IMO, there is no downside to balancing the budget by 2012. There is enough waste, duplication of efforts and unnecessary govt expenditures to make this a no-brainer. If you do that, you will sweep to landslide victories in both the House, and Senate, then it doesn’t matter who is in the White House. How could a Democrat run against a properly run campaign to balance the Federal budget? The Republican party has hundreds of millions of dollars in their pocket right now, to overwhelm the public airways with targeted ads. Once the battle is begun, money would flow in from citizens of both parties. I would even send them money again.
It's easy to balance the budget by 2012 if we can just cut way back on Social Security benefits, Medicsre benefits, Medicaid benefits, agricultural subsidies, food stamps, or just raise taxes.
With nearly all of our seniors on welfare now, there aren't many politicians who are willing to cut these programs in 2012, or 2013, or 2014, or at any time less than ten years from now. And, of course, while they can talk about cutting these programs in ten years, they have no power to control the budget ten years from now, so it's really just empty talk.
They are talking about raising taxes in the near term, but they're calling it Tax Reform.
“IMO, there is no downside to balancing the budget by 2012. There is enough waste, duplication of efforts and unnecessary govt expenditures to make this a no-brainer.”
If only that were true...not when we’re talking TRILLION dollar plus deficits.
The rut of the problem (to borrow a Dr. Jocelyn Elders term) is that the government simply SENDS OUT much more money than it takes in. In fact, you could FIRE every federal worker, and still have a Trillion dollar deficit.
No...something has to give...either we tax the crap out of people, or we cut DEEP and VERY DEEP, or we keep running the same deficits.
If you think that’s a winning strategy, you need to study the history of Republican BLOWOUTS more.