The Budget

Where to cut?

I'm not an economist, don't even play one on television, and can barely keep up with my own cash flow as some business owners like to say, but I believe I have learned enough in my lifetime to do better tham most of the, not only the present but most of the past, Presidental Administrations and their congresses.
My first step would be to freeze all new hiring by the Federal Government except in emergency situations [to be approved by Congress] along with capping Federal Employee's pay at the present level for at least one year. States could also benefit from this approach to balancing their own budgets. I'm sure this would need to be done as an act of Congress because our President probably wouldn't have the nerve to even mention it.

The next step could be the consolidation and elimination of the numerous Federal Government [overlapping] programs charged to overseeing part or all of the same programs. That should result in the saving of several billion dollars. That won't balance the budget but every little bit helps. Again, Congress would probably have to cut budgets and then the affected agencies would probably start by cutting high profile entities, as they usaually do, like libraries and parks in an effort to get public opinion on their side.

Then I would think about eliminating the Internal Revenue Service by changing the income tax, as we know it, to one of the simpler forms of taxation such as either the much touted Fair Tax, the Flat Tax or the Value Added Tax [VAT] although, at this time, I will admit that I don't know enough about either one of them to say how they would affect low income families but, in my opinion, anything would be better than what we have now.

Many people will say; "That's not enough to balance the budget. We'll have to raise the taxes on the super rich" but I don't think that is the answer either. Although I am not a fan of multi-million dollar athletes [I don't have to support them] or business executives who get their multi-millions in bonuses, it is those highly paid money people who, in one way or another, help create most of the jobs. What would we do without them? [I think I heard someone say that it cost almost two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the Federal Government to create one job.] If the rich were taxed more, then they would have less money to create more jobs and if that money was paid into the Federal Treasury it, like ours, would be wasted. Again someone will say; "Not true, small business owners create most of the jobs, not rich people". That's true but they depend on loans to establish and run their businesses and those loans are funded by the investment or bank deposits made by those richer people. I don't believe I could make many loans to help someone start their own business. Could you?

Why do we need to fund agencies such as "ACORN" and "Planned Parenthood"? ACORN was, and still appears to be, a purely partisan political arm of the Democrat Party whose sole purpose in life it to further voting in that Democratic party and regardless of what some people claim, Planned Parenthood still uses taxpayer money to pay for abortions.
I know that's not enough to balance the budget but it would be a very good start and I'm sure I [and you also] can think of a lot more as we progress on down the road of life. Surely if the budget was raised over a trillion dollars in the last two years we can cut that much without losing anything we had in 2008. Can't we?
Now, when it all boils down, will our Congressional Republicans, led by the Tea Party, actually cut the budger in any meaningful way or will all sides continue to play the blame game? My belief is that they won't really do anything, they have it all set up, by all the talk [smoke screens] about having to cut Social Security and Medicare, so as to do nothing about balancing the budget and blame their inaction on polls showing that voters don't want them to cut those programs. It will be politics as usual.

I started this posting with these words; "I'm not an economist" so please tell me how you can raise taxes on the people who create the jobs and at the same time encourage them to create more jobs? I must be dense. Thanks for your time and input. Stay tuned - William