So, the republicans want to kill the children and make grandma eat cat food. The democrats want to save everyone. Does anyone believe this anymore? First of all, ramen noodles are alot cheaper than cat food nowadays so I'm not understanding where they are coming from on that one. As for the republicans, they are playing politics with the budget cuts also. Of course we need a military to protect us but I'm sure there are ways to cut some excess pork without stopping research on the next best defense project. Are we forgetting that they spend 500$ on a hammer and 1000$ for a toilet seat? Come on now. The democrats want a zero % budget cut. They have said this a few times. This was Harry Reid's platform for the first debate for cuts. So, with one side not wanting to cut at all, and the other side willing to cave in and not only accept but claim victory for a cut that only covered a portion of one month's interest alone, how are we going to get out of the mess?
I have looked at this and found the perfect way to stop the accusations about how one side is destroying NPR for political purposes and the other is trying to kill our military. If you have ever been laid off or know someone that has been ( im willing to bet that we all at least know of someone nowadays) then you know that without enough money coming in, you'r going to have to cut some extras around the house. We all know that we spend billions of dollars in this country on things that we want and not need. I propose the same thing for the government. Without choosing a political cut or anything that can be argued as having a need and not a hand out, here is the solution. We need to cut 20% of every single program. Every program has waste and every program can learn to be a little more responsible with the money they have. This does not target a specific program so it cannot be attacked by partisans. It is fair and more than necessary. Because of the many spending problems we have right now, I had to use the 2010 budget and it was just an estimate. O.K. so in 2010 the total budget was 3.46 trillion dollars. If we cut 20% of that, it would be 692 billion (if my wife's math is correct haha) Now that is a cut we could all agree on.
Lets take it another way. All numbers are from 2010. the defense department spent 663.7 billion dollars. If we cut 20 % of that it would be, 132,740,000,000 (thats almost 133 billion) in just one cut. remember 20% would be mostly waste. The department of transportation spent 72.5 billion. 20% of that would be 14.5 million. Also, in waste. The department of health and human services spent 78.7 billion. 20% of that would be 15,740,000,000 (almost 16 billion). You see how fast these add up. I like this method even better because it breaks everything down one at a time. As congress cuts these programs they can add additional cuts necessary according to how relevant the program is. With just the top three spenders of 2010, we have cut a total of 148,494,500,000 dollars. That would be 148.5 billion dollars that we really could do without. We personally cut 35% when i was laid off so we all know its possible and 20% is not going to kill any program.
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