Put fiscal house in order of the u.s. Government is likely to be an exercise in long in pain management--just ask John Lovetere of McKinney.
He tried his hand to cut the Federal deficit through a federal budget Simulator connected to the website of The Dallas Morning News ', dallasnews.com.
"It was harder than you would think that would be, but it was enlightening because it did get to see where are the opportunities," said Lovetere, 81.
"It's pretty clear that if we speak of three biggies--defence, social security and Medicare-Medicaid--you're not going to fix things just by cutting out waste".
Lovetere's effort was one of 823 responses to the Simulator submitted to news in August and early September. The results included broad support for raising the retirement age for social security, but not necessarily for Medicare; disagreement about key defence;and sharp divisions of party-line on the future of fiscal policy.
In General, respondents who identified as Democrats were more willing to raise taxes.Republicans were more likely to cut spending. Independent fell somewhere in between.
A great lesson is that the deficit solely through tax increases, or exclusively through cuts cutting makes the task particularly challenging.The best solution may require both.
"People are less likely to support revenue gains, the less likely they are to reach the goal," said Maya MacGuineas, President of the Committee for a responsible federal budget, a group based in Washington, D.C. supported the Simulator.
On the expenditure side, he added: "don't think earmarks, think about reforming entitlements. Think of energy taxes and hangs discretionary spending, rather than clinging to the hope that we can all make this magically go away.
The Simulator has been provided by Peterson-Pew the budget reform, which is supported by billionaire Peter Peterson of Wall Street and the Pew Charitable Trust, as well as the Group of MacGuineas.
In addition to interest from readers of news, the Simulator has gotten more than 90,000 unique page views at national level.
Objective of the Simulator is for users to bring down the debt held by the public to a level of 60 percent of the total U.S. economic output by 2018. That is approximately the same level of today, even if the debt levels are expected to grow in the coming years.
Only about 60 percent of those surveyed the News ' has managed to achieve this goal. which was below the national average of nearly 75 percent among people who have tried the Simulator nationally, said Chris Dreibelbis, a spokesperson for Peterson-Pew.
Why reduce the deficit at all?
Right now, cut spending or force through generalized tax increases may damage weak recovery of the economy.
The most immediate problems, say many analysts are tearing down the rampant unemployment and by persuading the economy Back up to its potential.
Continued ...
No comments:
Post a Comment