You can participate in this by taking this survey which allows you to specify where to cut and where to increase. Your Uncle Dave would slash defense spending more than half, eliminate farm subsidies, eliminate the high-speed rail and raise funding for education.
An innovative study has found that when a representative sample of the American public was presented the federal budget, they proposed changes far different from those the Obama administration or the Republican-led House have proposed.
The biggest difference in spending is that the public favored deep cuts in defense spending, while the administration and the House propose modest increases. However, the public also favored more spending on job training, education, and pollution control than did either the administration or the House. On average the public made a net reduction of $146 billion–far more than either the administration or the House called for.
In other words, the public takes a considerably more humane view of spending than either party, is considerably less beholden to the military-industrial complex, and doesn’t seem to care if the super-rich get a bit offended.
The study was the combined effort of a think tank, the Program for Public Consultation, and the polling firm Knowledge Networks. They presented an elaborate questionnaire to more than 2,000 respondents.
Given the goal of cutting the deficit, the average Americans did the job — cutting it way more deeply, in fact, than either the Democratic or Republican proposals call for.
Ironically, the political subgroup that did the worst job was the slice of respondents who identified themselves as Tea Party sympathizers. They were the least likely to raise taxes and also the least likely, when faced with actual programs, to make cuts.
The next worst were Republicans, then Democrats. Independents raised taxes more than Republicans and cut spending more than Democrats, ultimately reducing the deficit by a whopping $195 billion.
Shoot all the bankers.
Pencil out 10 and 5 year budgets along with detail on the upcoming one. Budgets are not afterthoughts: they are they MAIN THOUGHT of what the government is going to do and how they are going to do it.
Total transparency so the people can provide input: if not in the coming budget, then on subsequent.
Prosecutions for fraud: every dollar spent to enforce IRS regulations returns 10 dollars. PUKE current proposal: cut IRS funds by 600 MM ((that sounds like too much, I might be off)).
Cut the military or have foreigners pay for the services. We should pillage the countries we invade, not rebuild them.
Tax the rich until there are no rich anymore. They are not needed. Capital formation to be set/distributed through national banks as set forth in the budgets. All profits secured thru the efforts of the people to be returned to the people.
Wallstreet Investment Banks to be outlawed. They are but a fraudulent skimming operation not productive to any society at all. With capital formation now in the Governments Hands, the very otherwise appropriate function of WS is subplanted. While government is very inefficient and even misquided, the constant gravity towards fraud and skimming is acceptable in contrast to the only alternatives now available.
Universal Healthcare with appropriate death panels.
Green energy development to release our oil dependency, create jobs, establish lead in 21st technology.
Easy Peasy.
easy
raise the age of retirement and raise maximum taxable earnings cut defense spending
don’t get re-elected but know you did the right thing
And stop all tax deductions. I’m tired of paying your share of taxes.
The defense budget may need curbing slightly, but for heavens sake… Cut the attack budget.
Go back in time and pass GWBush’s Social Security reform proposal. This would have decreased the budget deficits starting in a few years, while increasing the recent deficits. The long term impact would have fixed Social Security.
#6 MikeN:
You mean the proposal that would have put the SS funds into the stock market right before it tanked?
I guess hindsight isn’t always 20/20.
Lyin Mike: why do you lie?
why?
War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small “inside” group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.
And just like that, bobbo has us a communist nation.
#1 Joe,
Hey Joe, where you goin’ with that gun in your hand?
http://killthebanksters.com
#10–booboo==no, still lots of room for the greatest engine of economic progress yet discovered: just not an invitation for fraud and PUKE theftocracy.
Your specific complaint to any suggestion is what?
First off, we don’t just have a spending problem, ok? We have a revenue problem. You know, that recession thingy?
Why is it so difficult to get that important piece thru the collective skulls in here? A deficit is the difference between gazintas and gazoutas, K? Good.
Fix the deficit:
– tax the wealth, by a lot. Start with Reagan era tax rates. Use the term “Reagan era tax rates” so the GOP and Teabagger sheeple will swallow it.
– defense cut by 10% per year for next 5 years
– raise retirement age by two years and link further increases to life expectancy
– tax the church by enormous amounts. Fine priests each time they get arrested for having sex with 9 yr old boys and under.
