Let's say you could have a seat on that supercommittee. Better yet, let's say you could cut anything you wanted to out of the USA's budget. Where would you start? Where would you end?

I'm just really curious as I know that I exist in a partisan bubble and would love to hear people's rationales. Thanks!

Military: US has a way to high military budget for its needs.

Education, energy, labor, and homeland security would all be broken up witb many subcomponents ended. All other departments would see cuts of 10% or more. Socual security, medicare, and medicaid cut too. All staff budgets cut. All train funding cut. Affordable health care act ended. I would keep epa but limited its scope. I would amend the Administrative Procedures Act to allow a restricted number of regs per year and woukd cut lots of regs. Other things too which I know won't happen but I am on a phone and about to starw ork so can't continue.

Sam Harris has written, in The End of Faith, a devastating assault on our spending to fight drug use when it could be generating money in legalized, controlled form. It's not only dreadful inefficiency and absurd invasion of civil liberties, but outright frightening as you compare the costs of fighting nonviolent, victimless drug use to the costs of securing borders from terrorism. Plus we are putting otherwise production members of society behind bars and paying for their incarceration.

Taking money away from actual productive areas by comparison is a terrible thing to prioritize given this situation.

Yeah, I would think ending the War on Drugs would be a no brainer.

Sounds great!

Self-educated people scare me on how uninformed they are (the internet is a dangerous place to learn information). The only privately educated people I know believed in Santa Claus until they were in high school (no joke).

It is not easy typing on a phone with a restricted view screen. Unlike you, I can't afford high speed internet and a cell phone. I chose phone due to work requirements. Go read posts prior to June to see different results.

Why the non-sequitur? You have also conflated self-education and private education with tepid results. I am sure I have more education than you, but unlike you, I don't think that makes me any more or less intelligent than you or any other person. I highly doubt you have ever read or heard of the Administrative Procedures Act.

I would walk out of Iraq and Afghanistan to clear up a lot

I would move towards reforming the Medicare system. Insurance companies are robbing everyone and the government blind and controlling Congress too. Clean out the system and bureaucracy, get it down to the price levels of most other major countries

I would move away from a lot of government jobs, reduce the welfare, cut Federal fat like the Department of Education, Department of Energy, etc.

That's mighty assumptive of you. But I'll take the non-sequitur line, so thank you.

Here's some stuff I'd be down to cut:

Wasteful subsidies to agriculture and Big Oil. With barrels of oil selling for huge numbers, these companies will survive without us cutting them such large breaks.

Social Security/Medicare. And also subsidies to pharmaceutical/insurance companies. I'm starting to come to the conclusion that without a government option the Affordable Health Care Act isn't going to do enough to seriously reform our system. Cutting the price of Social Security and Medicare can happen but we need to do so carefully.

But as far as I'm concerned the elephant in the room is still largely war spending. America just can't afford to try to win a worldwide battle against drugs and "terror." Afghanistan is an exercise in futility - the question is not when will we be defeated there, but how much more money we're going to spend on it first. As is Afghanistan is the longest-standing war in US history and any victory we give the people of Afghanistan will pale to the long-term damage that our military adventurism will cost us when we are inevitably part of a more integrated global economy. If we renounced the war on terror we would create a lot less terrorists to fight in the decades to come. Bush and Cheney were very clear that they intended for this war to last our lifetimes, and it doesn't have to be that way. I think America will be both morally and financially better off if the Democrats can end the war on terror once and for all.


Now what I would not cut, or at least have any penny in cuts be equivalent to three pennies spent in for strong reforms and additional job-creation in, is Education and Energy. To me, these are investments in America's future. If American kids cannot compete, we will have a much harder time being a superpower. If we do not move away from fossil fuels, we will be better off when demand continues to rise as supply inevitably decreases.

If you are not an attorney, there is no real reason to read the law. Maybe if you were part of a group that a notice of rulemaking would have a profound impact on, then you might brush-up on it.

Cut military spending by 75%.

Cut education spending by 100%. It's obviously not helping anyway.

Cutting education or department of energy or interior won't really save you that much money. You could privatize the entire National Park Service and still only save a few billions. If you want to cut the debt, these three areas need to be addressed. Defense, Social Security, and Medicare. Obviously the retirement age needs to be raised. Also, I would set a cap limit to social security saying anybody who makes more than so much gets none of it (millionaires shouldn't be getting social security). Medicare is a tough one, it needs reform, but have no clue how to do it. Need to cut defense spending, get rid of some of the defense contracts, close bases in some parts of the world we don't need anymore. Get out of Iraq and Afghanistan. The defense cuts would save us billions.

