The Budget Deficit

The President is sending a 3.8 trillion dollar budget proposal to the Congress that has a 1.6 trillion dollar deficit for the coming year. The interest on the national debt is one of the biggest financial obligations we have. It is enough to pay for Social Security and Medicare. It is enough to make paying off the debt very difficult when added to the other obligations. We must pay for Social Security and Medicare as well as things like the national defense, education, infrastructure, and running the government. Many economists say our children and grandchildren will still be paying off the debt.

There are basically two ways to reduce the deficit. One is to reduce spending. The other is to raise revenue. Spending could be reduced by cutting or eliminating programs. Revenue could be increased by stimulating business or raising taxes.

There aren’t many non essential programs that could be eliminated if you consider Social Security, Medicare, education and defense essential. There are also few areas where cutting back can be done. We could reduce some of the cost by eliminating fraud, waste and abuse but it wouldn’t be enough. So we are left with the options of waiting for business to increase providing more tax revenue or increasing taxes as well as reducing spending where possible. Waiting for business to increase will take a long time. And many say it will take more spending before that happens anyway. And there is very strong resistance to raising taxes, especially during this time when business is struggling. So what are we to do?

The way I see it we spend way too much on defense. We are maintaining military bases in other countries all over the world. I don’t think it is necessary to do this in order to keep other countries from attacking the U.S. homeland. In fact I think it feeds a negative feedback loop. The more we are in other countries the more other countries hate America and want to attack us, or our interests. I don’t think it is our homeland they want to attack anyway but our interests that we are protecting by being in those other countries. What interests? Business interests! Which businesses? The corporations! Who owns the corporations? Most of the stock is owned by a very few very rich people, not the average citizens. So we, the people, pay for the protection of the interests of the rich. Unfunded wars have been the biggest contributor to the national debt. I think we should decrease the national debt by closing most of our overseas bases.

Rich people control the government by bribing our lawmakers to legislate on their behalf and give the bill to the people. As well as reducing military spending we should raise taxes on the money the owners of the corporations make from the operations of the corporations or the sale of stock in them. I don’t think it would be very detrimental to business expansion to do it and they have ridden the gravy train while the rest of us paid the taxes that kept the country going while protecting their interests. They should be made to pay their fair share. But to do that we need to take the money out of politics so that the ultra rich can’t buy influence with those who can raise their taxes. I think that the only way to do that is with a Constitutional amendment. And to do that we will need a massive grassroots movement. If it doesn’t happen we are likely to become a washed up formerly great country that only has a very small privileged class and a very poor underclass.