How would you balance the budget?

[Oneuli]

Trump's budget proposal is out and he is proposing trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see. Since conservatives used to pretend they cared about deficits, I'm wondering what conservatives here would do to remedy that.

From a liberal perspective, achieving a balanced budget isn't that hard, since we don't treat our radically low taxes as a given, nor do we put our largest area of discretionary spending off-limits.

For example, using 2018 data from the International Institute for Strategic Studies, consider the proposal of reducing our military budget to "only" 50% more than the combined spending of our two top potential opponents, Russia and China. That would be a huge budget in its own right, but it would save us about $300 billion per year.

Now consider taxes. The average tax revenues for a developed nation are 34.19% of GDP. So, say we wanted to be taxed less than a normal amount, but not radically less -- let's say 10% less than if we were at the developed-nation average. Based on a GDP of $20.9 trillion, that would bring in about $760 billion extra per year. So, right there, with $760 billion in extra revenues and $300 billion in lower spending, we've gone from a deficit to a surplus -- from about a $984 billion FY 2019 deficit, to a $76 billion surplus.

Note, were not talking about any hard sacrifices there. We'd remain a significantly "under-taxed" country, by the standards of developed nations, making us more attractive to business than our peers. And we'd continue to have a military budget about twice as large as the next-closest country's. So, as I said, this isn't a terribly difficult math problem for liberals. But how do you get there as a conservative? When you insist on radically low taxes and absurdly high military-industrial pork, where can you find enough savings to reach balance?

That's the problem Trump was tackling with his budget. Yet, despite his willingness to betray his campaign promises (and the nation's promise to its elderly) by slashing Medicare and Social Security, he couldn't even move the numbers in the right direction. So, if you could dictate the budget, could you reach balance? How, would you do it, in terms of specific numbers and programs?

 

[cawacko]

From a high level view very few people actually care about balancing the budget otherwise politicians would feel pressure to address it. It's basically become an instrument to bludgeon political opponents with.

If we want to address the deficit and national debt we have to start where the most spending goes and that's entitlements and the military.

 

[LV426]

If we want to address the deficit and national debt we have to start where the most spending goes and that's entitlements and the military.

Or, we talk about how much revenue was reduced by tax cuts.

Remember, last year revenues were 2% below the year before, and the deficit expanded as a result.

We didn't cut spending back from 1998-2001 when we had surpluses, we had higher tax rates that were eventually cut.

How many times do we have to cut taxes before you admit that doing so widens deficits and decreases revenues?

 

[LV426]

Trump's budget proposal is out and he is proposing trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see. Since conservatives used to pretend they cared about deficits, I'm wondering what conservatives here would do to remedy that.

From a liberal perspective, achieving a balanced budget isn't that hard, since we don't treat our radically low taxes as a given, nor do we put our largest area of discretionary spending off-limits.

For example, using 2018 data from the International Institute for Strategic Studies, consider the proposal of reducing our military budget to "only" 50% more than the combined spending of our two top potential opponents, Russia and China. That would be a huge budget in its own right, but it would save us about $300 billion per year.

Now consider taxes. The average tax revenues for a developed nation are 34.19% of GDP. So, say we wanted to be taxed less than a normal amount, but not radically less -- let's say 10% less than if we were at the developed-nation average. Based on a GDP of $20.9 trillion, that would bring in about $760 billion extra per year. So, right there, with $760 billion in extra revenues and $300 billion in lower spending, we've gone from a deficit to a surplus -- from about a $984 billion FY 2019 deficit, to a $76 billion surplus.

Note, were not talking about any hard sacrifices there. We'd remain a significantly "under-taxed" country, by the standards of developed nations, making us more attractive to business than our peers. And we'd continue to have a military budget about twice as large as the next-closest country's. So, as I said, this isn't a terribly difficult math problem for liberals. But how do you get there as a conservative? When you insist on radically low taxes and absurdly high military-industrial pork, where can you find enough savings to reach balance?

That's the problem Trump was tackling with his budget. Yet, despite his willingness to betray his campaign promises (and the nation's promise to its elderly) by slashing Medicare and Social Security, he couldn't even move the numbers in the right direction. So, if you could dictate the budget, could you reach balance? How, would you do it, in terms of specific numbers and programs?

Here's a dirty secret about government debt that Conservatives hate and will never mention; it never has to be paid off.

We don't ever have to pay off government debt because unlike individuals, government doesn't die. So there's no ultimate accounting of what is indebted when it comes to federal debt.

So long as our GDP grows at a faster rate than our debt, we're doing just fine.

High debt only has the effect of raising borrowing rates for the government, but the government has historically low borrowing rates, and has had them for at least a decade.

 

[Cypress]

How would you balance the budget?

Repeal the Trumpf trickle down tax cut scheme.

Return to the tax rates of the booming and prosperous Bill Clinton era.

