So in light of Obama announcing a spending freeze on discretionary spending, I thought this would be an interesting topic to revisit. Projected deficit: $1.3 trillion Spending freeze savings: $10-$15B Savings if you removed 100% of all discretionary, non-security spending: $450B Deficit in that scenario: $850B So basically, if you removed every dime of optional spending, we'd still have an $800B deficit. How do we even start to try to get this under control? On a side note, it also shows you how much of this problem from $400B -> $1.5T is structural rather than related to anything Obama has done given how little impact the discretionary part of the budget has.
I already cut 100% of discretionary programs in the example above. You're left with entitlements or security as far as programs go. What ways would you cut them?
Is that over 10 years? I remember the tax cuts being about $2T over 10 years, so even removing all of them would be $200B per year, but we're keeping all the middle and lower class ones, so I imagine it's less. I have no idea what the per-year savings of that would be.
I guess it's a range of Bush tax cuts rather than the big daddy we know and love. source: http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wirestory?id=9661795&page=1
Dont spend it in the first place? The same way a person who has massive out of control debt in the first place. You can either continue to live the high life and continue to go in debt and then feel the pain later. Or you can deal with the pain now. The problem is we are not dealing with one household ... we are dealing with millions of households. Taxes will need to be raised. Massive cutbacks will be needed across the board. None of that will happen. We will just print more money.
I thought it was telling when people showed up to healthcare town hall meetings screaming to their politicians not to take away their medicare or not to socialize it.
Pull back all the troops from Japan, Korea, Europe. Close those bases. Increase tax rate for SSN and Medicare. Reduce payment of SSN and Medicare. Fire 20% of governemnt employees.
there are only 3 choices: 1) devalue the dollar and monetize debt 2) revalue fort knox gold from $42/ounce to something like $3000/ounce and use it to settle debts 3) declare bankruptcy with a big **** you to all creditors of the united states govt. one thing's for sure though, paltry spending cuts and increased taxes rates are not going to wipe away $10 trillion in IOUs :grin:
