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Budget Discussion

polgara

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I have just read that Congress is having a very difficult time finding ways to cut $30 billion dollars from the latest budget request from President Obama which totals over $4 trillion dollars! If that's true, and I don't doubt that it is, I would like to hear comments and suggestions on what we might do to help them adjust to reality, since the CBO projects our interest payments on our current debt of $19 trillion dollars alone will require interest payments in the neighborhood of $450 billion dollars annually by 2020!

Is $30 billion in cuts too much or too little to make a difference?
 
It is always the same question... so what gets cut?

I would be looking at several things if it were up to me.

Primarily the Department of Defense. There is no logical reason for the US to engage in spending that is greater than the next 8-10 nations combined, just to run around the globe causing problem after problem wondering why we have to spend such a large amount to be the de facto world's police department (a.k.a do things our way or else.)

Secondary, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Transportation, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Education and the Department of Homeland Security. Assuming we are talking about overhead and not policy impact, there must be room to streamline operations. Especially when we have some Federal Departments that overlap State Departments and use their funding to carrot and stick the States to the will of the Federal level.

In order for 2015 (and pretty much the same story going back to 2010 with a few adjustments here and there) those Departments listed are #2, #8, #9, #12, #13, and #14 in ranking of spending.

But that is exclusively looking at spending. Which means without looking at taxation, or GDP, or deficits to GDP, or direction of Total Debt to GDP, or a dozen other benchmarks to know which direction we are headed in.

If you want to cut government fat, I am on board with that thinking. The consequence is nothing is off-limits, which in the long run may have other consequences we have to absorb in order to cut the size and scope of government.
 
I have just read that Congress is having a very difficult time finding ways to cut $30 billion dollars from the latest budget request from President Obama which totals over $4 trillion dollars! If that's true, and I don't doubt that it is, I would like to hear comments and suggestions on what we might do to help them adjust to reality, since the CBO projects our interest payments on our current debt of $19 trillion dollars alone will require interest payments in the neighborhood of $450 billion dollars annually by 2020!

.
Is $30 billion in cuts too much or too little to make a difference?

Here is the link to the budget of the United States

US Federal Budget Spending Estimate vs. Actual for FY2015 - Charts

There seems to be many areas that could be reduced but most importantly with the exception of SS and Medicare, ALL social engineering at the Federal level needs to stop and all social programs returned to the states and local communities where they belong. It isn't the role of the Federal Govt. one size fits all problem for states that have different cost of living and different social problems.

Pulling SS and Medicare along with the revenue to fund those programs off budget would be a good start

In the budget is 1 trillion dollars for healthcare, 149 trillion for education, 92 billion for transportation. Those are three areas where we could start
 
I have just read that Congress is having a very difficult time finding ways to cut $30 billion dollars from the latest budget request from President Obama which totals over $4 trillion dollars! If that's true, and I don't doubt that it is, I would like to hear comments and suggestions on what we might do to help them adjust to reality, since the CBO projects our interest payments on our current debt of $19 trillion dollars alone will require interest payments in the neighborhood of $450 billion dollars annually by 2020!

Is $30 billion in cuts too much or too little to make a difference?

Pay a negative income tax or minimum income to every American and get rid of all social programs and social security. Sell all public schools possible to private enterprise.
 
It is always the same question... so what gets cut?
I'd start with the F-35 program, then cut all of the Congressional salaries in half too while they're at it.
 
Here is the link to the budget of the United States

US Federal Budget Spending Estimate vs. Actual for FY2015 - Charts

There seems to be many areas that could be reduced but most importantly with the exception of SS and Medicare, ALL social engineering at the Federal level needs to stop and all social programs returned to the states and local communities where they belong. It isn't the role of the Federal Govt. one size fits all problem for states that have different cost of living and different social problems.

Pulling SS and Medicare along with the revenue to fund those programs off budget would be a good start

In the budget is 1 trillion dollars for healthcare, 149 trillion for education, 92 billion for transportation. Those are three areas where we could start

149 trillion?
 
