How would YOU balance the budget? (rent, credit card, buying)

[steveusaf]

Originally Posted by Captjob

Agreed........

BTW...."Lone Survivor" is probably one of the best books I have read in the last 2 years. Marcus Luttrell is a personal hero of mine!

Captjob

Totally off topic, but yes, it was an awesome book....

[lisa g]

My son is reading that book

[Mokon]

I really think this debt balancing web application is very much fundamentally flawed.

It has pre-imposed on us a set number of areas to make cuts in. It is quite bluntly an attempt by the NY Times to "show" less informed citizens that its "hard" to balance the budget. Personally, I was able to balance it just fine, but than again I am a strong believer in limited government. And my understanding from what I have read in this thread is many people here we also able to balance it. For people who are fiscally conservative but more moderate the NY Times is hoping they will say, oh, I need to raise taxes to make ends meet cause I can't just close down XYZ.

May I present another site to balance the budget based on?

WallStats - Death and Taxes & Taxes

Basically this site lists the national budget in a graphical format. It's particularly useful because you don't need to wade through the actual budget documents. When you start to look through this there are many programs that can be cut:

Department of the Interior
National Science Foundation
National Endowment for the Arts
National Institutes of Health
Department of Agriculture
etc..

Perhaps there are some components of these programs that should be kept around, but at the very least they should only be a skeleton of what they currently are. By shutting down programs and/or privatizing them and not just making a few superficial cuts we can reverse the budget deficit. If we do this, while keeping the tax rate at about the same place it currently is, in X number of years we will have our debt paid off and then taxes can be reduced to levels they should be at.

On a side note I don't know if anyone here watches Till Debt Do Us Part on CNBC but its a good show where a lady shows couples spending way more than they have how to turn around their debt lives. We need to do the type of cuts seen on this show to our government. Unlike my college economics professor who actually said government can't go bankrupt while teaching Keynesian economics, government can and do go bankrupt. The US is headed in that direction if we don't turn around and its honestly quite scary.

Til Debt Do Us Part - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[bignhfamily]

For starters, no elected official should ever make more than the median annual income for the US. Why does some fat cat politician make so much more money than our troops on the frontline???
Let's also end (or at least cut back drastically) our welfare system. Way to many people on a free ride.

[sgthoskins]

Originally Posted by steveusaf

I bet there are better places to cut the budget than major changes to military pensions. How bout congressional pensions?

At this point I don't care if it's every single fed and state pension except the military.

[sgthoskins]

Originally Posted by bignhfamily

For starters, no elected official should ever make more than the median annual income for the US. Why does some fat cat politician make so much more money than our troops on the frontline???
Let's also end (or at least cut back drastically) our welfare system. Way to many people on a free ride.

There are soooooo many areas that could be cut down it's mind boggling.

[nicolem]

I agree with ending welfare and all the other social programs that go with it-WIC, Food Stamps, heating assistance etc. People need to start being responsible, work-2 or 3 jobs if they have to. For those people who are truly in need-which are a small minority of the receipients, then private charity is available-and I mean 100% funded by willing private citizens-not by taxpayer-funded government grants, funds etc. Look at the millions and millions of dollars given freely by Americans for 9-11, Haiti etc. I have no doubt that if people are truly in need then Americans will step up and help out-it worked that way before the wealth stealing and redistribution programs of FDR and LBJ.

Other ways to cut the budget-elimintate the Dept of Education and other similar out of control departments that aren't needed. This will not only save a ton of $$ but return local control to the cities and states-where it belongs.

Repeal Obamacare-implement common sense policies such as tort reform, more pooling and purchasing insurance across state lines.

All illegal aliens should be deported and never allowed to return. Neither illegal aliens or legal immigrants should ever receive a dime of public assistance, in-state tuition rates etc. If our government enforced the laws on the books, we would not have this problem.

I also agree with whomever mentioned congressional pay raises and pensions. Members of congress should never make more than our men on the front lines. Most members of congress come out richer than when they went in. While I am a huge capitalist, I find it hard to believe they are not becoming richer by bleeding the tax payer dry, dirty deals, etc. when they are there.

Finally, social security and medicare need to go bye-bye-they need to be phased out. I am not talking about cutting off anyone who is currently receiving it or close to it . However, anyone under 18 should never be enrolled in it to begin with. For me, I have paid so much into it that I will never receive-all the $$ will be gone or I imagine I will be "means-tested" out. Cash me out now, stop my payroll deductions and let me take the $$ and invest it myself. I could make a better return using the $$ on late night tv Don Lapree schemes than the government ever would.

[lisa g]

Yes, Nicole got it right, Mokon, you left out the Dept. of Education, which actually trains new generations of government dependents who do not give a sh*t about national sovereignty.

[Mokon]

Certainly agreed Lisa. I just grabbed a few that I saw. The point is so much of our government is not what the founding fathers intended.

[rmcewan]

I think it is possible to balance the national budget without ending things like public education. But, balancing the budget is apparently rather hard. It has only been done on an annual basis 11 times since 1940. The good news is, that we may be getting better at it. Four of those surplus years in the last 13 years.