Here’s a nifty little place to take your shot at balancing the budget.
I eliminated the deficit without addressing the “entitlements” in any way. The “haves” would hate me, but then they probably already do.
Methinks all of this handwringing about the deficits is a dog and pony show.
Do your cuts and post a link. I’m curious about what other dopers would do.
The graphic for the 2030 deficit is terrifying. Each one of those boxes is $1 billion!
I think the article is an excellent example of why we shouldn’t reduce the issue of the budget into a four line caption. Cut the federal workforce? Sounds like a great idea. Oh wait, the federal workforce is already smaller than it used to be, and the very next box points out that government contractors have taken over a lot of that work. Cut aid to states? That just pushes more of the burden down to them, and make it more likely that my state taxes will go up. Increase the Medicare age and reduce tax incentives for employer-provided insurance? Wait a minute, isn’t there already a proposal to extend Medicare coverage to younger people whose employers don’t provide insurance and can’t get it on the open market?
The budget is an institutional nightmare and the only way to fix it is to go line by line, calculating the costs and benefits, not by arbitrarily checking boxes.
My plan is heavy on taxing the wealthy and corporations and doing as much as possible to protect jobs. I also took away a lot of the military’s new toys. 
Done.
39% from tax increases, 61% from spending cuts
I have a 2 trillion surplus in 2030.
My choices
it’s not rocket science. unfortunately it’s political science.
(and it will most assuredly not ingratiate me to the hur hurs that feel the need to spend countless dollars on cool new bombs n shit)
not saying you live in one of those states, but it’s high time certain red states who blubber on about fiscal responsibility stop living off of yankee largesse (i.e. transfer payments) and find out exactly how much it costs to save themselves from their creationist delusions.
Disagree. Just take a look at our fair president’s caving on the lapse of the bush tax cuts. that is effectively a check box option. similarly, you can lump large expenditures (namely military) together on the chopping block.
Not that hard to do at all. You just have to get us out of Iraq and Afghanistan and chop the shit out of military spending. Tax the rich, return to Clinton-era tax levels and we’re good to go.
I didn’t bother with the exercise because they didn’t have a button for what I would do.
Tax the fuck out of imports! People will have to pay a bit more for a toaster, but at least they’ll have a good job down at the toaster factory to pay for it!
All the import taxes and additional income tax would seriously cut into the budget deficit, and help the trade deficit as well.
And now; on to World Peace…
I can’t get to that from work, but probably the same general plan that I suggested to the Secretary of Defense when they asked for cost cutting suggestions.
Cut 5% per year from every single department and organization. Make sure that 5% is driven all the way down to the lowest level of the programs. Do that every year for 4 years. You’ve cut 20% of the total budget down, and done it in such a way as to actually eliminate waste and duplicate efforts. Everyone can find 5% in their budgets.
Here’s my version. I actually found this a bit challenging–I see some good arguments for not making some of the cuts/tax increases that I selected. But balancing the budget is bound to be painful to somebody, right? (Actually, I found balancing the budget for 2015 pretty easy, but after making all the ‘obvious’ [to me, naturally] choices, I was still running a couple of hundred billion short in 2030 …)
I agree and I have to say I’m surprised how easy it is. I have had the impression that it should be a problem where even an omnipotent leader would have a lot of really hard choices. Not really. My preferred approach was extremely similar but honestly I could have gotten out of Iraq and Afghanistan, chopped military spending and cut more entitlements than I did while raising taxes less than I did and I just don`t think it would make all that much of a difference. You could even return to Clinton era taxes AND raise benefit age, etc. and have a huge surplus.
I’m in favor of that.
Here is my link: Budget Puzzle: You Fix the Budget - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com
But do you recall that in 2000 there were such large surpluses that people were worried they would damage the economy. So my plan is, with some tweaks (like a carbon tax) return to the 2000 budget. This means getting our of two unwinnable wars and cutting back on many of the military toys. Oh yes, close all those foreign bases. They just make it easy to start wars.
Someone recently pointed out that since WW II, the US has won exactly two wars: Grenada and Panama. Gives me great confidence in the military. I don’t know what they’re doing wrong, but they’re not doing anything right.
And oh yes, I would not increase the age of medicare eligibility. I would lower it. To birth. This is based on my experience living in Canada for the last 42 years.
No kidding. So what do you think of all of the hand wringing and groaning coming from both sides of the aisle on this issue? A dog and pony show to what end? What is it they WANT to do?
Probably because we’re a founding member of the WTO, and you can’t just do that sort of thing without pissing off the rest of the world.
Oh, and having them raise their taxes on all our exports, which makes the net result pretty hard to predict, but probably not good. Comparative advantage really is good for both sides.
Like many others, I’d cut back on military spending and raise taxes a bit. Not too hard to get there.
My proposal ended up with 58% cuts and 42% revenue hikes. And I even cut my own pay.
Eh, the thing claims “cutting earmarks” would free up 14 billion. But earmarks are just directions on how to spend already allocated money. If the earmarks didn’t exist, it would make no difference in the governments bottom line, the decision on where to spend that money would just be pushed to various decision makers in the executive branch (which would probably be a good thing, but not one that does anything to help the deficit).
I admit my ignorance. Please educate me. What exports of ours are you suggesting will be taxed? What exactly are we exporting to China that makes up for the thousands of full container ships unloading at our docks that go back empty?
Oh, and by the way: What would you predict that they would do if their major trading partner makes it a bit more expensive to do business with them? Stop all exports and revert to a Third World subsistence economy? Or suck it up and continue to compete on the new, more level playing field?
It’s a 74% percent spending cut… Mainly capping medicare and raising the social security age. The main reason I did that is because the two of those combined equaled about a trillion dollars of savings in 2030.
I said I’d cut foreign aid. My line of thinking is that we need to fix everything domestically before just throwing money at third world countries. Not that we should eliminate aid, just redirect it. Use the aid at higher levels in foreign countries and structure it so it trickles down appropriately.
I voted to reduce military size to pre-war and pull back troops from Asia. I also decided to cut nuclear and space spending, which could be downsized a lot more, IMO. I left the military all their fleet and toys, as well as pensions and pay for non-combatants, but am a huge supporter of pulling out of the middle east.
Medical stuff: I’m on board with medical malpractice reform, as I think people are too litigious these days and sue for just about anyrthing. I chose to increase the medicare age to 68 and reduce the tax break (but not eliminate it or make it insignificant) for employers who provide medical insurance. Capping medicare growth was a big one for me because of the over half a TRILLION dollars it saves.
Social security: I decided to raise the retirement age to 70. Yes, I know that’s full of its own problems, but if over 20 years, we save 240+ billion, I’m sure we can find a way to still more-than-adequately take care of our seniors. Also, I’d tighten down on what qualifies as disabled.
Taxes: I voted to go back to Clinton era taxes, opted for a millionaire tax, and to eliminate loopholes. I didn’t vote to tax dividends or create a national sales tax, because I think sales tax is better left to the states, as are a bunch of things.
I rarely talk politics on this board, and my decisions on this were either/or, I couldn’t really play with the numbers enough to make Everybody happy. In the end, it’s all just my opinion on which method of change would be most beneficial to solve the deficit in the long run. I’d readily defend my answers as well as be open to convincing arguments and options for compromise.
Thought I’d add: My budget fixed the 2015 by 12 billion and left a surplus in 2030 of 354 billion.