Repeal Trumpf's massive and unnecessary peacetime military buildup, and trim the Pentagon budget to a reasonable and sane level, commensurate with protecting the conterminous United States, any vital national interests, and any treaty obligations.

 

[CFM]

Repeal the Trumpf trickle down tax cut scheme.

Return to the tax rates of the booming and prosperous Bill Clinton era.

Repeal Trumpf's massive and unnecessary peacetime military buildup, and trim the Pentagon budget to a reasonable and sane level, commensurate with protecting the conterminous United States, any vital national interests, and any treaty obligations.

So spend more money on nonsense social welfare programs for which the Constitution grants no authority but cut spending on one of the few things for which the federal government has the authority to do?

I'll take building a stronger military over feeding a freeloader.

 

[Oneuli]

Here's a dirty secret about government debt that Conservatives hate and will never mention; it never has to be paid off.

We don't ever have to pay off government debt because unlike individuals, government doesn't die. So there's no ultimate accounting of what is indebted when it comes to federal debt.

So long as our GDP grows at a faster rate than our debt, we're doing just fine.

High debt only has the effect of raising borrowing rates for the government, but the government has historically low borrowing rates, and has had them for at least a decade.

The problem is that conservative policies typically result in debt rising faster than GDP. Although we had debt fall as a share of GDP almost every year from the end of WWII to the start of the Reagan administration, it then started to rise as a share of GDP -- at least until after the Clinton tax hike, which caused things to improve for a bit. But then we got Bush's upper-class tax cut and things went to hell in a hand-basket again.

 

[canceled.2021.1]

Trump's budget proposal is out and he is proposing trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see. Since conservatives used to pretend they cared about deficits, I'm wondering what conservatives here would do to remedy that.

From a liberal perspective, achieving a balanced budget isn't that hard, since we don't treat our radically low taxes as a given, nor do we put our largest area of discretionary spending off-limits.

For example, using 2018 data from the International Institute for Strategic Studies, consider the proposal of reducing our military budget to "only" 50% more than the combined spending of our two top potential opponents, Russia and China. That would be a huge budget in its own right, but it would save us about $300 billion per year.

Now consider taxes. The average tax revenues for a developed nation are 34.19% of GDP. So, say we wanted to be taxed less than a normal amount, but not radically less -- let's say 10% less than if we were at the developed-nation average. Based on a GDP of $20.9 trillion, that would bring in about $760 billion extra per year. So, right there, with $760 billion in extra revenues and $300 billion in lower spending, we've gone from a deficit to a surplus -- from about a $984 billion FY 2019 deficit, to a $76 billion surplus.

Note, were not talking about any hard sacrifices there. We'd remain a significantly "under-taxed" country, by the standards of developed nations, making us more attractive to business than our peers. And we'd continue to have a military budget about twice as large as the next-closest country's. So, as I said, this isn't a terribly difficult math problem for liberals. But how do you get there as a conservative? When you insist on radically low taxes and absurdly high military-industrial pork, where can you find enough savings to reach balance?

That's the problem Trump was tackling with his budget. Yet, despite his willingness to betray his campaign promises (and the nation's promise to its elderly) by slashing Medicare and Social Security, he couldn't even move the numbers in the right direction. So, if you could dictate the budget, could you reach balance? How, would you do it, in terms of specific numbers and programs?

You won’t like my answer. So stick with yours. I am sure you think you are right.

PS

where are you going to cut $300 billion out of military budget?

 

[Oneuli]

From a high level view very few people actually care about balancing the budget otherwise politicians would feel pressure to address it. It's basically become an instrument to bludgeon political opponents with.

If we want to address the deficit and national debt we have to start where the most spending goes and that's entitlements and the military.

Yes, I agree it's used mostly as a bludgeon. However, I think you left out the most important aspect of how we could address it: raising revenues. Our spending levels aren't actually that high, relative to GDP, for a developed nation. In fact, they're well below normal:

https://data.oecd.org/gga/general-government-spending.htm

And if you counted only non-defense spending, it's extremely low -- just 37.9% of GDP, compared to 38.5% for Japan, 42.2% for Great Britain, 42.7% for Germany, and 55.0% for France. In theory, we could further starve our already-anemic spending, but wouldn't it make more sense to address our radically low taxation?

 

[ThatOwlWoman]

The problem is that conservative policies typically result in debt rising faster than GDP. Although we had debt fall as a share of GDP almost every year from the end of WWII to the start of the Reagan administration, it then started to rise as a share of GDP -- at least until after the Clinton tax hike, which caused things to improve for a bit. But then we got Bush's upper-class tax cut and things went to hell in a hand-basket again.

This has certainly been true throughout my life time. I have never been able to figure out where (R)s got the ill-deserved reputation of being fiscal hawks. Do you know?

