The bike shedding of budgetary politics.