Can You Close the U.S. Budget Deficit? - Use The Calculator Below to See How Well You Can Do

From the article:

In 2015, the federal government is projected to spend almost $4.2 trillion, the biggest spending plan in U.S. history. Taxes and other fees collected will total nearly $3.6 trillion, leaving a budget deficit of $607 billion.

Here are several dozen budget-cutting ideas proposed by various organizations and commissions. Choose among them to make your own plan to cut the deficit.

This was actually a fun and easy exercise to do; Of course each person's answer is based upon their knowledge and comfort level of federal government support programs and cuts that you feel may or may not be necessary to get America out of this continued deficit situation.

So how far can you cut our deficit? Be honest with yourself in your answers. There is an explanation to the right of each proposal which explains the benefit or affect or your decision before you check the (X) box to make a cut.

Remember, the goal is to remove the $607 billion dollar deficit for 2015. On a personal note, I did it with 17 decisions that I would be comfortable with and saved us 650.1 billion dollars.....should I contact the White House and show them how......

Try it and let everyone know your results. Looking forward to seeing the replies.

Go here to start making your decisions: (your choices include cuts in spending, freezes, tax options, subsidy removals, and/or or various combinations. etc.


www.aarp.org...


From the instructions:

Your goal is to close the $607 billion deficit.Directions: Mouse over a box to read a proposal's brief explanation; click on a box to select it. To undo a selection, click on the box again. Once your choices balance the deficit, the calculator recognizes your success. Make sure to look at all 4 pages.

Sources used for budget deficit reduction ideas:

1 National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform

2 Bipartisan Policy Center Debt Reduction Task Force

3 Congressional Budget Office

4 Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget

856.8!!
Guess I should run for president.
This just goes to show you that common sense and politics will never go hand in hand.

6.5% national tax puts a huge dent in it....add to that defense spending cuts and some congressional cuts and its a done deal.

This "calculator" is a joke, while they do list Social Security and Defense spending, they don't list other major spending areas that could be cut, therefore I don't think this calculator is fair.

reply to post by manta78


Simple and there were significant items not included in the choices, such as most of the social programs, needless federal departments, means testing for medicare and social security, corporate welfare and a host of others.

It could be done and would only take a bit of courage

Due to the creator's bias, many important options have been omitted from the selection choices.

More things that could be cut include shutting down the failed war on drugs, ending corporate welfare, and shutting down huge portions of the government that are wasteful and destructive to liberty.

Originally posted by Royalkin
This "calculator" is a joke, while they do list Social Security and Defense spending, they don't list other major spending areas that could be cut, therefore I don't think this calculator is fair.

Did you look at all (4) pages of your options to cut? Social Security and Defense were just two of the nine options you have to choose from......

Other options that are included in this calculator are:

Government Operations
Energy
Education
Military and Defense
Transportation
Health Care
Foreign Aid
Social Security
Taxes

Hard to play the game, when it is rigged from the inside.

Originally posted by stalphos
Due to the creator's bias, many important options have been omitted from the selection choices.

Did you notice this section of the article?

Here are several dozen budget-cutting ideas proposed by various organizations and commissions. Choose among them to make your own plan to cut the deficit.

Note: Their ideas included 9 areas of the budget to cut as I noted above in my response to Royalkin. That does not mean that this is all the ideas which are possible have been presented in this format by any means.

And those organizations and commissions consisted of:

1 National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform

2 Bipartisan Policy Center Debt Reduction Task Force

3 Congressional Budget Office

4 Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget



How about trying your skills with the information given in this exercise?

AARP Needs to modify this propaganda tool to allow more government programs to be eliminated before jumping right into raising taxes. IE List all spending with a keep or cut button next to each item.

Someone who doesn't really know where all the tax dollars are spent will look at this tool and think raising taxes is the only fix.

If they would allow me to see the entire budget on this tool, I would get us to a surplus and reduce taxes at the same time.

All those cuts are a joke, they are way too conservative. For example, rather than cutting small portions out of the defense budget and simply scaling back ongoing wars, why can't we cut back the entire budget. Cutting the defense budget in half and ending all current conflicts would take a huge dent out of that budget.

But, they obviously want us to accept raising taxes, as that seems to be the only way to get that calculator down to 0.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/a102aa32c5d9.gif[/atsimg]
One picture = 544.3 billion words.

Quite a joke when you see that they expect a 607 billion deficit in 2015 and tax income of 3.6 trillion.

Ridiculous. The US won't even make it financially to 2015 so it's kind of a waste of time, but thanks for the share anyways.

Oh also our yearly funding:

Total Outlays (Federal Funds): $2,650 billion
MILITARY: 54% and $1,449 billion
NON-MILITARY: 46% and $1,210 billion


Solution is simple
reduce military spending by 1/3rd and reinstitute bush tax cuts = profit.

Hell, we might even be able to handily afford things like universal healthcare, computers for everyone, millions of scholarships, etc...

We just need to get out of the whole murdering is our only real trade style economy.

Or we could just learn chinese

reply to post by manta78


I wish someone would come out with an unbiased calculator. First of all, it's from AARP... enough said on that. Also, the question about extending the Bush tax cuts gives it away. They have been the tax rates for a decade, and extending them doesn't add to the deficit. To say that implies that it is the government's money to begin with. How does money that the government never had add to the deficit?

Make sure you click on NEXT to see all 4 pages -

I like this - very clever - s&f thanks for posting

Originally posted by SaturnFX
Oh also our yearly funding:

Total Outlays (Federal Funds): $2,650 billion
MILITARY: 54% and $1,449 billion
NON-MILITARY: 46% and $1,210 billion


Solution is simple
reduce military spending by 1/3rd and reinstitute bush tax cuts = profit.

Hell, we might even be able to handily afford things like universal healthcare, computers for everyone, millions of scholarships, etc...

We just need to get out of the whole murdering is our only real trade style economy.

Or we could just learn chinese

Just so you know. if taxes go up i lose my house and so does millions of others who are on the brink

Originally posted by camaro68ss

Originally posted by SaturnFX
Oh also our yearly funding:

Total Outlays (Federal Funds): $2,650 billion
MILITARY: 54% and $1,449 billion
NON-MILITARY: 46% and $1,210 billion


Solution is simple
reduce military spending by 1/3rd and reinstitute bush tax cuts = profit.

Hell, we might even be able to handily afford things like universal healthcare, computers for everyone, millions of scholarships, etc...

We just need to get out of the whole murdering is our only real trade style economy.

Or we could just learn chinese

Just so you know. if taxes go up i lose my house and so does millions of others who are on the brink

If a removal of 4% of your income breaks you, then you suck at money managment.

You will then downgrade to something you can afford (hopefully with the valueable lesson not to purchase what you can't afford to begin with) and a housing boom will occur.

The government should just raise income taxes to 100%, that should cover all of their bills.

Originally posted by chiefsmom
856.8!!
Guess I should run for president.
This just goes to show you that common sense and politics will never go hand in hand.

Congratulations on your budget decisions and being the only person so far, who has ACTUALLY USED the information provided in the exercise to make a decision.... and thanks for all the replies/comments from others.....keep them coming...