- Jan 28, 2003
- 9,969
- 2,521
- Country
- United States
- Gender
- Male
- Faith
- Humanist
- Marital Status
- Married
- Politics
- US-Democrat
Here. Take this ax. This is your dream job. Slice away at the federal budget until you are happy. Where do you end up at?
I divided things into $100 billion slices for convenience.
After you decided where you can take at least $100B in the poll above, you can decide if you would take more slices than that out of any one category in an effort to balance the budget. In fiscal year 2012 (which ended Sept 30, 2012) we had a $1300 billion deficit. If you want to balance the budget you need to find thirteen $100 B slices. You could, for instance, ask for 2 slices out of defense, and 5.5 out of social security, and add 5.5 slices to revenue to balance the budget.
Here are the projected totals for last year. Obviously you cannot take more out of any category than what was spent last year.
Defense $716,300 7.2 slices
Health/ Medicaid $361,625 3.6 slices
Medicare $484,486 4.8 slices
Income Security (foodstamps, welfare, etc) $451,937 4.5 slices
Social Security $778,574 7.8 slices
Veterans benefits $129,605 1.3 slices
Interest on debt $224,784 2.2 slices
Everything else $648,236 6.5 slices
Me? I would take about 2 slices out of defense and add about 5 slices to revenue this year. That isn't near to a balanced budget, but we need to approach this gradually. What would you do? Eventually I would like to see the budget balanced, mainly by cutting defense and adding revenue.
The source data is here: Historical Tables | The White House .
I divided things into $100 billion slices for convenience.
After you decided where you can take at least $100B in the poll above, you can decide if you would take more slices than that out of any one category in an effort to balance the budget. In fiscal year 2012 (which ended Sept 30, 2012) we had a $1300 billion deficit. If you want to balance the budget you need to find thirteen $100 B slices. You could, for instance, ask for 2 slices out of defense, and 5.5 out of social security, and add 5.5 slices to revenue to balance the budget.
Here are the projected totals for last year. Obviously you cannot take more out of any category than what was spent last year.
Defense $716,300 7.2 slices
Health/ Medicaid $361,625 3.6 slices
Medicare $484,486 4.8 slices
Income Security (foodstamps, welfare, etc) $451,937 4.5 slices
Social Security $778,574 7.8 slices
Veterans benefits $129,605 1.3 slices
Interest on debt $224,784 2.2 slices
Everything else $648,236 6.5 slices
Me? I would take about 2 slices out of defense and add about 5 slices to revenue this year. That isn't near to a balanced budget, but we need to approach this gradually. What would you do? Eventually I would like to see the budget balanced, mainly by cutting defense and adding revenue.
The source data is here: Historical Tables | The White House .
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