Looked at the charts, I say pay the vets and drop unemployment bennies.
Shut it down!
The active duty pay is all that would be a concern.
Unemployment insurance should be off the priority list.
Military pay MUST be put on the list. It is a Constitutional issue.
It’s pretty clear Obama’s plan A is not to agree to a debt agreement and then maximize the pain and blame it all on the Republican House. Plan B is to get an agreement with tax increases, then use that to defeat Tea Party members who voted for it.
Federal Revenues are approx $200 billion per month. You can easily pay active duty military and veterans affairs. Those two items are a drop in the bucket. The rest of the list could disappear and most people would never even know it had been shut down.
That’s actually a pretty small list of things that wouldn’t get paid for. The other day I heard Erik Erikson whining on his radio show about the demise of NASA. NASA is the kind of thing you get rid of when you’re broke, not just NPR, Planned Parenthood or the Department of Education. Things I can also think of:
* Aid to Israel and any other foreign aid
* National Parks
* Most overseas military bases — pull out of Europe, South Korea, Japan and let them pay their own freight except for vital bases that support operations in our national interest
* Virtually all nonessential Federal agencies
I’m sure you all can think of things to add to the list. That is our new reality, courtesy of those who overspent and overpromised before us.
I agree with Herman Cain. The decision should be by department.
These figures look as if they were skewed to make a point.
There is no time period stated so it is impossible to determmine the basis for these calculations.
Estimates for 2011 Government Revenue hover around $4.5 trillion.
Move the active duty military payments to the top chart and we would be good to go.
Much of the expenditure in the bottom chart is for items we would like to see eliminated anyway!
This whole discussion is LONG over due and is a healthy thing.
Other spending = White House entertainment budget.
read later
“Other Spending $52b”. It’s the biggest item in either list and nothing in it is important enough to be broken out. In my company I think we’d cut that and say come back to us on individual items you feel like you can justify.
These aren’t “all or nothing”. For example Dept. of Ed is one of the bigger items. You’ll get a lot of push back saying we can’t cut Pell Grants. But those are probably $5-7b (I think 40% of the budget). There’s another $12b+ allowing the DoE to screw local schools with NCLB. We can certainly cut that budget by 50% without many downsides.
Why is that?
IIRC, I read somewhere that cuts of 25-40% just gets us back to 2005 spending levels.
Kick the people out of social security that never paid into it. Medicaid could have a copay even if it is only $5 dollars per visit, it would help.
You could stop the extended unemployment benefits or at least reduce the amount by half. Why take a job, when it pays less than unemployment is what some people think.
With respect to Medicare, your average American has to pay a percentage of their entire income into the system.
But there is a cap for the higher wage earner, and once reached, the excess is exempted. That cap could be eliminated(phase out so there is no extra to steal for other programs).
Lower the tax rates, and broaden the base, you will get new Revenue from growth instead of new taxes on people already paying them etc etc. A lot of the 2cnd list should be eliminated or drastically cut anyway.
More speculation.
Section 8 housing debacle involving luxury living.
http://www.wmal.com/Article.asp?id=2225336
We must end the entitlement mentality for the leeches.
I fail to see what this table tells us, since it is speculative and anyone can make up a completely different table (as freepers are now in the process of doing). I find it meaningless. Or am I missing something?