Originally Posted By: Cheerio
we can probably cut our defense budget in half and defend the US, but we should cut welfare by half as well

that would add up the about 1.5T. almost enough to balance the budget!


Throw in cut corporate welfare by half into the pot and I would agree on ideological lines.

Problem is that doing so all but guaranteed to fuck the economy. Huge cuts during anemic economy will produce another recession. Huge cuts to welfare during high unemployment will fuck over tons of people. Huge cuts to military will produce even more unemployed.

Sadly, it is not as simple as "lets just cut all of it".

Best approach to cuts is to analyze how much of each dollar is get reinvested into economy (1..2..3 before Derid rages about Keynesian economics). Welfare is generally 100% spent in US. Military sending is spent as salary, but more so as contracts. There are procurement requirements for US-made, but not for everything. So I'd guess it is anywhere between 50% to 75% spent in US. Corporate tax cuts are all get reinvested overseas, I'd guess as little as 25% of it ends up stimulating US economy.

Approach I would like to see is minimal cuts to welfare (mostly drug screening and such), moderate cuts to Defense budget (mostly Army), severe cuts to all corporate welfare, end of 1% tax cuts.

Then take some of this freed capital and create tax breaks to any business that employs US workers and penalize outsourcing (i.e. if job is outsourced and resulted in a layoff you pay a penalty).

Regardless of the approach it has to be bipartisan. Ryan/Romney are incapable of bipartisanship. Obama isn't much better, but at least we only have him for only 4 more years, not 8.

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