I don't know why Buffett chose 3% deficit to GDP as an acceptable ratio. Why not 1%? Why not 5%?
We've been at >3% deficit/GDP for much of the last 50 years.
Posted on 09/02/2026 7:25:17 AM PDT by econjack
"I could end the deficit in five minutes," he said. "You just pass a law that says that any time there's a deficit of more than three percent of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for reelection. Yeah, yeah, now you've got the incentives in the right place, right?"
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
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And term limits.
Yeah, that’s a great idea. Unfortunately, the people who would need to pass that law are the same ones who would NEVER pass that law.
Yea and I’m sure everyone in congress will vote to pass this bill.
Buffet says he doesn’t invest in anything he doesn’t understand.
Clearly he doesn’t understand congress.
Won’t work!
A Congress reduces Social Security to balance the budget. They won’t be re-elected either! Those who come after them will restore Social Security payments and repeal Buffet’s law.
While I agree with the sentiment of Mr Buffet, the Constitution sets out the requirements for the Congress plus the individual houses make up their own rules.......
Government / Congress would simply move things off-budget, or change the legal definition of GDP
Sounds good to me.
I think the last balanced budget we had was at the end of the Clinton administration?
And deficits add to the overall debt. They become cumulative as they add to the national debt year by year.
The national debt is about $40 trillion now. I think it was about $6 trillion in the Clinton era.
All of us have to balance our own household budgets. It should just be a given that government has to balance its budget.
It was a mistake in the Constitution to let the government borrow money or print money. It should’ve been funded entirely by tariffs and taxes.
I think Buffet nailed it.
3% of $30T
He said deficit, not debt. The deficit is about 2T per year, I think, so 3% would be sbout 60B
A good concept. But there’s no way a congenitally
spendthrift Congress is gonna vote itself out of office.
3 percent of GDP, which is around $30 trillion. Debt is $40 trillion now, I think. Annual deficit is about $2 trillion.
Whatever. Neither side in Congress is ever going to address the real issue of social programs that is driving this disaster: it’s politically unpopular, which also means they would never get reelected.
The only real way to balance the budget would be to directly base the value of US currency on gold and silver and make it directly exchangeable.
Sorry to say it - but under our present printed, fiat money system, we will have budget deficits and inflation until the system blows itself up.
After Congress raided it for cash for pork barrel projects.
Why can states like Forida have budget surpluses and Congress cn’t get even cose to a balanced budget.
I don't know why Buffett chose 3% deficit to GDP as an acceptable ratio. Why not 1%? Why not 5%?
We've been at >3% deficit/GDP for much of the last 50 years.
I think it’s time to start a national referendum on some real plan to reduce the deficit and also implement the line-item veto. I would suggest that any new program can only be passed if it also specifies the revenue source to fund it. The source could be funds taken from an existing program or a new tax.
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