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How to balance the budget in 3 steps

Logical1

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1) Cut Fed employees by 25%

2) Cut ALL welfare and payments to illegal aliens

3) Cut all foreign military bases to about 5 world wide.
 
1) Cut Fed employees by 25%

2) Cut ALL welfare and payments to illegal aliens

3) Cut all foreign military bases to about 5 world wide.

Tell me, what welfare and/or 'payments' do you think illegal aliens now receive?

HINT: it's a trick question.
 
1) Cut Fed employees by 25%

2) Cut ALL welfare and payments to illegal aliens

3) Cut all foreign military bases to about 5 world wide.

Your post lacks any numbers on how much that would save. You should probably correct that.
 
1) Cut Fed employees by 25%

2) Cut ALL welfare and payments to illegal aliens

3) Cut all foreign military bases to about 5 world wide.

So I looked. Let's take them one at a time, and looking only at the cost, using the most generous numbers for your claim.

1) There are about 2 million federal employees. If we assume they each cost about 250k a year(which is way on the high side, the actual number is probably less than half that, but I cannot find a figure), that results in a 125 billion dollar savings.

2) Absolute highest number I find of the cost of illegal aliens in the US is 100 billion a year.

3) Total cost of overseas basis, with the cost of the troops, is 22 billion.

So we get a total savings, at the most, of about 250 billion. The actual number would be considerably lower, and come with high costs. The US deficit this year is projected to end up at 833 billion. So you are at maybe a third that. See, it helps to actually check your facts, it keeps you from making silly claims.
 
1) Cut Fed employees by 25%

2) Cut ALL welfare and payments to illegal aliens

3) Cut all foreign military bases to about 5 world wide.

I've seen worse ideas, but it's like the old military saying that "...the important things are simple, and the simple things are hard."

There any number of areas we could cut spending on. The true challenge is making it happen in political reality.

On these specific items, you'd have pretty massive resistance on each from various different interests, and a real solution must include the means to cut through or around them.
 
1) Cut Fed employees by 25%

2) Cut ALL welfare and payments to illegal aliens

3) Cut all foreign military bases to about 5 world wide.

What an incredible post.

Sophocles himself would commit ritualistic suicide at witnessing such intellectual prowess.
 
1) Cut Fed employees by 25%

2) Cut ALL welfare and payments to illegal aliens

3) Cut all foreign military bases to about 5 world wide.

I think we could cut the list down to only two items.
1) Make baseline budgeting illegal.

2)Do not allow $1 more in expenditures from year to year.

The Federal Government gets on average about a 8% raise in income every year,
but seems to increase spending by more than that every year.
If programs did not get automatic increases, it would take about 10 years to pay off the debt.
It would not be a good 10 years, but I think it is better to select your own battlefield,
rather than have it selected for you.
 
Cut Fed employees by 25%
Federal employees pay taxes. If you fire them you'll lose tax revenue which will at best minimize the gain.

2) Cut ALL welfare and payments to illegal aliens
As with federal employees if you eliminated payments to either of these groups of people they would no longer be able to buy groceries, pay rent, hospital bills, buy gas, clothing...

1.) The drop in aggregate demand from all these consumers suddenly disappearing from the market would cut revenue in the private sector reducing profits.
2.) Lower profits would again lower tax revenue.
3.) Lower profits and lower demand would eliminate the need for many private sector workers costing millions of more people their jobs.
4.) Repeat from step one.

3) Cut all foreign military bases to about 5 worldwide.

This is probably the only one of your three bullet points that might have the intended effect without causing a major cascade of unintended consequences.
 
1) Cut Fed employees by 25%

2) Cut ALL welfare and payments to illegal aliens

3) Cut all foreign military bases to about 5 world wide.

So that would save what... 10%? What about the rest?
 
So I looked. Let's take them one at a time, and looking only at the cost, using the most generous numbers for your claim.

1) There are about 2 million federal employees. If we assume they each cost about 250k a year(which is way on the high side, the actual number is probably less than half that, but I cannot find a figure), that results in a 125 billion dollar savings.

2) Absolute highest number I find of the cost of illegal aliens in the US is 100 billion a year.

3) Total cost of overseas basis, with the cost of the troops, is 22 billion.

So we get a total savings, at the most, of about 250 billion. The actual number would be considerably lower, and come with high costs. The US deficit this year is projected to end up at 833 billion. So you are at maybe a third that. See, it helps to actually check your facts, it keeps you from making silly claims.