I have just read that Congress is having a very difficult time finding ways to cut $30 billion dollars from the latest budget request from President Obama which totals over $4 trillion dollars! If that's true, and I don't doubt that it is, I would like to hear comments and suggestions on what we might do to help them adjust to reality, since the CBO projects our interest payments on our current debt of $19 trillion dollars alone will require interest payments in the neighborhood of $450 billion dollars annually by 2020!

Is $30 billion in cuts too much or too little to make a difference?

Too little. It would be so inconsequential. I'd like to see them target cuts that really matter. I'd suggest starting with anything that's part of HUD.
 
It is always the same question... so what gets cut?

I would be looking at several things if it were up to me.

Primarily the Department of Defense. There is no logical reason for the US to engage in spending that is greater than the next 8-10 nations combined, just to run around the globe causing problem after problem wondering why we have to spend such a large amount to be the de facto world's police department (a.k.a do things our way or else.)

Secondary, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Transportation, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Education and the Department of Homeland Security. Assuming we are talking about overhead and not policy impact, there must be room to streamline operations. Especially when we have some Federal Departments that overlap State Departments and use their funding to carrot and stick the States to the will of the Federal level.

In order for 2015 (and pretty much the same story going back to 2010 with a few adjustments here and there) those Departments listed are #2, #8, #9, #12, #13, and #14 in ranking of spending.

But that is exclusively looking at spending. Which means without looking at taxation, or GDP, or deficits to GDP, or direction of Total Debt to GDP, or a dozen other benchmarks to know which direction we are headed in.

If you want to cut government fat, I am on board with that thinking. The consequence is nothing is off-limits, which in the long run may have other consequences we have to absorb in order to cut the size and scope of government.

Greetings, OrphanSlug. :2wave:

:agree: In the business world, as you probably know, every Department is required to cut their budget by a set percentage, with no exceptions made for anyone! Whether it involves cutting personnel, or travel, or planned salary increases, or a myriad of other possibilities, those choices are made by those who will have to live with them, which was deemed to be the fairest way to handle things. I don't know why government agencies shouldn't be expected to do the same, since it is taxpayer money that funds them all!
 
I have just read that Congress is having a very difficult time finding ways to cut $30 billion dollars from the latest budget request from President Obama which totals over $4 trillion dollars! If that's true, and I don't doubt that it is, I would like to hear comments and suggestions on what we might do to help them adjust to reality, since the CBO projects our interest payments on our current debt of $19 trillion dollars alone will require interest payments in the neighborhood of $450 billion dollars annually by 2020!

Is $30 billion in cuts too much or too little to make a difference?

First off, calling it a "budget" when spending outpaces projected revenues by 25% or so is kind of a misnomer in my book. In the real world it would likely be called a "wish list" but government rarely operates in the real world.

I could come up with about 80 Billion right off the bat by eliminating refundable EITC and ACTC. I could come up with another $1.5 Trillion (over time) if we phased out the current versions of SS/Med and replaced them with private, transferable accounts. Reining in EPA, Education and HUD could save another $20-50 Billion.

It's not impossible to get the "budget" back to being a budget but doing so is going to take a real paradigm shift from where we've been for the past 70 years or so.
 
I think you need to start somewhere. Just as I do at my own home. When the 100w bulb burned out on the porch I replaced it with a LED.

30 billion is not an insignificant amount of money. That is $200. from 150 million taxpayers. I say we split the bill. $100. from the taxpayers and the other half taken from the salaries of every federally elected and appointed worker. This excludes all workers considered poverty of less.
Is there such a thing as a government worker making poverty wages other than our soldiers putting their life on the line for this country? It is time the government workers tighten their belt every time they tell us we need to.

The sad fact is there is so much fat to be cut from our government that even cutting 300 billion would not remove enough fat to bring them down to the level of the average taxpayer.
 
Too little. It would be so inconsequential. I'd like to see them target cuts that really matter. I'd suggest starting with anything that's part of HUD.

