Of course you can. What we can't do overnight is get rid of the towering debt we've incurred, but balance a budget? Spend no more than we take in? We could start doing that right now if we wanted to. < snip >
Sorry, you are naive about economics (and politics). Forget the fantasy that congress could somehow restructure its entitlement programs in the short-run. Even if it had all the 'courage' in world and could somehow pull that stunt off, there are two major problems that would stand in the way of balancing the budget. Problem 1) if you had a $700B budget deficit, cutting $700B in expenses would not balance the budget anymore than raising taxes by $700B would balance it. Cutting $700B of government disbursements would result in a revenue shortfall (as that money goes out into the economy and comes back in the form of tax revenue, in some fashion) of some multiple. Cutting the deficit by drastic cuts in expenses or drastic increases in taxes are, metaphorically speaking, a greased pig. You think you can catch your goal, but it always slips away.
You really need to read what I wrote before you embark on petty ad-hominem attacks and these partisan excursions into the apologetics of Keynesian economics and associated spending practices.
Problem 2) Taking $700B out of the economy, suddenly, will put the breaks on the economy, which will contract tax revenue. Do you think you could suddenly cut 25% out of social security and you wake up in the morning the same way you woke up yesterday? Do you have any idea how many people live on social security? Do you think they could take a 25% hit to their income and it would not disrupt our economic system? If you made 20-25% cuts in medicaid or medicare do you think the economy moves forward without effect? Who pays those bills? (hint... they government does, just in other more expensive ways)..... Dp you understand that much of makes an economy work is psychology? if consumers have confidence in their future, they will spend... if they are uncertain, they will not. If they spend, the economy moves forward; if they withhold, the economy contracts. Then these actions work into the calculus of future confidence. One of the reasons the government spends money in stimulus is to stimulate consumer confidence...... you reverse that action, you likely get the reverse result.
Pure unadulterated nonsense. Do you read what you write, or really listen to the propagandistic nonsense which you apparently buy?
First, I should caveat that you're not wholly wrong - the notion of decreased consumer spending contracting tax revenues is accurate as is the reverse.
But the reason your argument is nonsense is really quite simple. The things that got us into this economic mess are not the same things that will get us out of it.
What isn't simple is the discipline to do what needs to be done. We can't accept the premise that any recovery must be painless because it won't. But neither can we accept the premise that the government is the solution.
Sorry, the idea that you can just balance the budget is nothing short of naivete or ignorance. You disagree, show me a credible person with a plan....
And here's the heart of Keynesian economics - the impossibility of balancing a budget ergo
the importance of not having one, which is nothing more than acknowledging that Keynesian economics doesn't work, that it is a flawed system that appeals to its own flaws to maintain its credibility and continue its use.
A pilot can aim his plane towards the sky, but if he doesn't have sufficient forward momentum, his plane stalls and dives. The dive garners him some air speed which he uses to point his plane upwards again, but again, his plane stalls with insufficient air speed and he stalls again and the plane dives. Losing altitude with each stall, he can only repeat his foolishness so many times. That's the problem with Keynesian economics, it promises the heights but doesn't deliver on momentum. Instead, it repeatedly delivers on [economic] stalls and nose dives but - because the premise is the ironic impossibility of being able to fly at all - it encourages and even teaches only those behaviors that logically follow its fundamental premise - "flying is for the birds."
I digress, but do you realize that government is the only entity on the face of the planet that propagates itself by its own failures? It is the only entity that "solves" its problems its previous "solutions" created by coming up with new "solutions" to "fix" them.
That's what you're advocating here and why you're calling me "naive" and "ignorant" for not accepting the notion of the "impossibility of balancing a budget."
I might suggest thinking, even a little, outside the flawed Keynesian box. You won't be ridiculed as naive or ignorant either for doing so.
