My point Deez is that every politician we elect makes some claim that they will do this or that to address the deficit during their term but never do anything once in - except spend.
I get your point, but they do that, because we don't want them to do anything but spend. Think about it. We spend about $4.1T per year.
$988B - Social Security
$631B - National defense
$589B - Medicare
$551B - Medicaid and other federal health programs
$179B - Veterans services
$325B - Interest on the national debt
about $740B - other junk
We're borrowing about $780B per year to finance these programs.
There's only one of these items that we truly can't do anything about - interest on the national debt. That money has to be spent, but that's only about 8 percent of the budget. There's still 92 percent that we can work with - should be easy, right? Wrong.
Social Security - We can't cut that, because the elderly who vote in massive numbers will freak out. Furthermore, the Democrats will exploit that to its fullest and will get the full support of the media in doing so. Can't cut it.
Medicare - (See Social Security.)
Medicaid - We can't cut that either. A big part of that goes to the elderly, so it would present the same challenges as cutting Social Security. We could cut the reimbursement rates to doctors, but the rates already suck, so if we cut those, then doctors will stop taking Medicaid.
What if we just cut the part that gives health insurance to the working poor? After, all who gives a crap about a bunch of Mexicans and shitkickers working at Walmart and McDonald's? Walmart and McDonalds, that's who. If we don't give them Medicaid, they will look to Walmart and McDonalds for benefits. They might even try to unionize to get it. In other words, we can't cut that either, because Walmart and McDonalds would have to start paying a somewhat living wage and dealing with unions. (Frankly, it might get interesting if we applied a tax surcharge to any business whose employees become Medicaid eligible, but that's not gonna happen.)
National defense - We can cut that a little here and there, but nobody wants a weak military. Furthermore, there are huge political players involved in that budget who will crap their pants if we cut it substantially. Besides, the whole thing is only about 15 percent of the budget, so how far could we really cut it and make a big difference? Hell, we could close the entire Pentagon, and it wouldn't balance the budget.
Veterans services - Who wants to screw over people who have served their country in a time of war, some of whom were wounded in the process? Not many takers for that, and again, it's not a huge item.
I know. Let's cut the other junk. Well, some of that junk is pretty important. It's for things like transportation. Do you like roads, bridges, airports, and train stations that don't fall apart? Yeah, I do too, and that stuff is expensive. Do you like having things like a federal court system? Yep, same here. How about money for public schools? I don't give a crap, but there are tens of millions of dumb soccer moms and teachers who do, and they outnumber people like me. How about cutting federal welfare programs (housing assistance, food stamps, etc.)? We can cut some of that, but in context, it's just not that big. And again, see the Medicaid discussion.
Could we raise taxes? Of course, but that can backfire if the economy slumps. Furthermore, who's willing to take a tax increase? Rich people can pay more, but it's not going to yield another $780B per year - or even make much of a dent. To get that kind of money, we'd have to hammer tens of millions of non-rich people who aren't used to paying high taxes and tell them they won't get anything for it. It's not gonna happen.
So the bottom line is that we take far too many and too big of items off the table for negotiation and then won't pay the taxes needed to bankroll it all, and that's why we can't balance the budget. It's easy to blame the politicians. They hold the power of the purse, but is it really their fault? We've had politicians who tried to talk sense to us. George W. Bush tried to do it after he got reelected. Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey tried to do it in the mid-'90s. Ross Perot did it. Ron Paul and now Rand Paul have done it for decades. Guys like Paul Ryan, Jack Kemp, John Kasich, Phil Gramm, and even some Democrats like John Breaux, Dick Lamm, Tim Penny, and Ernest Hollings tried to get us to put the brakes on some of this crap. We told them all to **** off, or we dismissed them as weirdos (and admittedly some of them were).
Again, it's on us.
explain what this means to Brexit.Please
