You Fix The Budget

Pretty much this, but I would be looking for a bit more of a midpoint.

I'd keep it, but raise the age to like 72.

But I'm biased; all my grandparents are working still.

I didn't. Not because i am pro-earmark, but because i tried to keep things realistic.

Earmarks, like "closing tax loopholes" are one of those things that everyone loves to rail against but just aren't going to go away.

You can pass anti-earmark legislation, and we may not call pork "earmarks" anymore, but there will still be pork. The only difference is that the deals won't be made where you can see them on c-span.

The value added tax and cutting troops to 30k by 2013 were just as unrealistic, if you use those to balance the budget, it's not actually balanced because those things simply would not happen.

Not bad, I'd tweak a few things here and there, but overall not bad.

Most of the foreign aid does not go to developed countries. Foreign aid makes up a small amount of the budget (wasn't worth cutting to me) and helps tremendously in the development of less fortunate countries. The faster they develop, the sooner we can expand our trade with those countries. I think foreign aid improves our standing with those countries in so many ways and for the small amount that we spend, it is worth it.

I saw a story when Bush was about to leave office about how great his unpopularity was here, but how much this one African nation loved him, people had him on their t-shirts and everything because of the amount of good he did for them. I see foreign aid as an investment in the future of foreign relations, both in national security (Why would people want to bomb America if we had a positive influence in their lives) and commerce perspectives.

I think the mentality is more "For the next few years, we just can't afford it" than "cut it all together forever."

Sometimes you shouldn't invest; why invest if you need the money for bread?

you get them back when you drive on a road, the military defends you, etc.

the point of taxes is not to return them in the form of an interest-free loan, no

This is about as realistic as doing away with social security altogether. As well as the option most people selected to cap growth starting in 2013.

i agree on both counts. while i'd kill social security if they made me king sev, i probably should have added the caveat that i'm fully aware that it's not actually going to happen. I didn't kill SS entirely in my "plan"(not that i had the option, but i wouldn't have selected it if i had under my realism clause)


I also fully agree that capping medicare growth is unrealistic given our aging populace and i did not select it. if you did select it, your budget is not actually balanced.

this thing serves as as much of a civics test as it does to illustrate its intended point

i don't think you fully understand what this is

We should just delete this thread because it's pointless. You can't decrease the deficit except for one way:

Convince people to stop sucking the government's *** and feeling like they're entitled to EVERYTHING.

Since that won't happen there's no point in discussing cuts. Nobody is willing to concede anything that they want, but they'll make concessions for other people. It's the most hypocritical bull ***.

/thread

Here's what i did. it probably sucks, but i think i did well enough.

Well let me know when you've see some leadership. I sure haven't. Hell I've consistantly denounced government spending on almost all levels on these forums but even the kids here arent willing to concede ***.

Socal Security AXED
Welfare AXED
Defense Spending Slashed.
Federal Jobs Privitized or Cut.
Severe Austerity Measures
Term Limits reduced
Take Massive amounts of currency out of the circulation.
Congressional pay = to what the average income is for people in your district.
Enact the Balance Budject Act. Government cannot spend over what it takes in Taxes.
Raise Taxes.
Trade War With our over seas competitors.

Pretty much wreck the revocovery for the sake of fixing the budget.

So you want to raise taxes but take away any benefits. That's pretty much saying *** you we want to give you less for more.

Death Lottery from Sliders.

We still need roads, infrastructure and defense. The government actually works for that type of stuff. Naturally FICA tax would be gone and people would need to take care of themselves as far as their own retirements are concerned.

Yeah I noticed a lot of people's budgets had this, not mine though. Realistically there can be some cuts, but there's always going to be more taxes than cuts, unless we redo the whole system from scratch, lol!

Mine was 32% cuts, 68% taxes I think

I think we just need to take all of our budget responsibility out of the box. Then we'll be looking at an empty budget.

Step 1: Estimate how much revenue you expect in taxes and then cut 10% off of it in case you make an error.

Step 2: Fill your box back up with the ***that fits within that projection.

Step 3: Make a few things smaller, shave %s off. If Defense is 30% then make it 25%. Same with Social Security/Medicare/medicade/ etc

Step 4: Congrats you not only balanced the budget but you created a surplus without raising taxes.

Step 5: Explain to the American people that we've successfully balanced the budget. So even though they be losing benefits and some of the things they enjoy atm, we are on the economic road to prosperity. If American people have to have a hard life for a few years and work an extra job then so be it. It's better than the country imploding.

Too bad nobody has the balls to do this /dream

If you don't raises taxes, you make up for it in other areas. I'd rather the government tell me, hey we're taking 40% taxes from you, then try to be coy about it and start tossing in deductions, rebates, and other ***.

Well the point is somebody is going to have to *** somebody over in order to balance this thing. I don't think that the country realizes it's going to *** EVERYONE over within the next 20 years. I know old people don't care because they'll be dead in 20 years and they just want their checks but quite frankly they can suck it up too.

I redid mine trying to be as realistic as possible and still got 54% Taxes, 46% Cuts. LOL

I'm going by things that had the a decent size long term effect, but not ridiculous things. Like boost medicare to 68, but boost social security to 70.

My mother owns a small business(real estate agent) and she gets tax breaks for owning a large vehicle. Yes, that's right, if the car weighs more than so-and-so weight, she gets to write off a good deal of money on her taxes when she does taxes for her business. ***like this can go. Get rid of these stupid *** tax-breaks and keep taxes the same and reduce the size of government and its spending until we can get back on track. Once back on track, go with what the people want at the time.