Yep, if we cut 100% of non-defense, discretionary spending then there would still be a deficit.
 
1) Cut Fed employees by 25%

2) Cut ALL welfare and payments to illegal aliens

3) Cut all foreign military bases to about 5 world wide.
Riiiiiiiiiiiiight

Total spending in FY2018: $4.4 trillion
Deficit for FY2018: $800 billion

Social Security = $1 trillion / 22%
Medicare = $625 billion / 14%
Medicaid = $412 / 9%
Defense Department = $886 billion / 20%
VA / Homeland Security = $180 billion / 4%
Interest on the debt = $363 billiion / 8%

Note: The US has about 800 foreign bases.

All of the above is $3.4 trillion (77%). You've barely made a dent in this figure -- maybe $150 billion for overseas bases? Now, I'm not a big fan of the use of military force, and I'm willing to listen to rational reasons to close some bases. However, even I know that dropping to 5 foreign bases, just to pinch a few pennies, would be total madness.

As hinted already: Undocumented immigrants are not eligible for any federal welfare, period. That saves $0.

The federal workforce is actually smaller than it was in the 1960s; it is now down to around 5 million, despite a substantial increase in the size of the population during that time. That includes military, which is a little more than half of the federal workforce. Compensation costs roughly $450 billion; cutting that by 25% would save very little -- at face value $112 billion. If you are only talking about cutting the civilian federal workforce, then that's a $56 billion savings (again, face value only). However, you're going to have a wave of quits and reduced productivity.

For example, what happens if you cut the IRS by 25%? For one thing, it takes longer to process returns and payments. It also means fewer resources to catch tax cheats. Both result in lower tax revenues, which is counter-productive. Ooops.

Will we have 25% fewer airport traffic controllers? Do you like the idea of even more delays at the airport? How will FEMA do if you cut staff by 25%? Do you want 25% fewer people taking care of our nuclear arsenal? (Yep, that's Department of Energy, not DoD.) How can you catch people cheating on food stamps, if there are 25% fewer people investigating possible fraud? What happens to medical care for veterans, when you cut VA staffing by 25%?

So at best, you might have closed the gap by $262 billion (or 33%), in exchange for... weakening our military, destroying our international military presence, pissing off all of our allies, putting a big smile on the faces of China and Russia and every Islamicist militant on the planet, and decimating the effectiveness of the federal workforce -- including ICE, the DEA, the FBI, the CIA, Homeland Security (including FEMA), and much much more.

Sounds like a bargain, don'tcha think?
 
Yep, if we cut 100% of non-defense, discretionary spending then there would still be a deficit.

There are a large number of problems to eliminating the deficit(not least of which is whether we really should eliminate the deficit entirely). When some one says it is easy, that just means they do not understand the problems. Cutting spending reduces GDP growth, which reduces revenue growth, which increases the deficit. It is a complex problem, and is going to take alot of work to fix. And it cannot be done overnight. With a deficit of 833 billion, if we cut spending by that amount, it would reduce GPD by 4.29 %, or in other words, we go straight to recession. A recession reduces revenue by large amounts, meaning more cuts to balance the budget, meaning a longer, deeper recession, meaning more cuts, and so on.

We have to reduce the deficit, it needs to be done. But that is going to take hard choices, and long term planning, and concessions from both sides of the isle aisle.
 
How to balance the budget in one step. Return to Obama era tax brackets.

I think the top tier will have to be a little higher than the Obama era. Clinton/Gore balanced the budget with an Obama-like 40% top tier. Because we now have to pay so much more in interest on the debt, the top tier will have to be about 50%. Once balanced, it could return to 40%.
 
There are a large number of problems to eliminating the deficit(not least of which is whether we really should eliminate the deficit entirely). When some one says it is easy, that just means they do not understand the problems. Cutting spending reduces GDP growth, which reduces revenue growth, which increases the deficit. It is a complex problem, and is going to take alot of work to fix. And it cannot be done overnight. With a deficit of 833 billion, if we cut spending by that amount, it would reduce GPD by 4.29 %, or in other words, we go straight to recession. A recession reduces revenue by large amounts, meaning more cuts to balance the budget, meaning a longer, deeper recession, meaning more cuts, and so on.

We have to reduce the deficit, it needs to be done. But that is going to take hard choices, and long term planning, and concessions from both sides of the isle aisle.

