Dave's Plan to Balance the Budget

By Dave

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget offers a budget simulator or "an online exercises in hard choices." Your goal is to stabilize the U.S debt at 60% of GDP by 2018.

This was easier to achieve than I initially thought. I favor a mixture of revenue increases and spending cuts in order to put us back on a more fiscally responsible path and this exercise demonstrated that, if we wanted to, it would be hard, but not impossible. If we are serious about deficit reduction, the two big necessary actions are reform of military and entitlement spending.My preferences were to reduce our military engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan, allow the Bush tax cuts to expire except for the AMT patch, freeze certain discretionary spending, reduce ship building and end unnecessary military projects, nix the farm bill, enact a 5% VAT, and entitlement reform.

It seems to me that there is a serious case to be made for progressives picking up the mantle of entitlement reform while Obama is still president. If hard choices need to be made with social security and medicare, I'd rather those choices be made by a majority power that is sympathetic to the goals of the programs, instead of by a party ideologically hostile to the idea of a social safety net.