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It's like cutting back on the $1 menu cheeseburger when you are paying $500 a month for a car you can't afford. You can either get rid of the car (Serious spending cuts) or make more money (Tax increases).
Because the vast majority of government spending is tied up in other programs. Social Security and Medicare and Defense are the big three. You can't fix the deficit without significant changes to these three programs, and all of them are political suicide for members of either party, and so is raising taxes. So in short, we are screwed.
What constitutes the "other" in mandatory spending? It is larger than medicare and looks to be nearly the size of defense. Maybe we need to redefine what is mandatory.
Location: Georgia, on the Florida line, right above Tallahassee
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Originally Posted by Toyman at Jewel Lake
What constitutes the "other" in mandatory spending? It is larger than medicare and looks to be nearly the size of defense. Maybe we need to redefine what is mandatory.
Columnist Joe Cappo described it as a patient going to a Doctor of Nutrition looking to lose weight. Doctor discovers that patient eats thick juicy steaks, marbled cakes, an assortment of butter-drenched breads - and that's just for breakfast! Dr. Says you need to seriously cut back on the groceries. Reduce your food intake and the weight will come off. Patient replies, after wolfing down another Twinkie, "I want to lose weight, but I love to eat. Would it help if I cut out the chopped nuts on my hot fudge sundaes?". About the only thing that voters want to cut is foreign aid, maybe 2% of the budget.
Cut spending, raise federal taxes, raise SS taxes and the retirement age, demand a balanced budget and institute a federal sales tax on all but necessities dedicated to reducing the deficit and maybe we can keep from falling off the cliff. People just don't seem to get that the party is over and it's time to pay up.
It's like cutting back on the $1 menu cheeseburger when you are paying $500 a month for a car you can't afford. You can either get rid of the car (Serious spending cuts) or make more money (Tax increases).
Because the vast majority of government spending is tied up in other programs. Social Security and Medicare and Defense are the big three. You can't fix the deficit without significant changes to these three programs, and all of them are political suicide for members of either party, and so is raising taxes. So in short, we are screwed.
Chart should be altered to show "Other" as "welfare programs" or such. As it stands, it is kind of nebulous and covers a lot of different programs though.
More shocking news on the DoD front. We spend as much on defense as we do on Social Security, and SS is like 60x the number of people.
And this isn't an "either or" mission either. We can raise revenues and cut spending. We obviously need to gut defense spending, restructure social security, and we'll have to figure out something to do with M\M. We can completely remove those programs and drop our health expectancy down a dozen years or so, that's a trade off.
We need across the board spending cuts on every item in the federal budget. Eliminate all foreign aid, who cares if it's "just 2%) of the budget it's a complete waste. I'd be hard pressed to find another item in the budget that's a bigger waste than foreign aid. Raise the retirement age and allow Americans the option of opting out of SS altogether and for all Americans under 18 eliminate SS and Medicare. For those on SS and Medicare leave it untouched. For those 19-54 create a voucher system for Medicare. Get out of all foreign nations and end all of our foreign wars. Untangle our foreign policy from Israel's. Cut of the magnets that attract illegal immigrants that mooch of our system and deport any illegal immigrant we can find.
But most importantly we must end our debt-based currency. Debt-based currency is a scourge and a cancer. The Federal Reserve must be ended and we must have a sound currency not based on debt. Whatever we do, absolutely DO NOT raise taxes! Do the people that advocate that actually believe our politicians will actually shepherd that money responsibly and use it to balance the budget? NO! They will just continue to spend it. The only way to solve the spending problem is give them less money to spend.
We can never "pay off the debt" as it is impossible under our current debt based system for what it's worth. So when I hear people who support debt based currency speak of "paying off the debt" I giggle a little bit. Every dollar created by the Federal Reserve is another dollar of debt we find ourselves in.
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