HUD, Dept of Energy, Dept. of Education could all be cut to about 15% of their current size.
Consolidate the Forest Service into the BLM to eliminate massive redundancy.
Consolidate all 5 branches of the military to eliminate the massive redundancy there (no more Navy pilots, Marine pilots, Air Force pilots, etc. just pilots approach.
Simplify the tax code and cut about 75% of the IRS.
 
Too little. It would be so inconsequential. I'd like to see them target cuts that really matter. I'd suggest starting with anything that's part of HUD.

Greetings, tres borrachos. :2wave:

:agree: I sometimes wonder if all the hand-wringing we see when they have to make a decision involving money isn't just an attempt to show us how hard they are working for us, which most people believe is :bs:!
Perhaps if their "perks" were on the cutting table, we'd see a different attitude? Sort of like "hey, my ox is in danger of being gored - let's look at other ways to cut!" It would be an incentive to try harder, IMO! :slapme:
 
Simply cutting spending addresses half of the problem.


To be fair, yes, we NEED to cut spending. I would look first at our "defense" budget. And then I would look into ways of reducing social safety nets by reducing their needs, IE, address the corporate welfare issue we have in this country. Why should tax dollars be used to enable corporations to underpay their help, thereby creating a need and a culture of welfare living?

I would also look into the salaries of people working within our government. A buddy of mine was looking into the personal net worth of well known political figures, and they are almost ALL worth in the mid to high millions. Many of these people are CAREER politicians, so, no, their fortunes were not made in the private sector, so the question begs to be asked...where did that money come from?
 
Greetings, OrphanSlug. :2wave:

:agree: In the business world, as you probably know, every Department is required to cut their budget by a set percentage, with no exceptions made for anyone! Whether it involves cutting personnel, or travel, or planned salary increases, or a myriad of other possibilities, those choices are made by those who will have to live with them, which was deemed to be the fairest way to handle things. I don't know why government agencies shouldn't be expected to do the same, since it is taxpayer money that funds them all!

At the risk of nit picking, the US government is neither a business or a household. It does not mean your analogy is entirely wrong, just means we have to be careful with application of these similarities (for lack of a better word.)

Technically, if a business orders a department to cut their budget by some percentage that means it more or less becomes so based on the decision else someone in a department leadership role has some explaining to do.

The US government on the other hand tends to sets a budget by department every single year, even if there is some default continuation of the previous year because the Senate and House cannot get along (think the 112th Congress and the back and forth as an example.) In some cases we did not even bother passing an actual budget but through clever terminology continued the previous budget with here and there changes.

Again, only thinking about spending levels devoid of any other context it is possible however unlikely that Congress can set a budget for a given department that is less than the previous year's budget for that department.

Across the board, department specific, or otherwise does not really matter for the purpose of this discussion. But it does tell us what most tend to ignore, these numbers across all departments are something that is the responsibility of Congress no matter how divided along party lines. If Congress is willing to make cuts along these lines then it becomes so, and the various Departments have to live with that determination. They can complain, they can tell Congress they cannot fulfill their obligations (think the IRS when they were asked to take on insurance verification,) or something similar. But in the end the departmental budgets lesser or more than the previous year start and end with Congress and a Presidential signature (well, it should be working that way... does not always happen though.)
 
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Simply cutting spending addresses half of the problem.


To be fair, yes, we NEED to cut spending. I would look first at our "defense" budget. And then I would look into ways of reducing social safety nets by reducing their needs, IE, address the corporate welfare issue we have in this country. Why should tax dollars be used to enable corporations to underpay their help, thereby creating a need and a culture of welfare living?

I would also look into the salaries of people working within our government. A buddy of mine was looking into the personal net worth of well known political figures, and they are almost ALL worth in the mid to high millions. Many of these people are CAREER politicians, so, no, their fortunes were not made in the private sector, so the question begs to be asked...where did that money come from?

Actaully, most of their money did come the private sector. Congress is excluded from "insider trading" laws, so they get all kinds of tips to keep their portfolios fat and happy.
 
