Quote:
Originally Posted by Biggy
At this point, I think everyone is on board with spending cuts. However, the democrats want tax hikes to help close the gap, and the Republicans are very against this (they will look like a bunch of liars in the next vote since they won a lot on no tax hikes).
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You CAN NOT cut the deficit without tax hikes. People that argue otherwise are ignorant or stupid or both.
Let's look at the 2010 budget as an example.
Total Revenue $2.381 trillion
"Sacred Cow" Expenditures
$695 billion ? Social Security
$664 billion ? Department of Defense
$453 billion ? Medicare
$290 billion ? Medicaid
$164 billion ? Interest on National Debt
TOTAL $2.266 trillion
ALL OTHER EXPENDATURES TOTAL $1.286 trillion
Now interest on the debt HAS to be paid you can't cut that. Social Security, Defense, Medicaid/Medicare are considered "sacred cows". So if you don't cut those and if you don't raise revenues( aka TAXES ) then you have to cut EVERYTHING else by 91% just to get a balanced budget. But wait, balancing the budget doesn't lower our $14 trillion deficit it just stops it form getting bigger. Even if you cut the remaining 9% from those other programs that only lowers the deficit by $115 billion a year. So that would take 122 years to pay off the deficit. Even if you additionally cut, Social Security, Medicaid/Medicare and the DOD budgets by 20% you're still talking 26 years before the debt is paid off. Now who here wants Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, Defense cut by 20% and everything else cut by 100% for the next 26 years? Not me.