If the easy federal budget cuts are behind us, what should be cut and what should be saved?

[RandomAnthony]

Jacob Lew, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, wrote an editorial in yesterday's NY Times called "The Easy Cuts Are Behind Us".

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/06/opi...

If this is true, and we're in a major budget crisis, what should be cut and what saved in the upcoming federal budget process? What do you think?

[Phil]

I know there would be a lot involved in doing so, and there are probably hundreds of reasons people would have for not doing it, but I think we should close our military bases in most other countries, get out of all wars and bring those people back home. Also, weapons spending should be, at a minimum, halved.

[Rebecca]

There is a lot of military waste. I went to that "America Speaks" meeting on which that budget cutting committee supposedly based its ideas (we were supposed to speak for the people, dontcha know) and there are still many obsolete weapons and equipment that's still being made. Getting rid of that would save a chunk of money. We said that at the meeting. That and rais taxes on the rich, and leave Social Security alone. And that wasn't just our group - they were combining the votes of all the different meetings in the country and that's what the overall opinion was. Then the committee results come out and, low and beyold, their recommendations were nothing like ours.

[Arminius]

Let's start with each Federal Department cutting 10%.

[Ken]

We could do the unthinkable and actually raise some revenue. That trillions dollar hole we just punched in the budget with another tax giveaway to the wealthy could be repaired simply by returning to Clinton-era tax rates. Not only did we have a balanced budget, we had a budget surplus at the beginning of the W. reign, massacred by a giant tax giveaway to the wealthy and an unfunded major military initiative. There’s your deficit.

It’s great to have a military empire scattered around the world, and some of the lowest tax rates, especially for the wealthy, in the entire world, and one of the smallest governments as a percentage of GDP anywhere on the planet, but if we don’t begin to invest in our people and infrastructure the way so many modern nations do, we’re facing a very second-rate future.

[Rebecca]

Ken wrote: "We could do the unthinkable and actually raise some revenue. That trillions dollar hole we just punched in the budget with another tax giveaway to the wealthy could be repaired simply by returning ..."

Amen, brother. And we had a government which functioned, which we won't if people seriously think you can keep chiseling away at its funding.

[Lobstergirl, el principe]

Bring all the troops home, cut weapons programs (AKA defense contractor welfare), abolish the Department of Education, institute a single-payer government healthcare system, raise the highest marginal tax rate to 45%, raise the highest estate tax rate to 50%, get rid of tax loopholes for multimillionaires and billionaires by raising the tax rate on carried interest income from 15% to 35%. Hundreds of billions of dollars saved right there.

[Michele]

I'm with Lobstergirl. Save social security: eliminate the threshold entirely. every dollar earned should be taxed for social security or your going to see a lot of frozen dead elderly people in the street.