Your ideal solution?

[AZRedhawk44]

So, pretend everyone at APS just got elected to the House and Senate.

What bill (just outlined ideas is OK, no formal bills with legalese that no one understands) will you present to address the nation's finances?

Me?

Assuming I have an approximate income of 3.5 trillion dollars and a supposed budget of around 4.5 trillion that I appear to be compelled to spend, I need to resolve a 1 trillion dollar shortfall.

To do that, I need to do it in a way that does not impede the economy in today's climate. 

-I'm going to keep taxes where they are, including the existing Bush tax cuts.
-I'm going to slash every government program 5% across the board this year, then another 5% next year.  This will provide 225 billion dollars of my needed 1 trillion cut in the first year, and another 210 trillion or so the next year.  This is "real dollar" cuts, not cuts in the projected increase to their budget that is normally talked about .
-I'm going to increase the SS retirement age by 1 year this year, and 1 more year 5 years from now.
-I'm going to freeze SS benefits at current rates for 5 years.
-I'm going to freeze the Medicare physician reimbursement fee schedule at its current rate for 5 years.
-I'm going to get the Federal government 100% out of the business of "art."  No more fed grants for art.
-Not a penny will go to Obamacare.

The tightening up of SS/Medicare would help inflation bring us out of a state of national indebtedness due to the ballooning of these programs.  The benefits would take about 3-5 years to really be seen, but these two programs eclipse even the Dept of Defense budget.

I don't think I can find a way to balance the budget in 1 year, but given 5 years I believe the above cuts would take care of it.

A trillion dollars is a lot of money to find.  Stupid congresscritters.

[Jamisjockey]

I would co sponsor your bill  

My thoughts?
Immediate freeze on current spending and debt levels.
Freeze on tax rates.  No cuts, no increases.  
Begin article 5 amendment process to permanently set all tax rates by constitutional amendment, require 2/3 cosent in both houses for any bill that spends money (even if its a buck), and tie spending and debt directly to tax income.
Increases in the SS age, and a plan to eliminate the program entirely.
I would also be looking at ways to eliminate all federally funded entitlement programs.  
I would go after any and every agency that doesn't do "something".  
FDA would see sweeping cuts.  
Elimate Departments of Education, HUD, HHS.  
Put together a task force with the authority to disband any federal program, agency, or department that doesn't have constiutional authority to exist.

Sidenote:
You want to make yourself sick?  Browse this list of .gov agencies
http://www.usa.gov/Agencies/Federal/All_Agencies/index.shtml
It will boggle your mind.

[longeyes]

To cut the deficits you're going to have to, "paradoxically," cut tax rates on saving and investment.  Without economic growth we are never going to get out of the bind we're in right now.  Unfortunately, that will drive the Envy Class crazy.  Hence The Great Impasse.

I think your government cuts are too meek and mild.  The time has arrived for draconian realism, not "rational" incrementalism.  We need nothing less than 25 per cent cuts across the board and the wholesale elimination of many departments and many, many programs.  In short a total re-think of the scope of government.

[HankB]

Repeal Obama care - between 2.5 and 3 trillion dollars in savings over the next 10 years, depending on whether or not you restore the 500 billion transferred from Medicare.

Repeal the Bush Medicare drug plan. Well intentioned as it was, we don't have the $800,000,000,000+ it will cost over the next decade.

Take Boehner's proposal and cut the rest of Federal budget back to where it was in 2008, without stimulus or TARP funding.

Implement a law that says as of FY2015 Federal elected officals, judges (except SCOTUS), and cabinet members only receive pay and benefits in years where the Federal budget is genuinely balanced. (Not the illusory nonsense during Clinton's last years that saw the national debt continue to grow even when there was an annual "surplus.")

Take a hard look at the continued existance of various departments including Energy, Education, HUD, HHS, DHS, and Indian Affairs. Curtail others (like Agriculture).

This is only a start - and a modest start at that.

[Tallpine]

Probably a couple wars we could do without, also...   

[Brad Johnson]

Fire the whole lot of them and replace them with clones who are slavishly loyal to ME!

mu-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!!

Brad

[charby]

I would present a two Constitutional amendments.

The populace of the US would be voting on an amendment on term limits on US House and US Senate.

The amendment will be written as such.

No one person may serve in office more than 4 terms in the US house of Representatives and 2 terms of the US Senate.

The next amendment would be written to repeal the 17th Amendment.

[Racehorse]

I'd rather repeal the 16th amendment.