Only a few billions? Oh, then don't do it!

What are you referring to? If you mean privatizing the park service that would be a dumb savings when you could do the other things and keep the park service but save up to a trillion.

You said "Only a few billions".

Thought that was funny.

Hahha okay laugh at my typo :p

I would cut the war on tobacco. Tobacco is the current war on drugs.

I would cut Career Politicians. Obviously, government services require employment, but to give career politicians and Public Employees executive salaries instead of wages is absurd.
They work for us, right?

I think the government sees the war on tobacco (high taxes) as a boon. Some of the states are actually feeling pain due to less people smoking.

How much money does it cost to fund the war on tobacco?

I know the war of marijuna is about the most absurdly expensive aspect to the current government, and a reason why Newt scares the shit out of me. He is calling for an increase on the war against drugs. It's getting beyond stupid at this point. I've always sided heavily with Ron Paul with this issue.

Unless you buy cigarettes or loose tobacco or other high tax tobacco products, you wouldn't know. The government has the smokers paying high special taxes on behalf of the demands of those third parties who don't use the product. Smokers are paying for the free speech of the Cancer society, The Heart Association, and in California, for pre-school programs (The First Five program) In New York it means a pack of cigarettes costs over $10 and a carton is more than $100 due to the unjust taxes. In California we pay $1 per pack to the Federal government and $0.87 per pack to the State, plus the price hikes due to the State lawsuit settlement which ignored the rightful injured parties. The State of California took the damages for themselves, away from the customers. This lawsuit is known as The Master Settlement Agreement (MSA), which the Michael Mann movie "The Insider" was based on.

And before anyone gets upset over smoking and cancer...The American Cancer Society estimates that in 2011 there will be more than 16,973 deaths in California from smoking-related lung cancer...
...out of a State smoking population of 4,680,000 smokers. They claim that 13% of Californians now smoke thanks to the tobacco tax increases which they campaigned for.
You do the math.

In fact, The American Cancer Society's figures for all cancer deaths in 2011 will be roughly 69,000 deaths, of which two-thirds will not be smoking-related or from second-hand smoke.
The population of The State of California is greater than 36,000,000 people.
This is the ACS report for California:

http://www.ccrcal.org/pdf/Reports/ACS_2011.pdf

I heard a radio spot for cancer tonight featuring Whoopie Goldberg that claims every minute someone dies from cancer. Adding up the minutes per year comes to 525,600 cancer deaths from all causes, not just from tobacco use, however, that is EDIT: Probably the U.S. figure based on a nationwide population of more than 300 Million People, 20% of which, 60,000,000, are reported to smoke tobacco.

And second-hand smoke is blamed for sticky platelets. This is due to the presence of Carbon Monoxide in the smoke, however, trace Carbon Monoxide + Pantothenic Acid and *I think* a few other nutrients combine to form Co-Enzyme A which prevents sticky platelets and is essential for life. Without trace CO, there is no Co-Enzyme A. So the sticky platelets are likely caused by processed foods and/or oxidizing preservatives (such as Phosphates) which no longer contain Pantothenic Acid. As Calcium D-Pantothenate this nutrient is known as Vitamin B5, though B5 has to be converted in the small intestine back to Pantothenic Acid in order to be utilized.

The smokers are being raped for taxes.

P.S. I said *I think* because the exact list of nutrients required to form Co-Enzyme A is not listed anywhere, though CO and Pantothenic Acid are identified by reference sources as principle necessary ingredients in forming Co-Enzyme A.

Hmmmm, so what you're saying is, the costs are more so in the pocket books of the those who smoke, and not as costly for the government itself or, what I'm moreso trying to get at, the community at large. In fact, besides possible lost business (which doesn't seem to be a lot), the taxes seem to benefit the community, provding for some amount of funding to state programs in times where we are struggling to raise the revenue high enough to provide public services. Thus the consequences of this "war on tobacco," seem to affect people on individual levels, and not the larger community.

Meanwhile, the war on marijuana is draining police funds and deverting police time away from serious crimes, like rape and murder, because marijuana is a schedule 1 drug. Meanwhile there is no sales taxes on marijuana to generate state revenues, which for states like California, need increasing. The legalization of marijuana would also open up a whole new industry generating legal jobs and would turn criminals into productive members of society, directing stumulating the economy, another aspect we need right now, and what's especially advantageous is that this stimulation would not come from the government itself, but would be organic (no pun intended) in nature. Finally it would help divert funds away from criminal gangs and Mexican cartels. With legal domestic weed, there is no longer a market for illegal alternatives.