– raise taxes on non-commercial oil consumption.
start with a flat tax with no exceptions on income. Then sunset social security, if your 25 or under you will not ever receive social security but you will pay it . set up mandatory retirement accts for all that move from job to job with you that you control and are tax free.
pretty damn simple but then the idiots in Washington never do simple.
Dallas you are a communist idiot and I’m damn glad you dont have any effect on any ones life but your own and I am ashamed that you actually call your self a Texan
I will agree we should tax the churches.
It was good enough for Charlemagne it is good enough for us.
I came in minus 118B, mainly from slashing the defense.
And SSI was covered. But hey I know where the priorities are. Life goes first, death goes second. No profit in death.
Cursor_
# 14 He’s not the only one. If any of these social engineering idiots could actually make a change in anything it would be a sad world. Fortunately they are regulated to howling at the moon.
I have written off Social Security a long time ago. Depend on the government for nothing….and you won’t be disappointed.
Learn to take care of yourself.
Drug war.
Oh,yea; Stopping that would be a negative cash flow for the corporafasists that run this racket.
{hillary clinton says “there’s just too much money in it”}:
http://reason.com/blog/2011/02/07/hillary-clinton-we-cant-legali
AND have them stop putting Acetaminophen in everything so that everyone gets a botched liver if they have a drink or two and then pop a gov-approved pill (with misleading or non-existant warnings as to it’s killer nature — think anything rumsfeld).
^ In other words, get rid of the FDA and USDA and any other gov crap that is supposed to protect us. All they do is push poison and make outlawed that which is safe and effective and free.
LOSE THE TSA demoralizing trainer squads and also maybe cut down on COG programs and fema camps — Hell, do you really want this crap to be all that remains in case there is some apocolypse? I, for one, would rather be ruled by damned dirty apes.
I solved the SocSec problem by taxing the rich without cap and adjusting the COLA calc. That was easy.
I came up with a 200+ billion surplus by slashing defense and subsidies. Even after adding investment in education and science. The solutions are not rocket science, the politics are. Since (so far) the Chinese don’t have to deal with politics at a mass level, watch them clean our clock economically in our lifetime. If not the next decade. Capitalism and democracy are not interdependent.
#14, 16
I agree you probably don’t want me fixing problems. You go ahead and keep electing a bunch of pussies that pander to interests that get them elected.
The solution is obvious. You have to raise revenue whose base as decimated by the Cheney administration. Explain going to two wars and a simultaneous tax cut? Wars imply sacrifice – tax increase to pay for it.
Too late now. Time for stop the government circle jerk and do the obvious. Increase taxes, cut defense spending and raise entitlement thresholds.
Death penalty for collusion between elected officials and business. Start with the governor of Wisconsin to set an example.
#21. Dallas – “You go ahead and keep electing a bunch of pussies that pander to interests that get them elected.”
and
“Death penalty for collusion between elected officials and business.”
So, When are you going to wake up to the fact that when you make a statement like that, it has Obama’s description written all over it? Are you calling for Obama’s death?
Don’t you think impeachment would be a tad more in line?
You have more money your pocket than all the taxes paid by organized religion put together.
No social security cap = not only will SS be safe, but we could lower retirement age to 62 and simultaneously cut unemployment numbers.
No Medicare cap either = no problems with medicare.
Cut the defense budget in half. Close every foreign base not vital to national interests. We don’t need any more new fighters or bombers for quite a while.
Roll back Bush tax cut on everybody making $250,000 or more. Roll back Reagan tax cut on anyone making $1 million or more.
Cap salaries of executives of any company that get any special benefits, payments, bailouts, earmarks, below market mining and drilling rights, below market real estate deals and tax breaks that are not available to everyone. This would stop all corporate handouts pretty quick!
Budget problem solved!
#13 Please keep your fingers off MY Social Security thank you. Instead how about changing these unfair trade treaties. I just don’t see how giving Communist countries most favored nation trading status is helping US.
I am NEVER this arrogant. Till now.
You are all both wrong and too tied in your own opinions to matter much in any debate.
SS
Simple, turn it into a means tested benefit. You only get it if you need it. No matter how long you have paid into it or how much.
Period…..
Defense, Turn the military into expeditionary forces… Like the Marines. Small, light, hightech and lethal. GO in, take care of business and get out. Let the charities rebuild the nations. Even if that leads to a nation that once again hates us.
