A combination of cuts in defense, and non-defense, non-entitlement cuts isn't going to be enough. Entitlements by themselves are going to be larger as a percentage of national income or production than the entire federal government is now. Add interest on the debt, and at least if you mike some less than optimistic assumptions they could be higher than the entire current burden of government federal, state, and local.
The tax increases are to high for the health of the economy, and perhaps even too high to be possible, even if you cut defense to zero, and keep other non-entitlement spending to no real per capita increase.
$700bil on defense may be maddening to you, but its small compared to the costs I'm talking about, and its becoming a lower and lower percentage of our economy and of our federal spending over time. Its not really the problem.
The main change will have to come from decreasing the growth in entitlement spending. One start would be to increase retirement ages saving money from both Social Security and Medicare.
Or you could change the cost of living setup to reduce future increases.
Perhaps both, so that changes made to either would not have to be as big.
But instead what we've been getting from the current and previous president is new entitlements (Obamacare, and Medicare Part D), and deficits as large (in nominal dollar terms) as the entire budget not all that long ago. |
