Well, apparently all they have to do is cut out all the giveaways programs (as advertised in Matthew Lesko's books), and our budget is balanced!! ;~D

That is BS. Show me what you would cut to produce $675 Billion per year ! I agree we should cut the Pork which has been estimeted at 25-30Billion. Cuts in Medicade, education, Veteran benefits, border guards, help to the poor for home heating are not acceptable cuts. Neither are cuts in Social Security or Medicare. If you believe cuts in these social and retirement/health care programs would fly with the vast majority of Americans, you live in a dream world!

Well, according to Mr. Lesko: "There is This is real money, given out by real government agencies. Each year the U.S. Congress appropriates over $1 TRILLION in government grants for people to use to help themselves and help the country. ORDER NOW!" So don't get your panties in a wad at me!! As long as there is money out there to "open a coffee shop, write a book, or work on your invention" I'd say the deficit could be into non-existence, just by using Lesko's books as a blue print!!!

Maybe you wouldn't have had to pay Authorhouse all that dough, had you known about Lesko and all that government cash!!!!! ;~D

Link

If the government is EXPENDING 1 Trillion in grants, where does it show up in the Federal Expendatures? I suspect that Trillion dollars is a projection of the possible grants if everyone received every possible grant. Any payments from grants would show in the federal disbursements! If the Fed were paying Americans $1 Trillion in grants each year, the deficit would be $1.5 Trillion each year.

I don't know, why don't you ask Lesko? ;~D

Mr Lesko and his guides to Govt Grants does not address the point of this Blog. Our problem is not grants it is Govt Operations 487 Billion, Defense including the Iraq war 525 Billion, the interest of about 350 billion, Medicade of 194 Billion, other including military and Govt pensions of another 337 Billion.

So, I made a suggestion on how Congress can apparently cut up to $1 trillion from the budget. Lesko's books should be used as the blueprint. All you do is sit there and call Bush a liar, without EVER offering up anything by way of suggestion.

Tall words for a guy who still throws his rank around, what, over a decade after you retired?? Let the birds land man!! ;~D

As I said, the budget expendatures do not show any Trillion in payments for Grants as part of the 675 Billion dollar deficit.. They contain the data I show in my reply ( per the Bush Sec of the Treasury). Look at the OMB Web site. You can not solve the budget deficit by removing something that is not part of the deficit. It is the Bush policy and the financial statements from the Bush administartion that are in question. Who would you like to hold accountable? Clinton or Kerry There are 900 grants from 26 agencies. However as I said the Fed can only pay out the amount appropriated each year for each of the 900 grants. I do not know the total appropriated but is in the billions. When a person applies for a grant and the amount that was appropriated has been reached, they do not receive the money even though they may qualify for the grant. Thus, the trillion dollars in the book you sight is to help sell the book. If everyone that could applied did so. most would not receive a cent since the total available is not even close to a Trillion. Bottom line, if ALL grants were cut, it would only lower the deficit by the number of billions appropriated which is part of the General Fund budget. Not the magic Bullet you claim. Try again!

Col Gene, what you consider "Acceptable" and what I consider acceptable are pretty different I suspect.

I somehow suspect that your "solution" to the deficit would be mainly to cut military spending and raise taxes. I don't consider that acceptable.  I'd prefer to see welfare cut. And by welfare I mean medicaid, medicare and social security (in the latter two cases, i would put in a policy that would prevent those who haven't contributed into the system from being able to take out of it. PLus I would ensure that no one got more than X times what they put in out).  I'd also eliminate the department of education and all federal spending on education.

 

First, only Medicade (197 Billion in FY 05) is welfare. Social Security and Medicare are types of insurance that people are entitled to and promised by the government. If you believe the vast majority would accept ending or cutting to any extent Social Security or Medicare you are wrong. I do not think most would agree with drastic cuts in Medicade because it helps the poor with healthcare.

I would do the following:

Eliminate Pork About 25-30 Billion
Plug loop holes that allow business to avoid corporate taxes
Restore the taxs on the trop 5% to the pre 2001 levels
Include all earned income for Social Security taxes and invest the added 100 Billion per year in equities within the Social Security Trust
Seek to reduce the amount of Medicare expendatures for administration, recorders keeping etc. Only 65% of Medicare expendatures go for medical treatment and drugs.
Begin rebuilding the schools, roads, bridges, water/sewer systems and electrical grids. This would provide jobs and profits to the companies doing the work and would be a more effective way to stimulate GDP growth then tax cuts to the wealthy while reparing our nation.
I agree that only people who paid into SS should receive benefits and we may need a means test for social security benefits to insure it is able to make the full payments to those who need it for retirement.

Begin rebuilding the schools, roads, bridges, water/sewer systems and electrical grids.

Ok, how do you do this, and cut "pork". By definition any expenditures in either of these areas would be "pork", since they are not the responsibility of the federal government.

But at least there were some suggestions in there. Instead of mindless Bush bashing.

Pork are appropriations that do not go through the normal process and are tacked on to other bills. The rebuilding of basic services are not taking place. States do not have the money and companies are not stepping forward. These systems will fail at some point and I am suggesting a way to s better stimulate the economy by employing provate contractors with federal money.

COL Gene,

Even you are blindsided when you say there is "only" $25-30 billion a year in pork. As para points out, maybe Lesko's book needs a harder look. As I have pointed out, many of the jobs given to feed the hungry beast that is the federal government are pork; they just aren't defined as pork. In FACT, the "Department of Homeland Security" ITSELF is pork; it replicates the jobs of the state National Guards and the FBI. And at a huge cost.

The FACTS are facts: when the government ANNUAL BUDGET, conservatively figured, amounts to over $8500 per man, woman and child, we're getting EXTREMELY poor value on the dollar. Change need to be made, and NOT by raising taxes so that the federal government can operate on MORE money.

What we have is the equivalent of a family making $20,000 a year and living on a budget of $25,000 a year; eventually it WILL catch up with them. Unfortunately, unlike our hypothetical family, a bankruptcy of the US government stands to carry FAR GREATER consequences.

There may be other areas that can be cut but those cuts are not even close the the 675 Billion of the deficit. In addition, to begin paying down the $7.6 Trillion debt and reducing future interest would require even more than the 675 Billion per year. Face it, without both spending cuts, higher GDP growth and tax increases, the deficit of the size we have today can not be resolved! If we start cutting lots of federal jobs we had better have job growth to provide employment or we just trade one problem for another.

If we start cutting lots of federal jobs we had better have job growth to provide employment or we just trade one problem for another.

Right, we can't do it overnight...but we can't solve the budget problem overnight either. What we need to do is begin eliminating government jobs through attrition and shifting workers to other agencies/departments over time. True, it will take awhile before the net effect of a smaller government is realized, but we will be headed in the right direction.

(Of course, we can also help the jobs situation by giving American jobs to American workers FIRST...especially before ILLEGALS are hired!...but that's just my two cents).