You Fix The Federal Budget….Give It A Try
January 26, 2011
Hat Tip To Patrick.
In the end I had 51% for tax increases and 49% from spending cuts.
You’re in charge of the nation’s finances. Some of your options have more short-term savings and some have more long-term savings. When you have closed the budget gaps for both 2015 and 2030 you will get more of a sense of the difficulties involved for those who have to make the calls in Washington.
I have some reservations about the choices that are needed to be made in these groupings as NASA, as an example, gets coupled with other items. More stand alone decisions would have been a better reflection of national needs.
4 Comments
leave one →
I had 59% tax increase and 41% spending cuts. Had a $200billion surplus in 15 yrs but a deficit in 30.
I managed a 50%/50% tax/spending cuts ratio, but had I thought more about it I would have gone back and restored some of the spending cuts. You see, I ended up saving 250 billion in the short term and over half a trillion in the long term, and I didn’t mess with social security or medicare at all. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/13/weekinreview/deficits-graphic.html?choices=6m1305ql
My saving provides plenty of slack to restore farm subsidies, increase federal workers pay and maintain or increase the number of contracted staff.
And all this without the “re-set option,” a plan whereby anyone whose net worth tops one billion dollars has to go back to GO and start over: return all the wealth and property, give it all back to the US treasury and receive in return a pair of Nikes, two pair of tube sox, two pair of jockey shorts, a pair of dockers, an NFL logo sweatshirt, a John Deere ball cap, a hundred dollar bill and a Greyhound bus ticket to Spokane, Washington, or Tulsa Oklahoma–your choice.
Yes, xoff. I recall that. I feel like the military has become more like “the mob”, serving itself and the contractors that profit from it more than it serves the American citizens.
In a follow-up analysis of 11,000 responses posted on Twitter, the NYT reported:
“The most popular option among all respondents? Reducing the military to less than its size before the Iraq war — included in about 80 percent of the solutions posted to Twitter.”
Yet whether it’s the GOP or Obama, the militarybudget is always off the table.
Quite a disconnect.
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/21/weekinreview/21leonhardt.html?_r=1