 

[Billy the Great Khan]

Pull out of NATO, close all overseas bases, cut defense spending by 1/3, raise SS age to 85, allow people under 35 to opt out of paying into it (because we will never get that money back), end the War on Drugs, get rid of the DEA, ATF, and a bunch of other alphabet soup agencies, and a 25% cut to all federal administrative salaries.

 

[Celticguy]

Here's a dirty secret about government debt that Conservatives hate and will never mention; it never has to be paid off.

We don't ever have to pay off government debt because unlike individuals, government doesn't die. So there's no ultimate accounting of what is indebted when it comes to federal debt.

So long as our GDP grows at a faster rate than our debt, we're doing just fine.

High debt only has the effect of raising borrowing rates for the government, but the government has historically low borrowing rates, and has had them for at least a decade.

Tell that to Zimbabwe

 

[Superfreak]

Trump's budget proposal is out and he is proposing trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see. Since conservatives used to pretend they cared about deficits, I'm wondering what conservatives here would do to remedy that.

From a liberal perspective, achieving a balanced budget isn't that hard, since we don't treat our radically low taxes as a given, nor do we put our largest area of discretionary spending off-limits.

For example, using 2018 data from the International Institute for Strategic Studies, consider the proposal of reducing our military budget to "only" 50% more than the combined spending of our two top potential opponents, Russia and China. That would be a huge budget in its own right, but it would save us about $300 billion per year.

Now consider taxes. The average tax revenues for a developed nation are 34.19% of GDP. So, say we wanted to be taxed less than a normal amount, but not radically less -- let's say 10% less than if we were at the developed-nation average. Based on a GDP of $20.9 trillion, that would bring in about $760 billion extra per year. So, right there, with $760 billion in extra revenues and $300 billion in lower spending, we've gone from a deficit to a surplus -- from about a $984 billion FY 2019 deficit, to a $76 billion surplus.

Note, were not talking about any hard sacrifices there. We'd remain a significantly "under-taxed" country, by the standards of developed nations, making us more attractive to business than our peers. And we'd continue to have a military budget about twice as large as the next-closest country's. So, as I said, this isn't a terribly difficult math problem for liberals. But how do you get there as a conservative? When you insist on radically low taxes and absurdly high military-industrial pork, where can you find enough savings to reach balance?

That's the problem Trump was tackling with his budget. Yet, despite his willingness to betray his campaign promises (and the nation's promise to its elderly) by slashing Medicare and Social Security, he couldn't even move the numbers in the right direction. So, if you could dictate the budget, could you reach balance? How, would you do it, in terms of specific numbers and programs?

Before I begin with how to fix this... We do not have 'radically low taxes'. We are about 26% of GDP. The UK is 34%. The France, Germany and the Nordic countries are insanely high in the mid 40's. Switzerland is about 28%

That said... here is what I would propose:

1) Eliminate the tax code as it stands... all of it. All 75k pages of it. All loopholes, all deductions, all subsidies. For the individual side: Replace it with a Flat tax of 20% on earned income from 0-$500k Additional 10% tax on anything over that. This is on ALL income: Earned income, dividends AND capital gains. Standard deduction for every adult is $30k. Which will make the tax code progressive and protective of the lower income families. For the corporate side: recognize that a corporation is just paper. Eliminate the corporate tax code all together. The individual tax code will take care of taxing the money based on who gets it.

2) Spending: We must get this under control, obviously. You pinpoint the obvious first place to start... The DoD. Way too much waste there. Let Europe pay to defend Europe. Eliminate most of the bases there, eliminate the bulk of the top of military hierarchy (we have far too many Generals/Admirals etc... who all have staff... basically too much admin). Definitely stop spending on weapons programs the military doesn't even want/need. Bottom line, I agree we could cut Defense by at least $200B.

3) Healthcare costs: It doesn't matter how we pay for healthcare if we don't address the cost issue. What is driving the costs so high? Why is it so expensive to get a medical degree? Why are insurance costs so high for doctors/hospitals? I have more questions than answers here, but this is first place to start.

4) Social security: Fix it with an additional 3% tax on income over $500k. That would resolve the issue. Social Security is not nearly as big of a problem as people think. Medicare is... which is due to number three above.

All in all, I think we would agree on a lot... Not much we can do with the amount we have to pay out of SS, but we need to balance it with an increase in taxation as mentioned so that it doesn't detract from other areas in the future. Besides SS, Healthcare via medicare and medicaid is the biggest mandatory expense. We must figure out a way to get costs under control. Defense is the non-discretionary target. I think we agree that at least $200B, maybe more, could be cut.

I think the area for discussion for the two of us would be on taxation. I want more transparency and simplicity in the tax code. There shouldn't be 75k pages to go through. My plan above is certainly open for tweaking on the numbers... but I think it is the better option than what we have today.

