An Internet hub with domestic and international news, analysis, original reporting, and popular features from the left, center, indies, centrists, moderates, and right
Balance The Budget
Another of the many ‘balance the budget’ programs, this time from the NYT
I’ll be curious to see how folks tackle this. I presume some will do nothing but spending cuts while others will focus mostly on tax hikes and cutting the military.
But it’s a fun exercise
4 Responses to “Balance The Budget”
I went for a mix of cuts and tax hikes, but nothing draconion – and balanced it. Thanks Patrick, I’m going to send this to some other people..
Very interesting and fun exercise. This confirms my moderate position as I ended up 47% taxes and 53% spending and I was not looking before I balanced.
One has to wonder what the hell our politicians are doing in Washington…Oh right,argueing as usual.
They don’t work for us anymore RP. This much is clear.
I definitely solidified my Conservative position at a 67% cut, 33% tax backing for balancing the budget.
To break down my liberal v. conservative side, I did the following:
Conservative:
Halve foreign aid; ban earmarks; cut civilian pay in the federal government by 5%; cutting the federal workforce by 10%; cutting 250000 federal contractors; reducing non-combat military pay and overhead; med mal reform; raising the retirement and medicare age to 70; capping medicare growth; tighten disability eligibility; increasing payroll tax for the wealthy; following Bowles Simpson; instituting a national sales tax.
Liberal:
Carbon tax; means testing social security benefits; reducing our troops in the Middle East to 30k by 2013; canceling weapons programs; reducing the size of the Navy and Air Force; reducing our troops abroad, and reduce the military to pre Iraq size; reducing our exploration of space, and nuclear arsenal.
By doing this, I managed to turn the deficit into a surplus, and do so in the future.