How to fix the budget — it’s easy!
The CBO says that in order to balance the budget over the next 25 years, we would have to either decrease spending or increase tax revenue by 5.4% of GDP. That’s $788 billion. Of course, politicians will create another crisis and find more reasons to take our money, but what about the other option: STOP SPENDING. Politicians don’t know how to do that, but let’s show them how easy it is.
Last year, our GDP was $14.6 trillion, and the Federal Government spent $3.5 trillion. So in order to achieve the necessary spending levels to balance the budget within the next 25 years, we need to cut $788 billion a year for 25 years. (I know that’s kind of a restate of the first paragraph, but I wanted to reiterate the numbers involved. Stop whining; keep reading!)
So I hear politicians, including the President a few weeks ago in North Carolina, saying that pork projects account for only 1% of GDP, so we should concentrate on the bigger items like Social Security and Medicare and just forget about those little annoying pork projects that don’t account for anything. But if the pork accounts for 1% of GDP, that’s almost 20% of the necessary spending necessary to achieve a balanced budget. All of a sudden, that 1% just got a whole lot bigger.
Then there’s TARP. That money wasn’t meant to last forever, but until it’s all spent, we are wasting $151 billion a year on it. That’s 4% of GDP. Well folks, we just got to 5% of GDP real quick by cutting out two sets of programs meant only to pad the pockets of democrat districts and big donors.
The last 0.4% can come from Other Discretionary Spending. We waste $437 billion annually here, or 12% of GDP.
Folks, I’m not genius, but I just solved the problem, and it took 10 minutes on Wikipedia and Google. For those of you wondering about after TARP funds expire, I’ve got a radical idea: cut the money from that Other Discretionary Spending category. There’s $437 billion to choose from. I’m sure that we don’t need to spend all that. That’s why it’s called discretionary. When I buy a new pair of shoes, I don’t do it because I need them. I do it because I want them, so I use discretionary funds. My OWN discretionary funds. Although, I bet it’s much more fun spending someone else’s discretionary funds. Oh, the shoes I’d have if I could use someone else’s money.
We don’t need more taxes folks; we need people in Washington who know how to say No to a spending spree and understand what is wanted and what is truly needed.
Posted on April 22nd, 2010 by TheAdamBomb
Filed under: Uncategorized
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