 

[moon]

The US has in excess of a thousand military bases world-wide. Hellooooooooooo !

 

[Superfreak]

Repeal the Trumpf trickle down tax cut scheme.

Return to the tax rates of the booming and prosperous Bill Clinton era.

Repeal Trumpf's massive and unnecessary peacetime military buildup, and trim the Pentagon budget to a reasonable and sane level, commensurate with protecting the conterminous United States, any vital national interests, and any treaty obligations.

What the leg humping moron fails to mention is Bill Clinton is responsible for the largest tax giveaway to the wealthy EVER. Lowering long term cap gains to 20%. Gee golly, I wonder who it is that benefits the most from that?

 

[Oneuli]

You won’t like my answer. So stick with yours. I am sure you think you are right.

You're correct. I am. However, I encourage you to try to make the numbers work. I think you may be surprised how difficult it is to reach balance without touching the parts of the budget the conservatives treat as off-limits.

where are you going to cut $300 billion out of military budget?

The options are many. Keep in mind that every other nation on Earth manages to get by with a small fraction of our spending, and the level I'm targeting would leave us spending over twice as much as anyone else. If they can do it, we can, too. If we reduced the military budget by $300 billion, relative to what IISS lists for 2018, that would be a $343.3 billion budget... not that much lower than the inflation-adjusted amount we spent back in the 1990s. Where, specifically, could we find savings? Well, for starters, we don't need the next generation of fighter jets and bombers, since our current generation is already superior to anything our adversaries can deploy in any significant numbers. We also can mothball most of the aircraft carrier fleet -- Russia gets by with a single carrier, which isn't even half the size and capabilities of ours, and China's got two of those derelicts. There's no reason we need a dozen of those giant money holes. We can also pull back from many of our overseas positions, and decrease our force size, while scrapping most of the kinds of forces that are based on the idea that we're going to be waging a major conventional war against the Warsaw Pact (artillery, tanks, etc.) Our nuclear force is also wildly excessive -- many times more than needed for mutually assured destruction, and absurdly expensive because of it. And we can retire a large portion of our general officers, since we have a top-heavy force full of political animals with more stars than brains.

 

[Superfreak]

Pull out of NATO, close all overseas bases, cut defense spending by 1/3, raise SS age to 85, allow people under 35 to opt out of paying into it (because we will never get that money back), end the War on Drugs, get rid of the DEA, ATF, and a bunch of other alphabet soup agencies, and a 25% cut to all federal administrative salaries.

You will have SS. SS is an easy fix. Otherwise, I agree with the above. Especially the war on drugs comment and cut to federal admin salaries.

 

[Oneuli]

This has certainly been true throughout my life time. I have never been able to figure out where (R)s got the ill-deserved reputation of being fiscal hawks. Do you know?

They may be utterly incompetent when it comes to most things, but they're masterful propagandists. They realize that if they simply talk the talk of being fiscal hawks, the corporate media will feel too sheepish to point out the reality, and most people will be too lazy to seek it out on their own.

 

[Phantasmal]

It would also cut federal subsidies to farmers, add a user fee on e-cigarettes and end a tax credit for electric car purchases.

People are gonna love these budget proposals!

Hes also includes $20 million for a Jack Nicklaus project after they paid to played a round of golf. Wonder if Jack let Trump win. Does Nicklaus have to register as a lobbyist now?

 

[Oneuli]

Pull out of NATO, close all overseas bases, cut defense spending by 1/3, raise SS age to 85, allow people under 35 to opt out of paying into it (because we will never get that money back), end the War on Drugs, get rid of the DEA, ATF, and a bunch of other alphabet soup agencies, and a 25% cut to all federal administrative salaries.

Could you share the numbers of what you think you'll save with those changes?

With regard to raising SS to 85, that would REALLY screw the young. Keep in mind that younger current workers have been paying in at higher rates for their whole careers, whereas current retirees got years of paying in at low rates. If anyone has to suffer to make these savings, shouldn't it be today's elderly, who paid in less value than they have already taken out, rather than tomorrow's elderly, who are actually paying in at levels more sensibly related to their expected pay-out?

Anyway, if you raise SS age to 85 and allow people under 35 to opt out of paying into it, basically all of them will. And then you won't have the money to pay for those older people who are in the system already, meaning you will need to take from general revenues for that. And that will greatly drive up deficits.

As for cutting federal administrative salaries, that works if you think the problem is our public servants are much too competent. After all, you get what you pay for, and if you cut their pay well below what the market demands, you'll get a much lower class of worker -- those who can't find work in the private sector. I, personally, don't think we're suffering from a plague of government workers working at much too high a level, so I couldn't support that.

I'm in favor of ending the war on recreational drug users. However, I'd like to see the rest of your list of which alphabet soup agencies to cut -- and, again, what the specific savings would be.

Thanks.