[sumpnz]

Term limits would be high on the list.  12 years service, however they want to split it up between House and Senate should be plenty.

Sunset clause.  All future legislation can have no more than a 10 year sunset clause.  All existing legislation (except COTUS) must be renewed within 5-10 years.  Anything not explicitly, and individually renewed expires after the sunset period.  If the law is so good then it'll get renewed.  If not, it goes away.  That'll tie them up so much that they can't accomplish anything.

[White Horseradish]

End the War on Drugs. Put a taxation system in place for the drugs. Disband DEA and put a commission in place to examine the rest of the alphabet soup and disband as appropriate. Transfer the freed up personnel and necessary assets to Border Patrol and ICE, sell what isn't necessary. Cut foreign aid to people that we get nothing useful from, maybe install some sort of a mechanism to measure return on investment in these matters. Quit teaching illiterate shepherds which of their women's orifices is the correct one to produce children. Remind Congress about letters of marque and get them to issue some pirate hunting licenses. Term limits. Build a government housing complex for active congresscritters consisting of one or two bedroom apartments to control their cost of living in DC. They want bigger accommodations, they pay for them out of their own pocket.

Maybe more stuff I can't think of at the moment.

[Ron]

I like the idea of the sunset clause on all legislation.

We also need to rethink our use of base line budgeting for the same reasons.

Implementing the sunset and forcing government to occasionally start fresh with a new budget would help kill off zombie government and agencies.

BASELINE BUDGETING

"Baseline budgeting" is one of those Washington terms that sounds very dry and boring. In reality, baseline budgeting is one of the most sinister ways that politicians claim to cut spending when they are actually increasing spending. The Congressional Budget Office defines the baseline as a benchmark for measuring the budgetary effects of proposed changes in federal revenue or spending, with the assumption that current budgetary policies or current services are continued without change. The baseline includes automatic adjustments for inflation and anticipated increases in program participation. Baseline, or current services, budgeting, therefore builds automatic, future spending increases into Congress's budgetary forecasts.

Baseline budgeting tilts the budget process in favor of increased spending and taxes. For example, if an agency's budget is projected to grow by $100 million, but only grows by $75 million, according to baseline budgeting, that agency sustained a $25 million cut. That is analogous to a person who expects to gain 100 pounds only gaining 75 pounds, and taking credit for losing 25 pounds. The federal government is the only place this absurd logic is employed.

Politicians often like to have it both ways. Baseline budgeting gives politicians an opportunity to deceive taxpayers by allowing them to claim that they are holding the line on spending while providing more services.

Baseline budgeting seems like a technicality and should not be such a hotbed of contention, but every round of budget negotiations involves baseline budgeting with both sides of the aisle complaining that the other side is using the process to mask spending increases. Baseline budgeting is an issue that truly separates the deficit hawks from the budget chickens.

Eliminating the inflated budget baseline will force Congress to justify and account for increased spending instead of hiding behind automatic increases. Through commonsense accounting, taxpayers would learn that spending in Washington is not under control.

[charby]

I'd rather repeal the 16th amendment.

I'm ok with paying a reasonable income tax, I do enjoy roads, national parks, national defense, etc.

[MechAg94]

Term limits would be high on the list.  12 years service, however they want to split it up between House and Senate should be plenty.

Sunset clause.  All future legislation can have no more than a 10 year sunset clause.  All existing legislation (except COTUS) must be renewed within 5-10 years.  Anything not explicitly, and individually renewed expires after the sunset period.  If the law is so good then it'll get renewed.  If not, it goes away.  That'll tie them up so much that they can't accomplish anything.

I like the 10 years sunset, however, I would say a 2 year sunset on all spending bills.  

When you say 12 years maximum in office, do you include local and state offices?  Would you add restrictions against lobbying?  IMO, the goal is elect people who are not career politicians.  Term limits alone do not fix that.

[MechAg94]

I'm ok with paying a reasonable income tax, I do enjoy roads, national parks, national defense, etc.

I would say then that they could set the maximum income tax rate, but they would probably try to find a way around it.  

I heard a guy talking about the income tax once and his opinion was that the modern growth of our govt can be traced back to passage of the income tax.  Once we gave them a new source of revenue, they took it and ran with it.  A point he brought up was that Prohibition would never have happened without the income tax.  The issue had come up years before and it wasn't passed because alcohol taxes were a large part of the govt revenue pre-income tax.

I think if you scaled back social security to be what it originally was (a retirement plan) or turned SS into a private system, you wouldn't need income taxes.  Of course, you might need to get rid of the federal debt and debt payments as well.  My only concern here is what you do with people who are disabled in some way and get money from the govt.  I'm not sure how to hit that one.