Close all offshore bases as the opportunity arises. Have the military change to meet the new challenges of the world.
Cut spending. Tell teachers as well as nurses as well as everyone else. There is just not as much in the till as before. deal with it….
Don’t lower taxes, pay off the national debt to the tune of 1 trillion dollars a year till paid in full.
end all foreign trade agreements.
Tax the rich and the companies just like everyone else except if they use their wealth to employ folks with a living wage. Hey folks, they are rich for a reason. Instead of killing the modivation why not use it to the country’s advantage?
I am writting this mostly out of a bit of anger. Let me sit down and think a plan out and I will shame you all.
Try putting your egos aside and give me an honest argument aginst any of what I have proposed so far.
#2 – “Tax the rich until there are no rich anymore. They are not needed.”
Hmmm, might as well build a doomsday weapon and destroy the planet. If it’s not possible to be rich, there’s no reason to work at all. This would leave you with no ecomomy, no nothing.
I always kind of got the impression you believed in freedom. Private property is the very core of freedom and I don’t see it in your vision (nightmare).
Fix Social Security: make rich people pay it.
Fix the deficit: make rich people and corporations pay it.
#27–President Amabo==thank you. Yes, its ambiguous to discuss ideas with undefined terms. What is rich? Would saying “super rich” make any difference?
Do you think anyone would stop working if they could only make 15MM a year and not 20MM? And if they did decide to quit, would there not be anyone willing to make 15MM a year?
Sadly, YOU have bought into PUKE BIG LIE NO 3: The rich provide jobs. They dont.
But your reference to FREEEEEDOM is taken seriously. Is it possible for anyone to make Billions per year and not be taking someone else’s freedom to make a living wage?
Its debatable in theory but not common practice. Show me a rich man, I and will show you a thief. and maybe a theif who steals by having the laws made so as to favor himself over others. Legal but still theft of other people’s freedom: worse, as it is by operation of law.
Is WallStreet needed at all? If so, how much? Those million dollar bonuses paid by bailouts rather than jail?
Silly hoomans===FREEEEEEEDOM is for everyone, not just the Super Rich.
@#28 What human right do “poor” people have that “rich” do not have so that we need to deny basic rights to property to those “rich”.
Solution is trivial:
1) Treat everyone the same. You vote, you pay same percentage of what you earn as anyone else earning whatever they can. Single tax bracket. (You do not vote, ex. younger than 18- NO taxes). No exemptions, deductions, special conditions…
2) Read Constitution and eliminate any and all Govt. functions not specifically listed there. Dept’s of Education, Energy, Commerce, Agriculture,…
3) Eliminate all domestic and international subsidies, incentives, gimme’s… Corporate, state and individual. (No MY tax money to BigOil OR to someone to buy insanely expensive Volt).
4) Return all of the military forces from peaceful areas abroad. Expedite ongoing wars and return all forces from there too. Expedite using maximum force at hand (retract forces and nuke to oblivion whole countries if needed: Afghanistan, Somalia,…). If attacked in future in any manner ONLY respond by full power of nuclear weapons over the whole populations of attackers in question. Do not plan military deployments overseas in any form or fashion.
5) Eliminate social programs completely institution voluntary Govt. overseen insurance for people who want it (eradicating Social Security, Medi-Care/Aid,… if people want to be protected like that, they need to pay in but no mandates and no guarantees to those who do not pay in).
6) Budget mandate: Govt. can’t in any way shape or form spend or plan to spend more than it takes in in a year. Govt. can’t borrow from itself or outside. Eliminate Fed’. If economic conditions result in unplanned deficit, next year budget must include twice the amount of shortfall as an item. If economic conditions result in more income – half of excess must be used for paying old debt (in addition to ongoing budgeted debt repayment) and half must be saved for use in disasters (use of saved money requiring 90+% votes in both Senate and Congress).
>> MrTinFoilHat said, on March 3rd, 2011 at 6:16 pm
>> SS
>> Simple, turn it into a means tested benifit. You only get it if you need it. No matter how long you have paid into it or how much.
Your idea would kill Social Security by making it no different than welfare.
The reason Social Security is so popular is because we all buy-in and we all benefit.
If you turn it into welfare, then the conservatives will defund it because they despise the poor.