I love how often liberals on these boards use the “trickle down” argument against me. I’ve never advocated trickle down economic theories, unlike most liberals I actually have a deep understanding of and appreciation for the science of economics.
In fact around a year ago on these very boards I proposed the following budget plan, which contains no trace of trickle down economic theory:
The cuts I (a Republican) would like to see:
[ul]here (Warning: PDF) - They are all small but add up to $200bn or so by 2015 and in the scheme of the 2030 budget they are an important part of fixing things. This is essentially the best aggregation of all those “little things that are too small to care about.” Even accumulated it’s only about $200bn savings in the FY 2015 budget, but we’re still talking about 0.2tn in savings in budget year 2015 and with a ~1tn or so deficit that’s something.[/li][li]The above PDF includes some defense cuts, but I would go much further. First cut the Navy to 230 ships.[/li][li]Second, complete withdrawal from Iraq/Afghanistan by 2015. No advisers, no trainers, no presence.[/li][li]Cap total military deployments in Europe and Asia to 100,000. This is roughly a 26% decrease.[/li][li]Reduce standing military size to pre-Iraq war levels.[/li][li]Reduce nuclear arsenal further (aim for around 1,000 warheads.)[/li][li]If health insurance continues as it is, raise Medicare age to 68.[/li][/ul]
Now, all told that’s about 30% of our deficit problem out to 2030. To fix it, you have to tax, and these are the taxes you implement:
[ul]and below. [/li][li]Currently income over $106,000 is totally exempt from payroll tax. When we introduced payroll taxes the top limit meant that about 90% of all income was subjected to the payroll tax, right now about 80% of all earned income is subject to the payroll tax. We should periodically adjust the upper limit so that it captures about 90% of income so that we are still capturing the same portion as income across the board goes up with inflation and economic growth.[/li][li]5.4% surcharge tax on earned income > $1m[/li][li]Vastly reduce and/or eliminate mortgage deductions for high income households[/li][li]Implement a 5% national sales tax[/li][li]Implement a Bank Tax that is assessed on the value of the bank’s holdings. Banks with under $50bn in holdings would be assessed no tax. It would be around 0.15% (0.0015) on banks > $50bn, so Goldman Sachs would owe about $1.4bn a year. Banks above $1tn would owe 0.35%, so Bank of America would owe almost $8bn a year. This is both a revenue gain and designed to make being so large a less competitive proposition, we should not want overly large banks. Obviously like all taxes it is passed on to consumers, but since pretty much all credit unions, most small municipal banks, and even many regional banks will not have more than $50bn in holdings it means ordinary consumers will have little to be worried about if they bank with those entities. The very fact that those alternatives will exist for ordinary consumers means even the big banks will probably pass these costs on to large institutional clients who may be too big for a smaller bank to server and who are the reason some of these super banks have such large holdings in the first place.[/li][/ul]
I’ve also proposed this alternative rate table that would substantially reduce the deficit: