I can!
Budget Puzzle: You Fix the Budget - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com
I eliminated farm subsidies, cut foriegn aid, cut federal pay, cut the federal workforce, cut contractors, cut earmarks, cut discretionary funding, cut aid to the states, reduced the military to pre-Iraq size (we don't need a bigger land force, we need a deadlier better utilized land force), canceled the F-35 and Osprey, reduced noncombat compensation and overhead, enacted malpractice reform, raised medicare and social security ages to 70, capped medicare growth, reduced the employer health insurance tax benefit, reduced SS for the rich, and tightened SS growth and eligability. I didn't raise any of the taxes, but I did go with the Bowles-Simpson plan which (since it reduces loopholes) increases revenues despite the fact that it lowers rates and i did reduce the mortgage interest credit. and hooray! i have a surplus by 2015!
I can!
Budget Puzzle: You Fix the Budget - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com
I eliminated farm subsidies, cut foriegn aid, cut federal pay, cut the federal workforce, cut contractors, cut earmarks, cut discretionary funding, cut aid to the states, reduced the military to pre-Iraq size (we don't need a bigger land force, we need a deadlier better utilized land force), canceled the F-35 and Osprey, reduced noncombat compensation and overhead, enacted malpractice reform, raised medicare and social security ages to 70, capped medicare growth, reduced the employer health insurance tax benefit, reduced SS for the rich, and tightened SS growth and eligability. I didn't raise any of the taxes, but I did go with the Bowles-Simpson plan which (since it reduces loopholes) increases revenues despite the fact that it lowers rates and i did reduce the mortgage interest credit. and hooray! i have a surplus by 2015!
even at the expense of the rest of the economy? remember, whenever you distort market signals (through tax exemptions or otherwise) you are potentially creating a bubble like what we just saw, and it certainly creates misallocation of resources. the mortgage deduction is fun (hey, i like getting money back in April too), but it also serves as a subsidy to the housing industry.
that bubbles can be caused by non-governmental factors doesn't mean that government intervention in the economy can't cause bubbles. the mortgage interest tax break serves nothing more than a subsidy to the housing industry; it's already built into the prices of land and homes, i'm not sure it really helps home-owners all that much at all.
megapropman said:The average home owner isn't savvy enough to calculate that back out of their mortgage payment.
perhaps not, but the average developer is.
the price of housing is already adjusted, it is from the first-purchaser onwards.
I haven't seen or heard of anyone saying that we can balance the budget by only cutting entitlements, but tax increases alone can't come close to balancing the budget, so spending needs to be cut, and entitlements account for the majority of spending, so it's unrealistic to try to balance the budget without touching entitlements.Good show! Just more evidence that it will take more than just cutting "entitlement" programs to get this budget mess fixed. More people need to look at this because we can't just raise taxes and we can't just cut entitelment programs to get the deficit curbed.
I can!
Budget Puzzle: You Fix the Budget - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com
I eliminated farm subsidies, cut foriegn aid, cut federal pay, cut the federal workforce, cut contractors, cut earmarks, cut discretionary funding, cut aid to the states, reduced the military to pre-Iraq size (we don't need a bigger land force, we need a deadlier better utilized land force), canceled the F-35 and Osprey, reduced noncombat compensation and overhead, enacted malpractice reform, raised medicare and social security ages to 70, capped medicare growth, reduced the employer health insurance tax benefit, reduced SS for the rich, and tightened SS growth and eligability. I didn't raise any of the taxes, but I did go with the Bowles-Simpson plan which (since it reduces loopholes) increases revenues despite the fact that it lowers rates and i did reduce the mortgage interest credit. and hooray! i have a surplus by 2015!
That's the problem, nobody is giving specifics of what should be cut and/or where to raise taxes. Earmarks and welfare seem to get the brunt of the spin but completely cutting those two things will only be a small fraction of what needs to be done to curb the deficit.I haven't seen or heard of anyone saying that we can balance the budget by only cutting entitlements, but tax increases alone can't come close to balancing the budget, so spending needs to be cut, and entitlements account for the majority of spending, so it's unrealistic to try to balance the budget without touching entitlements.
CP!!! I love this link!!!
In the past, I've thought that the budget is sooooo overwhelmingly complex that no one can wrap their arms around it. This interactive exercise shows that's not true. I would love to see this go further.
An interactive computer model that showed line-by-line expenditures. A committee to identify those programs possibly eligible for cuts. Another committee to interact with those programs to determine "unintended consequences" of cutting their programs.
There is hope.
If anybody has the guts.
I did it, too, with a mix of 66% spending reductions/34% tax hikes. However, while the mathematical exercise is relatively straightforward e.g., entitlement spending needs to be reformed, the political calculus to build consensus is difficult. For example, I suggested slowing the growth of Medicare spending. Yet, if that requires rationing, how much public support will there be? I suggested raising the SS and Medicare eligibility age to 68 (even as 70 might make more sense given life expectancy changes), but that also would generate significant political backlash.
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