It is extremely unlikely that congress will cut spending and almost as unlikely that congress will raise taxes. So long as doing neither gets them re-elected at rate of over 90% then inaction is the politically easy option.
 
It is extremely unlikely that congress will cut spending and almost as unlikely that congress will raise taxes. So long as doing neither gets them re-elected at rate of over 90% then inaction is the politically easy option.

The last 2 Democratic presidents did exactly what you mention, with Bipartisan Congressional support. Clinton and Obama raised taxes and cut spending. Clinton achieved a Budget Surplus. After inheriting a record $1.4 Trillion deficit, Obama more than halved ththe deficit during his tenure.

Dems are making the hard decisions. Republicans are just cutting taxes and raising deficits, to get "brownie" points.
 
The last 2 Democratic presidents did exactly what you mention, with Bipartisan Congressional support. Clinton and Obama raised taxes and cut spending. Clinton achieved a Budget Surplus. After inheriting a record $1.4 Trillion deficit, Obama more than halved ththe deficit during his tenure.

Dems are making the hard decisions. Republicans are just cutting taxes and raising deficits, to get "brownie" points.

Let's see what a demorat majority in the House comes up with.
 
It is extremely unlikely that congress will cut spending and almost as unlikely that congress will raise taxes. So long as doing neither gets them re-elected at rate of over 90% then inaction is the politically easy option.

You don't have to cut spending... all that is required to get our fiscal house in order: (nominal) deficit growth < GDP growth.

fredgraph.png


The problem arises from the fact that if we don't reduce deficit growth during good economic times, it is impossible during downturns.
 
So I looked. Let's take them one at a time, and looking only at the cost, using the most generous numbers for your claim.

1) There are about 2 million federal employees. If we assume they each cost about 250k a year(which is way on the high side, the actual number is probably less than half that, but I cannot find a figure), that results in a 125 billion dollar savings.

2) Absolute highest number I find of the cost of illegal aliens in the US is 100 billion a year.

3) Total cost of overseas basis, with the cost of the troops, is 22 billion.

So we get a total savings, at the most, of about 250 billion. The actual number would be considerably lower, and come with high costs. The US deficit this year is projected to end up at 833 billion. So you are at maybe a third that. See, it helps to actually check your facts, it keeps you from making silly claims.

I didn't get a chance to look yet, but does anyone know what percentage of the federal budget is compulsory (social security, medicare, etc) versus what percentage is discretionary spending?
 
After inheriting a record $1.4 Trillion deficit, Obama more than halved ththe deficit during his tenure.

Deficit spending eventually turns into national debt. Obama, dollar wise, ran up the most by any US president. I believe he was charged with over 8 trillion dollars, closer to 9 trillion.
 
Deficit spending eventually turns into national debt. Obama, dollar wise, ran up the most by any US president. I believe he was charged with over 8 trillion dollars, closer to 9 trillion.

Cheney/GW executed the worst presidential pass-on since the great depression - Housing/banking crisis, bankrupt US auto industry, CEO corruption gone Amok, a severely depressed stock market, high unemployment, 2 wars, and much more. Before Obama put his hand on the bible, the deficit was approaching $1.4 Trillion. After he cleaned up these messes, the deficit started dropping like a rock, and it ended up less than half of the inherited $1.4 Trillion.
 
1) Cut Fed employees by 25%

2) Cut ALL welfare and payments to illegal aliens

3) Cut all foreign military bases to about 5 world wide.
Federal payroll is something like 2 percent of the budget. Undocumented immigrants don’t get welfare.

As I’ve said many times on these pages, the vast amount of money the federal government spends is concentrated in five areas: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, defense and interest on the debt. Everything else makes no real difference for deficit reduction. So, if you are looking to cut significant spending, you are talking about cutting the big five or you have no idea what you are talking about.

I’m no military expert but my off the cuff belief is that reducing bases to five would be a logical nightmare for thing such as refueling and supplies as well as lengthening the time of tactical responses.
 
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The reduction of "mandatory" spending is simply a (moronic?) way of sayng that "discertionary" spending is more important. It is akin to adding an unaffordable second new car payment to a houshold "budget" and saying that it will be partially offset by a 5% reduction to rent, utility, medical care, insurance and grocery payments. Since the landlord, utility provider, doctor and insurance company will not accept partial payments then only grocery spending will be cut by 25%.
 
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