So, you oppose raising taxes on the rich. What's YOUR solution to the deficit then?

Question

$480 billion! It can't go on like this! So I challenge you to come up with a list of $480 billion in spending cuts. I say you WON'T be able to do it! Especially if you accept my second challenge NOT to take it out of the pittance that goes to the needy while protecting the lavish giveaways to the rich.

Compile a list that totals $480 billion and email it to me. Unless you can do it, you must accept tax increases instead.

Answer 1

The best solution is to increase tax revenues, and raising the rate of taxation is not the best way to do this.  The Bush administration's tax cuts caused the largest increase in federal revenues in the last 40 years for the last 4 years:

http://perotcharts.com/category/challeng...

Tax revenues have been increasing at 9.5% per year, if that continues, this deficit won't be such a problem.

Keep in mind my source is probably biased against Bush, and you can find a wealth of unflattering charts there, but you can't argue against his tax cuts.

Answer 2

Illegals cost America 84 Billion a year.  so lets see... In just under six year America could make up that 480 Billon by kicking out Illegals alone.  Imagin what Americans could do if they cut down the government.  They're the reason we are broke in the first place.  

Answer 3

Legalize pot and you wont need to raise taxes! It will be America's new cash crop!  

Answer 4

I see that you expect this debt to be paid off in a single year.  This country has been in debt since the Revolutionary War.  You want higher taxes on everyone that makes more than you do.  I've already paid for your phone bill, your police force, your road construction, your over-extended mortgage bailout, your food stamps, your welfare check, and your medical care, but that is not good enough and you want to help yourself to my lunch money and my son's shoe money.  The only thing here that is lavish giveaways is the grand theft that you commit against my family.  If you didn't earn it, it isn't yours.  Taxes are a cancer on the economy.

I'm not fond of national debt, and I definitely want it paid off, however I must point out that your entire philosophy about the economy is fatally flawed and completely blind to reality.

If a poor man workes 80 hour weeks, makes good decisions, and creates a successful business, you want to classify him as rich and take away everything he worked for.  If he grows his business and provides much needed employment, you call him names, hate him, and say he is victimizing the people he employs.  The only solution you will accept is that everyone be poor.  Only then will you be satisfied that life is fair and you aren't being punished for being lazy or stupid.  You claim to want poor people helped, but you are the direct cause of poverty.  You will punish anyone who finds a way to get ahead a little.  You don't understand that social mobiliy is what turned this nation into a superpower.  You want to take that away from us, even to your own ignorent demise.

No, I don't have to accept your unfounded taxes due to not sending you an email.  I also don't have to accept your blatent attempt to turn this country into a Communist, poverty stricken 3rd world nation.

You think that taxes on the "rich" are free.  When you can't find a job it is because you have worked so hard to make sure that success is stolen away from those who worked much harder and smarter than you to get it.

Answer 5

i suppose we can always stop by cutting well fare to lazy people who are living off it.  we can always get out of Iraq and let the rest of the world handle their own problems for a while.  oh we can also stop paying the bills of foreign countries who need economic support.  

oh btw, if you keep punishing the rich for being rich all you are going to do is make them leave the US, the funny thing about being rich is you can go anywhere you want, by raising the bill for the rich people who not having any accountability for the poor is a good way for the rich to move their companies off shore, this will help eliminate jobs for good hardworking americans, oh and lower our tax income as well.  

Answer 6

I always say this

you will not get a legitimate answer for that on here

Answer 7

This package would solve it.

- Extend payroll taxes to all income

- Extend the capital gains tax

- Place payroll taxes on all distributions of companies owned by less then 20 people

- Lower corporate taxes

- Create a special windfall tax on all commodity producers

- Increase the Earned Income Credit level

- Reduce income taxes for income below 35k

- Remove the US from the Iraq War

- Remove international funding from the budget

- Cut out as much pork from the budget as possible

- Fund expansive infrastructure projects, and use able bodied individuals on public assistance for labor.  

Answer 8

No problem.

All we have to do is cut out all the pork programs that have been added by the senate and the house. I should note that Only one of the two senators running for president had $0 in the way of pork spending and it wasn't Obama.

Purple - There was not a surplus when Bush took over. That is a common mistake that people on our side often make. The last budget that Bill Clinton signed took care of that surplus.

Answer 9

If we stop the war in Iraq, much of that deficit will vanish. Making the tax rates equitable over all income levels above the poverty line will ensure a fairly consistent income to the federal coffers. That would involve something like a flat tax with no deductions at all.

Last but certainly NOT least is to elect a congress that is capable of spending within the limits of the available funds!

