How would you balance the US budget?

[PLATO]

First $100K of all income is tax free. Tax rate above $100K is set every year at budget approval time.

This will put the necessary political pressure on the politicians to cut the crap and fund the rest.

Also, I would make all lobbying efforts illegal other than by individuals. This would keep the Congress more focused on what the people actually want.

I would require the budget to be finalized every year by the end of October so that people could be more informed on what their politicians have done when they go to the polls in November.

Finally, any "supplementals" needed during the year would have to be fully funded by the next years revenue.

[Arrian]

Darius

I'd probably throw in some cuts to the "butter" side of the budget and make the military cuts less dramatic at first... cut some, then cut some more, etc. Totally agree about inheritance/estate taxation. I'd add in legalization of some of the less worrisome drugs and tax 'em.

I'd let the Bush cuts expire as well, and the top bracket should probably come up a bit. We also need to make a decision about the AMT: do we want it or do we want something else that accomplishes a similar/the same goal (or do we not want either)? If we keep it, shouldn't it be indexed?

We need to run surplusses for decades, pay down the debt with it, and then, once we've gotten our **** together, we can create a set of rules that get us surplusses in good times and allow some deficit spending in bad times.

-Arrian

[Arrian]

Now if you really want to help Americans and raise money at the same time try this. Impose what I call a Fair Wage Tariff.

Yay! Trade wars! Phenomenal idea.

-Arrian

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by FrostyBoy
Oh, and education ain't getting much is it?

Throwing money at something doesn't fix it - unless the people are skilled. Give education the biggest piece of the pie, then the rest won't need so much pie, pretty ****ing simple really.

Actually, if you have lots of educated people and no jobs for them, it doesn't do much for you.

JM

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by DanS

Anyway, all of these people jonesing to raise other people's taxes are scary.

It's a conservative thing, we want to put them a little bit closer to where they use to be.

JM

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by Arrian


Yay! Trade wars! Phenomenal idea.

-Arrian

QFT

Smoot-Hawley FTW!

[BeBMan]

Balancing the US budget? I'd take 50% for me, the other 50% for the country. Pretty balanced IMO

[DanS]

It's amazing that most people here are talking about raising taxes. Most of you are dangerous, if we were to take you seriously.

[Patroklos]

1.) Reduce military research funding. The current additional operational costs will take care of themselves one way of the other shortly.

2.) Drastically reduce the size of the bureaucracy. Anyone in the government knows we could do the same work with half the people if we paid those left over half again their salary and actually enforced work standards.

3.) Raise SS age to reflect actually retirement trends and life spans.

4.) Take all illegal immigration costs to the government attributable to Mexican nationals out of Mexico's aid packages (that goes for every country's illegals, but we all know Mexico is the main drain in this regard).

5.) Redirect the bulk of our foreign aid to Latin America.

6.) End military aid to Israel (and most other big ticket recipients ie Egypt).

7.) Execute Congress and start over.

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by DanS
It's amazing that most people here are talking about raising taxes. Most of you are dangerous, if we were to take you seriously.

Excluding a couple years for Bush Sr. they are the lowest they have been since the 20s. I am not suggesting an increase back to the 70% of most of the 20th century.

JM

[DanS]

And they should be lower still. As gov't spending and taxation increase as a percentage of the economy, economic growth slows.

Seriously, some of you act like Uncle Sam is a cash cow ready to use for your stupid pet projects.

[Lorizael]

Originally posted by Patroklos
7.) Execute Congress and start over.

What with Congress being the ones to actually vote on budgets, I don't know how well this one would go over.

[Arrian]

Originally posted by DanS
It's amazing that most people here are talking about raising taxes. Most of you are dangerous, if we were to take you seriously.

As opposed to the apparently harmless fools who say things like "deficits don't matter?"

Pet projects are fine when they're military interventions, right?

Step one is to get from where we are now (huge deficits) to running a surplus, and that means both cuts in spending and tax increases (modest ones, IMO - back to where we were before Chimpy showed up). edit: and we all know that those levels of taxation were so awful that the economy was terrible pre-2000 and has been great since. Oh, wait...

-Arrian

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by DanS
And they should be lower still. As gov't spending and taxation increase as a percentage of the economy, economic growth slows.

Seriously, some of you act like Uncle Sam is a cash cow ready to use for your stupid pet projects.

So I guess the economy must have been pretty horrible from 1930-1980 when the highest bracket was greater than 70%.

JM

[DanS]

It wasn't very good, to be sure.