Solving The US Budget Deficit Problem
Photo Source: Clipart.com The budget deficit in this country is staggering. There is no agreement on how to get out of it, between the political parties. The Republicans created the biggest deficit and the Democrats are adding to it. Some people think that they can create a new party and steer the government toward more fiscal responsibility. We have heard about the Tea Party people, the group of ultra conservatives and CPAC, the ultra conservatives. Neither seems to agree with each other on many different points. As a matter of fact, one of the leaders of the Tea Party went to the Cpak conference and stated that he could never join them. Is the answer to our budget crisis unsolvable? If you look at it on the surface, it seems that way. Even if the ultra conservatives could get into power and enact draconian budget slashes, by the time they were in power and able to do this, it would be too late. It has been said that at the rate we are going, that by 2020 the entire federal budget will be going for interest payments. I have no way to verify this, but it could be true. Then there are the Democratic conservatives screaming for budget cuts and restraints, but there are not enough of them either. Most congressmen and senators are driven by the lobbyists and if they don't go along with their spending plans, the lobbyists will just throw money behind a different candidate, come election time. Believe me, they are all too aware of this fact. Did you ever wonder why not much gets done to help the common person by the government? The reason is simple, WE HAVE NO LOBBYISTS spreading money around. Foreign countries have more pull with the government than the ordinary American citizens do. The funny part of this whole thing is that it would be so simple to get us back on the fiscal track. I heard an idea the other day, one that I have heard many times before, but in this atmosphere of trillion dollar shortfalls, it has become very appealing. The idea is the old flat tax idea. It is said that if everyone and every company had a flat tax placed on them of 15%, there would be no budget shortfall and the deficit would disappear in a short time. There would be no need for confusing tax forms, but there would be a need for a way to verify the incomes of the self employed. Still it is an idea who's time has come. It is said that it would bring in far more revenue than we collect now and at the same time lower the tax burden on many people. There is a problem with the flat tax however, the idea has some powerful enemies. You say to yourself who would want to oppose something like this? Well for one, lawyers. I remember being at a bar association meeting in New York many years ago and the lawyers were jumping for joy. An amendment for plain language in contracts had been defeated. Boy were they happy and shaking hands and smiling. Sure, they don't want things simple, because you wouldn't need lawyers. I have nothing against lawyers, but when they stand in the way of progress, or the common good, then I certainly do. The next group of people that would oppose the flat tax are accountants. These are the people that are hired to do the taxes that have become so complicated. They probably derive most of their income from tax advice and filling out forms. Then there is big business. Probably all have so many tax shelters and use so many loopholes that they pay less of a percentage of their profits in taxes than we do. One of the reasons that the bigger businesses became multinational was to avoid some of their tax burden. The Europeans dealt with this by adding the Value Added Tax, also known as VAT, where everyone along the line that buys goods pays tax on them. We could also save a lot of money in many other different ways. No project should even be allowed to be considered in the House or Senate that costs more than a certain amount per person. An example of what I am talking about is the famous bridge to nowhere. From what I understand only about 50 people would have benefited from the building of a large bridge. Not only that, but any road project that was suggested for a road that hardly anyone uses, should be shelved. The bridge was to cost 398 million dollars. If we divide that by the 50 people that would have used it, that comes out to a cost of almost 8 million dollars per person. Does anyone think that there is something wrong here? That doesn't even account for the expensive maintenance that would be required every year. There should be no proposals tacked on to bills. Each thing that is proposed should be in its own bill, so that law makers don't feel pressure to pass something because they know that the main bill would have to be voted down to stop the amendment. This would also save large amounts of money. If the flat tax was enacted, we could put the surplus IRS agents on seeking out fraud in Medicare, Medicaid and even Social Security. I am sure this would net us many millions or even billions of dollars. I have to ask you a question. If you were running the government and found that you had these huge deficits, would you continue to send huge amounts of money to foreign countries? This is exactly what we are doing and no one ever says a word about it. In case you are wondering how much we give each year here are the figures for 2006, the latest I have from Vaughn's Summaries. The largest receivers of aid are on tops: Israel 2 billion 520 million
dollars This may seem like chicken feed compared to our problems, but remember this is coming out of borrowed money and we are paying interest on it. Another thing is that some say that there are hidden funds that are sent to some countries that are not listed and in some cases this can be a lot more than what we see. Notice that I haven't listed the amount being spent every year in Iraq and Afghanistan. A lot of people might not know this, but we even sent money to Russia, it wasn't much only 52 million in 2006, but we seem to bankroll everyone at our own expense. Do you think that India is doing well lately? Then why are we sending them money? We sent them 94 million dollars in 2006. We also have to stop the military from bull dozing us by accepting arms that don't work with the promise that they will be perfected. I have said this many times, would you buy a car that didn't run with the promise that it would be made to run in a couple of years? So far we have discussed a flat tax,
streamlining bills, cutting aid to countries, eliminating large
projects for small amounts of people, wasteful military contracts and combating fraud. I am sure
there is a lot more that we could do, I am not an economist. We have
to do something and we have to do it right away, or all will be lost.
That includes not fighting in pointless wars. |
