Saturday, May 22, 2010

Balancing the Federal budget


The Committee For A Responsible Federal Budget has released a new Web-based tool that lets you have a go at balancing the Federal budget by 2018, assuming a debt level of no greater than 60% of Gross Domestic Product. It's an interesting exercise, particularly if you (like me) consider higher taxes to be anathema, and want to get rid of as much bloated Government spending as possible.

I managed to get the budget balanced by 2020 at the desired debt level, and reduce taxes, but only by cutting entitlement spending (Social Security, Medicare, etc.) and reducing welfare as well. I have no problem with this, of course, as I don't regard those programs as sacrosanct; but others will doubtless regard me as heartless and uncaring for expecting people to make some provision for their own need, rather than permanently feed at the Federal trough. I'll cheerfully plead guilty to such charges. I want the smallest government possible, commensurate with its Constitutional responsibilities - and any 'responsibilities' it's taken on that aren't enumerated in the Constitution, I want to see disappear, yesterday if not sooner.

Have a go yourself, and see how you do.

Peter

3 comments:

CarlS said...

I tend to agree with you that "social service" programs are not sacrosanct.

OK, then. let me out of the Social Security "contract". All I want is (1) no more coerced (read: stolen) deductions from my earnings and (2) all the money I put in as well as, in accordance with long-standing law, all interest earnings calculated based on daily interest rates just as banks, credit cards, and the IRS do. Yes, it can be done - they know the rates going back until ..... and computers could make those calculations in moments.

Want to balance the budget? Now and going forward? Great. Give me my property and let me out.

joe said...

I question some of their calculations. We have seen in real life that cuts in income tax rates tend to increase gross revenues. Also, several programs only had the option to "cut in half" rather than simply eliminate.

Shrimp said...

They didn't have enough options to choose from. I want the nuclear option! I want the near total reset.

Where is the button to wipe out the Dept of Education? The Dept of Ed has never educated one person, but we spend billions funding it.

The EPA? Useless. Gone.

The dept of Energy? Ditto. Gone.

BATFEioio, gone before the song can finish.

Homeland security? Please, they're morons and entirely overpaid.

TSA, likewise.

Medicare and SS, goodbye.

Imagine what kind of money we'd save by firing hundreds of thousands of useless fed.gov employees.

Spending of every sort, cut to the bone.

Military spending would be cut. Not because I want to, but because we need to. The Joint Strike Fighter, gone. In it's place, we'll use the pre-existing f-22 contract. No new orders for five years, only replacement orders, and pay raises.

Pork projects and research and all foreign aid, cut, gone. Grants for arts and TV and radio, gone.

Basically, if we can live without it, we don't spend on it.

It isn't the job of the federal government to spend our money so foolishly. It's our money and our job to spend it foolishly, if we so choose.

Oddly enough, the one thing the federal government is supposed to do, they aren't. Protect the border, and they can't even manage that, so states along the border are taking the matter into their own hands, and at their own expense. So, why do we have a federal government again?