[MechAg94]

Some other thoughts:

1.  Cut off welfare completely.  I don't care if states want to do this (I think they will), but I don't think federal govt has any business doing it.

2.  The OP mentioned 5% cuts in all federal programs/departments.  I think that is too little.  I think 10% in the first year and 5% in each year for about 4 or 5 more years.  Freeze pay and all increases in pay for every Manager until it happens.  Make it a condition of employment.  

3.  There needs to be some way to give incentive to managers of federal departments to save money instead of getting into empire building.  Right now, the only limit is their budget and that keeps increasing.  Could heads of federal departments be given bonuses for budgeted money they give back?  

4.  Cut back on all foreign aide.  Most especially all the AID's funding and all sorts of other foreign charity.  I don't think this helps us and I don't think it helps the people we are trying to help anyway.

5.  Eliminate PBS and NPR.  Both have enough viewers/listeners to become private without affecting their programing to any great degree.  

[charby]

4.  Cut back on all foreign aide.  Most especially all the AID's funding and all sorts of other foreign charity.  I don't think this helps us and I don't think it helps the people we are trying to help anyway.

I think it does help us. The media tells us the rest of the world hates the USA but my coworkers who travel a lot for work have told me differently. People like us mostly because we do give aid to our enemies and no other country does that. That sends a pretty powerful message that we are strong but merciful.

[Jamisjockey]

I think it does help us. The media tells us the rest of the world hates the USA but my coworkers who travel a lot for work have told me differently. People like us mostly because we do give aid to our enemies and no other country does that. That sends a pretty powerful message that we are strong but merciful.

There is absolutely no constitutional mandate for foriegn aid.  Period.  None. 

[Racehorse]

I'm ok with paying a reasonable income tax, I do enjoy roads, national parks, national defense, etc.

I have no problem paying reasonable taxes. I just think that an income tax is the wrong way to do it. Income taxes penalize productivity and too easily facilitate social engineering. It's much harder to tax the rich at a higher rate with something like a sales tax. I prefer consumption taxes.

[Tallpine]

I have no problem paying reasonable taxes. I just think that an income tax is the wrong way to do it. Income taxes penalize productivity and too easily facilitate social engineering. It's much harder to tax the rich at a higher rate with something like a sales tax. I prefer consumption taxes.

Plus income taxes are a terrible invasion of privacy 

[RevDisk]

I would cut all redundant agencies, first off.  Regardless of if they are Constitutional. 

Then I'd start eliminating unnecessary agencies (HUD, DEA, EPA, ATF, etc).  Merge all necessary functions into the old agencies:  FBI (law enforcement functions), Treasury (taxes, fees, etc), Customs (tariffs and duties), Immigration, etc.  Put HARD caps on "mission creep" on said agencies.  Find out all of their responsibilities, limit it to a handful. 


That is a necessary step that would save hundreds of billions that I don't think has enough attention.  Most folks have no idea just how many agencies there are, and how large they are. 

[charby]

There is absolutely no constitutional mandate for foriegn aid.  Period.  None. 

Very true, but I think some foreign aid does help win hearts and minds and perhaps influence delivery of resources we need.

[charby]

I have no problem paying reasonable taxes. I just think that an income tax is the wrong way to do it. Income taxes penalize productivity and too easily facilitate social engineering. It's much harder to tax the rich at a higher rate with something like a sales tax. I prefer consumption taxes.

Tax on food too?

[MicroBalrog]

Tax on food too?

And the problem is?

[charby]

And the problem is?

No problem there

[T.O.M.]

I've got an idea floating around in my head for how to cut some serious expenses at the federal level.  There are some 20 different federal law enforcement agencies...IRS has a crimnal investigation division, National Institute of Health has a Police force, Veteran's Affairs has police, etc., etc.  Why not merge all of these law enforcement agencies into a single Federal Law Enforcement agency?  Think of all the adminstrative duplication you could eliminate, You could literally eliminate thousands of federal employees in this way.  And, there would be large equipment savings, in terms of computers, office equipment and space, paper, even firearms (instead of a contract for each agency, one large contract for all feds).  Leave the Marshalls to work for the courts (security, fugitive searches, enforce court orders), and the Secret Service for protective details.  Yeah, I know it would be really unpopular at the employee level, but I think it could work well.  No more jurisdictional fights.  If it's a federal issue, its the FBI for investigation, or the Federal Police for uniform work.