HUD, Dept of Energy, Dept. of Education could all be cut to about 15% of their current size.
Consolidate the Forest Service into the BLM to eliminate massive redundancy.
Consolidate all 5 branches of the military to eliminate the massive redundancy there (no more Navy pilots, Marine pilots, Air Force pilots, etc. just pilots approach.
Simplify the tax code and cut about 75% of the IRS.

I'd recommend against combining the services. Each service has a very specific specialization and needs a lot of autonomy to be effective. Having all the services under DoD is unified enough.

I also hear a lot of talk about getting rid of the IRS. That isn't a great idea and won't save anything significant. Their whole budget is about $12 Billion or 0.3% of the "budget". If it were up to me I'd actually focus on getting their level of competence up, put money into improving systems, and beef up their services capabilities.

Sure, simplifying the tax code is a great idea but, again, it isn't going to save any money. It also isn't going to happen in any meaningful way until we can cut other government spending and programs that have prompted so many of the crazy computations.
 
Frankly, it would be easy. Private sector employees accomplish twice as much, twice as efficiently, and with 1/3 of the staff that most government agencies employ. You could nix positions left and right and streamline the services the government provides.

Pet projects lie everywhere in every bill. Get them gone.

The EPA is grossly oversized. The money from the federal government is thrown in droves at the worst schools in the country with no results. Massive waste occurs in all sorts of studies and politically-charged causes that are better left to the private sector. The IRS could be virtually abolished with a 10 percent flat tax.

The government makes ZERO money, but it can legally steal money from us in all sorts of ways. We have no recourse.

If government had to show a profit in every department, it would look entirely different.
 
At the risk of nit picking, the US government is neither a business or a household. It does not mean your analogy is entirely wrong, just means we have to be careful with application of these similarities (for lack of a better word.)

Technically, if a business orders a department to cut their budget by some percentage that means it more or less becomes so based on the decision else someone in a department leadership role has some explaining to do.

The US government on the other hand tends to sets a budget by department every single year, even if there is some default continuation of the previous year because the Senate and House cannot get along (think the 112th Congress and the back and forth as an example.) In some cases we did not even bother passing an actual budget but through clever terminology continued the previous budget with here and there changes.

Again, only thinking about spending levels devoid of any other context it is possible however unlikely that Congress can set a budget for a given department that is less than the previous year's budget for that department.

Across the board, department specific, or otherwise does not really matter for the purpose of this discussion. But it does tell us what most tend to ignore, these numbers across all departments are something that is the responsibility of Congress no matter how divided along party lines. If Congress is willing to make cuts along these lines then it becomes so, and the various Departments have to live with that determination. They can complain, they can tell Congress they cannot fulfill their obligations (think the IRS when they were asked to take on insurance verification,) or something similar. But in the end the departmental budgets lesser or more than the previous year start and end with Congress and a Presidential signature (well, it should be working that way... does not always happen though.)

:agree: I used the analogy of a business to show that when every department in business was treated the same, no one could cry foul. Government should be no different in that respect, since the Department of Defense feels they are just as vital as the IRS or HUD or the agency that handles food stamps, and so forth. Perhaps cutting every government agency by the same percent is not realistic, but no one could argue, as they certainly do today, that it wasn't fairly done, since every agency, no matter their budget amount, would have to comply with the same percentage amount of cuts. How do you think it might be handled if at some future date we are faced with this problem?
 
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I have just read that Congress is having a very difficult time finding ways to cut $30 billion dollars from the latest budget request from President Obama which totals over $4 trillion dollars! If that's true, and I don't doubt that it is, I would like to hear comments and suggestions on what we might do to help them adjust to reality, since the CBO projects our interest payments on our current debt of $19 trillion dollars alone will require interest payments in the neighborhood of $450 billion dollars annually by 2020!

Is $30 billion in cuts too much or too little to make a difference?

Cut 30 billion dollars from the salaries and perks pool of Congress and the President until both get a handle on reality.
 