Answer 10

I don't really care for Conservatives and their propaganda (Even Ben Stein, one of the long-time apologists for tax cuts for the rich trickling down on everyone else, now admits that it was a bad and self-destructive idea for the US - he was on Glen Beck last night), it is a fact that any money the federal government takes in WILL be spent even if everyone agrees to pay down the national debt. The so-called surplus under Bill Clinton (don't even get me started on that!) were caused mainly because at the time the Congress was controlled by people whose ONLY goal in life was thwarting and humiliating Clinton (as stated by Alan Simpson, R-Wyoming) and so almost nothing got done and almost no new spending programs were authorized (okay, you got me started, the other reason for the 'surplus' was because Clinton continued the Reagan policy of spending incoming Social Security receipts on current spending and replacing them with internal IOUs, not really a surplus unless no one pays attention).

Also, even though we didn't get much of a tax cut, it was enough that it would hurt to have it reversed at this time. s***w you, future generations!

Answer 11

I don't oppose it, I think it is the best way to go.

Answer 12

The Republicans are complaining that Obama wants to raise taxes but If the current administration hadn't put us into such a MASSIVE debt we wouldn't need to raise taxes.

When Bush entered office there was a HUGE surplus and now we have the largest deficet ever.

Answer 13

The super-rich (the one-percent-that-rules-America) should have to pay for the Iraq war .Don't make the working class or the middle class pay for it. That way, the one-percent-that-rules-America will be more reluctant to let Presidents declare war on countries half the world away.

Answer 14

Tax increases slow down the economy, reduces buying power, all not good. I am annoyed by the Liberal answer to everything tax it till it doesn't move any more!

Answer 15

Cut corporate Taxes below Asian rates and draw capital to the country.

More transactions equal more revenue.

Answer 16

There are no giveaways to the rich. Tax "breaks" are a way to coerce people into doing with their money what the government wants them to do, and it's their money to begin with. Not taking it away is not the same thing as giving it to them.

Neither is it logical to equate raising tax rates to raising tax revenues. It's been shown during the Kennedy and Reagan administrations that the opposite is sometimes the way the economy works.

It really is best not to oversimplify.

Answer 17

I just hope China hurries up with their threat and teach a lesson to those  who want to continue spending

Answer 18

How about if the government spends only the money it takes in, in its record budgets revenues. If they spent more time ending waste, pork, and pet projects, we could balance the budget, not just reduce the deficit.  

Answer 19

I reject your 2nd challenge. The best way to help the poor is to give them the tools that help themselves, and there is no better way to do that than to give them jobs.

How do you create jobs without increasing spending? Cut corporate taxes. When corporations have more to spend, they expand their operations to increase their profits. Expanding operations creates jobs.

The worst thing to do is make the poor so utterly dependent on the state. The level of benefits that you call a "pittance" is enough to get by, and I've dealt with enough of these people in the course of my job to know a simple fact: many have no desire to work, because they do not need more money to get by. Meanwhile, my wife and I work our ***es off all week out of a sense of self-reliance.

Cut out all expenditures not directly related to the purpose of the government: protecting the rights of individuals.

-Pay for a standing military, to guard against foreign suppression, but not at the current size. Self-defense does not require this large of a military.

-Pay for police forces to guard against domestic aggression.

-Pay for a legislative body and a system of courts to enforce contractual agreements.

Do this, and no taxes will need to be raised. If anything, they could be cut further, which will stimulate the economy even more. I'm a lot more interested in using my money to pay for gas in my car and food in my fridge than I am for having a diplomat in Estonia.

Answer 20

We have to cut medical funding. We have to cut disaster funding. Let them take care of themselves. We have to close military bases around the world. We have to end the wars. We have to let our infrastructure deteriorate some more. We have to decrease the size of government.

We have to stop funding PBS and other organizations like that. We have to cut the benefits for government employees starting with the higher ups because they are more equipped to afford it.

I do not agree with this but if that's our choice then it is what it is.  Nothing is for free!

edit: Something to consider is that the rich will just leave. They have the power. Where will they go? What are their options? I think Obama may be smart enough to understand that. Let's hope so. Because we need a real solution that actually benefits middle and lower income Americans. I cannot afford to pay more in taxes. I already pay so much. Living in Massachusetts is not helping. I want to move but where to. There is so much legal corruption as I call it here. I'm sick of it. Ethics mean nothing. It's not against the law is what I hear repeatedly and I say, it doesn't make it right or acceptable.

Answer 21

The keys are to grow the economy while holding the line on government spending.  Tax receipts will rise as the economy improves, even if tax rates are lowered.  In fact, the economy will improve largely BECAUSE tax rates are lowered.