quote:Originally posted by dolemitejb:
This problem is not as easy to solve as some are making it out to be.
Well I'd hate to be one to make it out solving the budget problem as "easy"...but I was somewhat astounded at recent CBO numbers when they ran a budget with the Bush tax cuts in place. It is the CBO...and how accurate are they? Well I don't know, but the folks at REASON magazine seemed comfortable enough in quoting from the report.
I posted on that article in another thread...they call it the 19% solution.
dolemitejb has posted on this fact of tax revenue historically being no more than 19% of GDP regarless of what the tax rates are.
Taking that into account, projecting 19% GDP tax revenue, the CBO came up with a 10 year budget that would be balanced by 2020.
What drastic cuts and services would we lose? Not much.
The recomendation was a measley 3.6% cut in the budget...approx $129 billion out of approx $4 plus Trillion annual budgets.
3.6%...and to quote from the article:
quote:A balanced budget in 2020 based on 19 percent of GDP would mean $1.3 trillion in cuts over the next decade, or about $129 billion annually out of ever-increasing budgets averaging around $4.1 trillion. Note that these are not even absolute cuts, but trims from expected increases in spending.
3.6% cuts in expected increases in spending.
Giving the apocalyptic hyberbole that politicains and special interest groups resort to when any sort of cut is duscussed, this really needs to be studied more.
3.6% and yet I've heard barely a peep about it in the news.
Now this doesnn't address our near $14 trillion debt...but a balanced budget has to be a step in the right direction.