The point of the exercise is to show that the one-issue soap boxes people climb up on in Politics threads do not come anywhere close to solving the budget crisis on their own.

It's not as easy as "spending cuts!" versus "more taxes!" Neither the official party platforms of Republicans, Democrats, not the Tea Party can close the budget gap solely via their proposals currently on the table.

Ex: Entitlements are sacrosanct to Democrats, but defense spending is sacrosanct to Republicans, etc. And I notice that cutting foreign aid is a popular choice here, but what if I told you that a huge chunk of that foreign aid goes to Israel? Now it gets complicated again.

When Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity get up there and say it's all the Progressivenes fault, they're wrong. When Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann scream that it's the Conservatives' fault, they're wrong. If you took either of their platforms and adopted 100% of their proposals alone we would still be *** screwed.

It's time for the country to realize that we have serious problems and need to work together. But I guess it's easier to tune into our CG explosive-laced 24/7 screaming pundit news show, bury our angry heads in the sand, and be comforted in the fact that we might be dead-*** wrong, but not as wrong as those other guys.

Estimated receipts for fiscal year 2010 are $2.381 trillion, an estimated decrease of 11% from 2009.

$1.061 trillion – Individual income taxes
$940 billion – Social Security and other payroll tax
$222 billion – Corporation income taxes
$77 billion – Excise taxes
$23 billion – Customs duties
$20 billion – Estate and gift taxes
$22 billion – Deposits of earnings
$16 billion – Other

The President's budget for 2010 totals $3.55 trillion. Percentages in parentheses indicate percentage change compared to 2009. This budget request is broken down by the following expenditures:

Mandatory spending: $2.184 trillion (+15.6%)
$677.95 billion (+4.9%) – Social Security
$571 billion (−15.2%) – Other mandatory programs
$453 billion (+6.6%) – Medicare
$290 billion (+12.0%) – Medicaid
$164 billion (+18.0%) – Interest on National Debt
$11 billion (+275%) – Potential disaster costs
$0 billion (−100%) – Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP)
$0 billion (−100%) – Financial stabilization efforts

Discretionary spending: $1.368 trillion (+13.1%)

$663.7 billion (+12.7%) – Department of Defense (including Overseas Contingency Operations)
$78.7 billion (−1.7%) – Department of Health and Human Services
$72.5 billion (+2.8%) – Department of Transportation
$52.5 billion (+10.3%) – Department of Veterans Affairs
$51.7 billion (+40.9%) – Department of State and Other International Programs
$47.5 billion (+18.5%) – Department of Housing and Urban Development
$46.7 billion (+12.8%) – Department of Education
$42.7 billion (+1.2%) – Department of Homeland Security
$26.3 billion (−0.4%) – Department of Energy
$26.0 billion (+8.8%) – Department of Agriculture
$23.9 billion (−6.3%) – Department of Justice
$18.7 billion (+5.1%) – National Aeronautics and Space Administration
$13.8 billion (+48.4%) – Department of Commerce
$13.3 billion (+4.7%) – Department of Labor
$13.3 billion (+4.7%) – Department of the Treasury
$12.0 billion (+6.2%) – Department of the Interior
$10.5 billion (+34.6%) – Environmental Protection Agency
$9.7 billion (+10.2%) – Social Security Administration
$7.0 billion (+1.4%) – National Science Foundation
$5.1 billion (−3.8%) – Corps of Engineers
$5.0 billion (+100%) – National Infrastructure Bank
$1.1 billion (+22.2%) – Corporation for National and Community Service
$0.7 billion (0.0%) – Small Business Administration
$0.6 billion (−14.3%) – General Services Administration
$19.8 billion (+3.7%) – Other Agencies
$105 billion – Other

K lets take a look at some numbers here:

Projected Taxe Revenue:

$ 2,381,000,000,000

Projected Spending:

3,550,000,000,000

Deficit Spending 2,381,000,000,000 - 3,550,000,000,000 = 1,169,000,000,000

Now let's look at individual taxes to see what's *** us:

Projected Taxes for Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid:
$ 940,000,000,000

Projected Spending:
Social Security 677,950,000,000
Medicade 290,000,000,000
Medicare 453,000,000,000

Total Spending: 1,421,950,000,000 (That's 60% of our projected TOTAL income:

Deficit Spending for these programs:

940,000,000,000
-1,421,950,000,000
: 481,950,000,000

To make it fit:

Cut Medicare/Medicade/Social Security by about 500,000,000 or 30%

Ok let's look at some other areas:

Remaining Taxes: 1,320,000,000
Remaining cuts to make: 669,000,000,000

Suggested Cuts:

Current Defense Spending: 663,700,000,000
After cuts: 500,000,000,000

Remaining Deficit: 505,300,000,000

The "other" catagory: 571,000,000,000
After cuts: 400,000,000,000

Remaining Deficit: 334,000,000,000
Discretionary Department Spending(not including defense)

Total: 704,300,000,000
After cuts: 604,300,000,000

Remaining Deficit: 334,000,000,000
-100,000,000,000
=234,000,000,000

AT this point it has to come from this "other mandatory catagory"

400,000,000,000
-234,000,000,000
=166,000,000,000

Remaining Defict $000,000,000,000,000

If I were Obama I would use the rest of the Tarp Money towards the SSI fund since it's sitting in the bank atm. Just resize the programs to these levels and we're balanced.

Jaerik, 2012.

You heard it here first.

Where's the option to only cut foreign aid to Israel? I'll take that option. That might actually help the image of the U.S. lol!

What's in that other category? Was definitely the first thing to catch my eye.