Has ANYONE put forward a plan to balance the budget within 4 years?

[dolstein]

Seriously, I'm sick and tired of having my future standard of living eroded simply because today's politicans lack the guts to make the difficult choices NOW.

It's outrageous what my parent's generation has done. They've run up trillions of dollars in debt simply because they didn't want to see their own standard of living reduced in order to meet the government's funding obligations. And now I'm getting stuck with the bill. What's worse, the politicians in Washington are talking about cutting MY social security benefits while my parent's benefits apparently are off limits. It's intergenerational theft, pure and simple.

But nobody in Washington seems willing to acknowledge what a HUGE hole we've dug for ourselves. The Bush administration projects that they'll cut the deficit in half, but they do so by using a ridiculously inaccurate baseline and by simply ingoring hundreds of billions of dollars in spending. The Democrats, while right to criticize this smoke and mirrors approach, seem unwilling to contemplate any meaningful spending cuts, and the tax increases they've proposed would be used more for additional spending than for deficit reduction. Neither side has come up with anything even remotely approaching a long-term fix.

I just don't think people are going to realize just how big a problem we face unless someone has the courage to propose an honest budget plan that not only brings the budget into balance quickly, but that can generate enough of a surplus over the long run to pay off the national debt.

[papau]

1. disruptive on defense unless tax hike on rich very large - and even then

disruptive cuts still required.

It is a 10 yr project to get to even that starts with ending the tax cuts for the rich.

And then ending the payroll tax wage cap.

And then ending the new toys for the military and homeland defense.

Computers were not meant to be/do not have to be database control of the population - which what we are paying to develope now.

[mandyky]

2. No, Even Howard Dean said it might take 7 years

and that is with rescinding all the Bush taxcuts. But Dean also wanted NCLB and healthcare funded.

[DaveinMD]

3. I thought Dean

wanted to eliminate NCLB. I could be wrong on this.

[mandyky]

4. He just did not like that being a federal mandate, the cost

was born by schoolboards and local property tax payers. He was against it being underfunded, and probably his education plan would have been different than NCLB. He was big on catching children as infants, I believe his VT thing was Success by 6 or some such.

[DaveinMD]

5. thanks

that makes sense.

[BlueManDude]

6. The Democrats cleaned up Reagan's mess

Clinton/Gore restored fiscal sanity. Don't blame Dems for this crap.

[Dr Fate]

7. Clinton balanced the budget w/i a reasonable timetable...

...and the GOP/media kicked and screamed the entire time too.