This has been making its rounds on blog (I got it from Ta-Nehisi but the original source is The Third Way.)
So if you want to balance the budget without raising taxes, where would you start? If wikipedia happens to be factually correct at this moment, we’re spending more on mandatory programs than we get it total revenue. In other words, it is legally impossible to balance the budget without raising taxes.
A deficit of $1,500 billion is not going to be closed by cutting congressional pay and Amtrak, that’s for sure.
And is case you’re wondering, if TANF (aka: welfare) were put on this chart, it would fall (if my math is correct) at around $25, just below NASA (the TANF budget is about $16.5 billion).
Military procurment & weapons research should be on there right below Combat Ops but above personel. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States
Why are we paying for Amtrak??? My congrassmen said they would not vote for any pay increases for themselves if a vote cmae up… So why don't then propose one??
$64 billion for highways and $2.2 billion for trains. Why does the small figure bother you and others?
We pay (a little) for Amtrak for the same reason we pay for roads and airports: because it's part of our national transportation infrastructure.
The real question is why we pay so little for trains. We get what we pay for.
I wonder what cutting our military budget in half would look like. We'd still have the largest and most well taken care of military in the world, no?
Maybe we close some bases around the world and bring some folks home.
The military is a pretty big make-work program. I'd prefer it if those patriotic men and women were building things, invading countries for no good reason.