So living within our means,... means the end?
I beg to differ. IMHO,... that will be a new dawn to a brighter future.
If I were in charge... real cuts where both sides can agree. After that,... 1% cut across the board for everything else. Nothing spared. This is repeated every year until 5% budget surplus achieved.
Hahahahaha... sorry didn't mean to laugh, but there's some humorous observations here...
"Living within our means"... VERY funny... we're not even CLOSE, NOR will we EVER be... (not until the whole country is bankrupt and the gubmint is paying everything off with worthless scrip they're printing by the trillions (which is why it will be worthless). The cuts they're talking about won't even get us anywhere on the same CONTINENT as "living within our means"... let alone anywhere CLOSE to "living within our means".
Then there's "REAL cuts on which BOTH SIDES can AGREE..." Ummm... okay... lets see... Oh wait, there's NOTHING on which both sides can agree... maybe you can knock a couple billion out of NASA funding or something like that, maybe cuts to the farm bill (well, the about 20% of it that's actually GOING TO FARMERS instead of WIC and Food Stamps, which consumes the other 80%) Wow-- you may have just cut out a whopping $5-10 billion at most... pocket change compared to the fed'l budget...
"1% across the board from then on"... and in maybe 20 years MAYBE you'd balance the budget... maybe even make the 5% surplus budget goal you set...
Oh, wait, you'd be voted out about 16 years before that ever happened... nevermind.
Want to balance the budget?? (nevermind paying down the debt, which is becoming a REAL problem-- sooner or later just servicing the debt will be more than we collect in taxes-- at that point-- BAM-- bankrupt).
Eliminate gov't departments wholesale-- HUD, Dept. of Education, EPA, Dept. of Agriculture, Dept. of Health/Human Services, etc.
Eliminate programs wholesale-- Food Stamps, WIC, Welfare, etc. and all the freebies that go along with it.
Congressional amendment forcing Congress to live under the same laws as the rest of us-- no more seperate retirement fund, no more exemptions, special health care and travel provisions, etc, no more voting themselves pay raises-- gov't pay for elected representatives, senators, president, supreme court justices set at the Median US household income plus 20%, with a reasonable travel allowance similar to that found in business for employees travelling on commercial business. No more special planes (excluding the President for obvious reasons) no more million dollar soirees on the public dime... And term limits for Legislative Branch similar to the Executive Branch-- no more guys like Strom Thurmond who was in junior high when Seti I was still Pharoah of Egypt...
Eliminate tax breaks for stuff that makes no sense... oil companies posting record profits getting tax breaks for oil exploration and production?? I don't think so. LOTS of this sort of graft and corruption going on, in ALL areas of gov't/corporate interaction...
That's a good start anyways...
Later! OL JR
PS... zero out ALL foriegn aid, PERIOD... zero out all support for the arts... lots of CRAP we can cut that we don't need...