It's astounding that as screwed up as the budget & debt picture is, it could still be fixed if everyone were willing to be even modestly rational about our situation. The fiscal house has been on fire for a decade and most of DC wants to pretend otherwise (particularly when their favored party is in power).
- Lock spending growth for ten years at a maximum 1% per year, no matter what.
- Cut $250 billion off the military. Make the human force smaller. Trim or end various very expensive, unnecessary weapons systems. Close & consolidate a lot of bases. Aim for ~2.3% of GDP for military spending.
- Reverse the recent personal tax cuts. Raise income taxes on the top 1/3, staggered toward the top 10%. Try to get $150-$200 billion here.
- Bring Social Security costs down by $50b. Add some means testing for people that really don't need it.
- Squeeze costs out of healthcare by using Medicare/Medicaid/CHIP/VA as a club, across the board targeting of all costs in the industry. The US Government spends over $1 trillion on healthcare, find at least $100b in savings.
- Go to work on the national debt by gently abusing the position the dollar has as the global reserve currency. Have the Fed start a ten year QE program buying $500b per year back in debt and retiring it.
- Federal legalization of marijuana (another tax point for states, perhaps reducing some federal revenue dependency that could be redirected back to the federal budget); it'd also reduce the vast, expensive government prison, policing & enforcement costs. We're heading this direction now, let's just move faster.
- Meaningfully increase gasoline taxes, eg $0.20 per gallon, to fund & offset infrastructure costs. Also consider a new infrastructure tax on expensive consumer vehicles, meant to amplify the contribution by higher income persons to the infrastructure funding increase (since the gas tax hits the bottom 2/3 far harder).
That combination would produce a budget surplus within maybe five years. The surplus after a decade of spending growth locked at 1%, would be immense. We'd be down to $12 trillion in public debt within a decade, with a $26-$28 trillion economy, making the public debt easily managed. The Fed's QE debt retirement could end there. And all it would take is ten years of shared, modest pain and discipline.
> And all it would take is ten years of shared, modest pain and discipline.
Modest for who?
Social Security: There are an absolutely insane number of people who didn't plan for self-sufficient retirement because they planned on social security checks. They shouldn't need it, but they do. Those people are a far larger problem and constitute the bulk of avoidable liability. The problem with SS is people who need it but shouldn't have, not the people who actually don't need it.
Military: Here's a truth that doesn't win elections: blind patriotism is the only palatable way to sell any absolutely enormous jobs program to the US public. A lot of these folks don't have the education or skills required to operate in a private sector unbuoyed by gov't spending. And to the extent that they do, they'd be entering newly saturated job markets with low barriers to entry.
Gas taxes: Carnage for the lots of folks who can't afford to true cost of driving but already sunk 30+% of their annual gross into a car as a 10+ year investment.
The policies you're suggesting -- at least, most of them -- would leave an enormous amount of human suffering in their wake.
Still justifiable policies / good ideas? Well, that's another discussion. But let's be realistic about the impacts.