Actaully, most of their money did come the private sector. Congress is excluded from "insider trading" laws, so they get all kinds of tips to keep their portfolios fat and happy.

That should be stopped, along with allowing former government workers to get new employment from private businesses they formerly regulated.
 
I have just read that Congress is having a very difficult time finding ways to cut $30 billion dollars from the latest budget request from President Obama which totals over $4 trillion dollars! If that's true, and I don't doubt that it is, I would like to hear comments and suggestions on what we might do to help them adjust to reality, since the CBO projects our interest payments on our current debt of $19 trillion dollars alone will require interest payments in the neighborhood of $450 billion dollars annually by 2020!

Is $30 billion in cuts too much or too little to make a difference?

Great post polgara.

How about this report from the GAO?


$45 Billion Wasted in Redundant Federal Programs: GAO | The Fiscal Times

The federal government has no idea how many tax dollars it’s wasting on redundant federal programs every year—but it’s likely in the neighborhood of $45 billion.

That’s according to the Government Accountability Office, which identified more than two dozen new areas of inefficiency and overlap in its annual report to Congress. This is on top of the more than 160 redundant areas that the GAO has identified in its three previous reports.​
 
I could come up with about 80 Billion right off the bat by eliminating refundable EITC and ACTC.

Tax credits are expensive, I agree, and the totals there are even higher — $67B for EITC and 58 for child care. Those were budgeted to be more or less flat over the next couple of years, but now Obummer is asking for another $50B over ten years for children. Shameless liberal.

We might wanna look at the exclusion for employer-sponsored health insurance, $153B last year and going up more than five percent every year. Or the exclusion for net pension contributions and earnings, $120B and increasing at around ten percent annually. Then there are the preferential rates on capital gains and investments, $115B and growing at around six percent. Deductions of mortgage interest cost us $75B a year, and are of course expanding. That's $463B a year for mostly upper-income households, equivalent to 12.5% of the federal budget, and $24B more than last year's deficit.

Hmm. Nah, stick to the kids living in low-income households. That'll help motivate them, teach 'em how life is in the real world.

>>I could come up with another $1.5 Trillion (over time) if we phased out the current versions of SS/Med and replaced them with private, transferable accounts.

Too bad we didn't start doing that in, say, 2007.

>>Reining in EPA, Education and HUD could save another $20-50 Billion.

Any specific suggestions?

I say we split the bill. $100. from the taxpayers and the other half taken from the salaries of every federally elected and appointed worker. This excludes all workers considered poverty of less.

I'm guessing there are more taxpayers than there are "federally elected and appointed workers."

>>It is time the government workers tighten their belt every time they tell us we need to.

I've worked for the federal gubmint since 1999. My pay was frozen 2011-13. Everyone in my group got 1% in 2014. Last year, we got another one percent, and because I go to all the socialist worker party meetings, they gave me another 2.8%.

HUD, Dept of Energy, Dept. of Education could all be cut to about 15% of their current size.

Again, any specific suggestions?

>>Consolidate the Forest Service into the BLM to eliminate massive redundancy.

Details?

>>no more Navy pilots

:<(

Many of these people are CAREER politicians, so, no, their fortunes were not made in the private sector, so the question begs to be asked...where did that money come from?

The large and powerful corporations that pretty much control the gubmint. You've heard the expression, "You get what you pay for." The smartest investment we could make would be to publicly fund elections. Of course, then we'd need to survive without all those wonderful negative campaign ads on TV.

I'd suggest starting with anything that's part of HUD.

Throw 'em out on the streets. There are plenty of bridges not being adequately maintained that they could sleep under. If there's a collapse, that would soften the blow for the commuters.

Cut direct foreign aid.

That's about one percent of the budget, with Israel the largest recipient at around ten percent. A third of it goes to fight diseases like AIDS. Another fifth is military assistance.

foreign_aid.jpg

Cut 30 billion dollars from the salaries and perks pool of Congress and the President until both get a handle on reality.

The total for the salaries involved is a little more than $800M. In case yer looking for a handle on reality.
 
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