Let's decrease or even elminate corporate subsidies to lower government deficit.

[MrFun]

Why did the GOP House vote unanimously to protect subsidies for oil corporations when eliminating such subsidies can save millions of dollars?

[Hauldren Collider]

Let's compare a few numbers here:

1,000,000 --> One million
1,000,000,000 --> One billion
1,000,000,000,000 --> One trillion

What's our deficit, something like 1.5 trillion dollars? Ah, what the hell. You're only off by six orders of magnitude. No big deal.

[Hauldren Collider]

Also if you really believe that you're not allowed to complain about gas prices.

[giblets]

Corporate subsidies are the first things that should be cut.

[Dinner]

It's a step in the right direction. Hell, just getting rid of the farm subsidies would save $120 billion per year and with food prices at record highs if they can't make it on their own now they likely will never be able to make it on their own but either way they need to stop picking the tax payer's pockets. Did you notice how ending just that one subsidy, which mostly goes to a few large corporations and not "family farms", saved more then twice the proposed Republican cuts? That's just one cut and I doubled their "best efforts". Next, if you like, I can explain how to save $300 billion per year in wasteful military spending while keeping open all the bases and maintaining our current force levels.

On a more positive note when New Zealand got rid of farm subsidies the value of farm output actually went up by 50% in just two years as farmers were forced to improve productivity and switched from subsidized but low price commodities to items which actually justified a high market price based on demand. Gee, imagine that.

Edit: Ending the wasteful and completely counter productive ethanol subsidies would also save $10-$20 billion per year. Oh, and as the OP said cutting the $20 billion or so we give in subsidies to big oil wouldn't hurt but there is something even greater we could do. Rather then cutting spending or raising taxes there is a third option (to some extent) and that is get better at catching tax cheats thus making sure we actually collect what is due to us. Independent studies have shown that spending $1 increased IRS audits of tax returns yields an additional $10 in revenue on average yet the Republican Congress wants to cut the IRS by $120 million. We should frick'in triple the IRS budget and order them to audit every tax return for a person making over $500,000 per year and the entire Fortune 500. I'm willing to bet that will net tens if not hundreds of billions in new revenue as we catch the **** sucking tax cheats. All told that solves half a trillion to $600 billion of our problem right there or about 10 times what Republicans have proposed so far.

[Hauldren Collider]

Oerdin, it's not a step in the right direction, it's a red herring. Even if you cut all the subsidies and tax exemptions and federal grants until all you had left were core services and entitlements we'd still have a gaping deficit. You simply can't fix the deficit without cutting entitlements. While we're talking about steps in the right or wrong direction, explain to me what kind of a step adding another entitlement is? Right or wrong?

[giblets]

I don't see any reason to go after entitlements until the corporate subsidies and bloated military budget are dealt with first.

[Hauldren Collider]

I don't see any reason to go after entitlements until the corporate subsidies and bloated military budget are dealt with first.

It's not a matter of "until". "Until" implies that if you cut the former two then somehow you might not have to deal with the third. Your particular priorities on where the cuts should be deepest are irrelevant if you refuse to acknowledge the fact that entitlements have to get cut at all.

[giblets]

I'm only acknowledging that cutting entitlements without eliminating corporate welfare would be dumb.

[Hauldren Collider]

There are probably thousands of random little federal candy bars that would be really stupid not to cut, but passing out government bucks is a key part of how congressmen win re-election.

People have this misconception that the low-hanging fruit are the little bitty things that congressmen throw into the tax code or appropriations to please constituents. This is false. The low-hanging fruit are entitlements and all those military projects the pentagon says it doesn't want.

[DaShi]

Let's compare a few numbers here:

1,000,000 --> One million
1,000,000,000 --> One billion
1,000,000,000,000 --> One trillion

What's our deficit, something like 1.5 trillion dollars? Ah, what the hell. You're only off by six orders of magnitude. No big deal.

Yet, you're in favor of saving a few million by cutting teacher's salaries.

[Dinner]

I don't see any reason to go after entitlements until the corporate subsidies and bloated military budget are dealt with first.

After the pigs stop swilling up my tax dollars for their personal profit then we can talk about my social security checks. Until then, no, not a chance, we'll hang any politician who says the pigs feeding on government money are more important then the actual people of this country. Fix that problem first then, maybe, we'll talk about SSI (which BTW is still running a surplus and is absolutely fine until at least 2059).

[Hauldren Collider]

Yet, you're in favor of saving a few million by cutting teacher's salaries.

That's state budgets, where the deficit is a billion dollars or two and a few million dollars is actually a substantial portion of the deficit.

[Dinner]

The budget was balanced in WI until Walker walked in and gave out tax breaks to all his biggest campaign donors. Talk about corruption.

[Egbert]

That's state budgets, where the deficit is a billion dollars or two and a few million dollars is actually a substantial portion of the deficit.

Umh, you said a few million is a "substantial portion" of a billion or two. If so then Oerdin's proposal to cut $120 billion in farm subsidies must by your own logic also be a "substantial portion" of $1.5 trillion. The benefits of funding IRS audits and cutting other corporate welfare might also turn out to meet your definition of "substantial portion".