patrick.net

"Ah, shit, even with draconian cuts I can’t do it."

Yeah, scary. Maybe the teabaggers will get an amendment passed to force the gov't to have a balanced budget. That will be pretty interesting if they also won't let democrats raise taxes. If people think the tea party set are screaming now...can you imagine if the government actually started making the actual cuts to pensions, healthcare, etc to make a balanced budget happen. The screaming and hysteria out there be nuts. It's like: oops....we can't pay you after all. Good thing all those rich folks will be creating lots and lots of high paying jobs so we can all start funding our own retirement and healthcare needs!

Really, it took us awhile to get into this situation and we have to scale back spending in small increments (basically we will probably have to fulfill all the made promises but so long adequate pensions for the folks after boomers. Dang, born at the wrong time!). But, yeah, you gotta increase taxes.

Troy says

oh yeah, get rid of the mortgage interest tax deduction for homeowners and rental houses (and condos). That would save $200B/yr eventually.

I just bought my first house this last year and I don't think a Schedule A will beat out the standard deduction. Even after adding the RE taxes, I am still a few hundred below. Take it away and slaughter this sacred cow.

I would like the idea of raising the cap on SS income. Why not pull the stops and have no cap?

During January 2010, the National Research Council and the National Academy of Public Administration reported a series of strategies to address the problem. They included four scenarios designed to prevent the public debt to GDP ratio from exceeding 60%:

1.Low spending and low taxes. This path would allow payroll and income tax rates to remain roughly unchanged, but it would require sharp reductions in the projected growth of health and retirement programs; defense and domestic spending cuts of 20 percent; and no funds for any new programs without additional spending cuts.

2.Intermediate path 1. This path would raise income and payroll tax rates modestly. It would allow for some growth in health and retirement spending; defense and domestic program cuts of 8 percent; and selected new public investments, such as for the environment and to promote economic growth.

3.Intermediate path 2. This path would raise income and payroll taxes somewhat higher than with the previous path. Spending growth for health and retirement programs would be slowed, but less than under the other intermediate path; and spending for all other federal responsibilities would be reduced. This path gives higher priority to entitlement programs for the elderly than to other types of government spending.

4.High spending and taxes. This path would require substantially higher taxes. It would maintain the projected growth in Social Security benefits for all future retirees and require smaller reductions over time in the growth of spending for health programs. It would allow spending on all other federal programs to be higher than the level implied by current policies.[138][139]

1. Eliminate all foreign aid for 5 years.

2. Cut pay of federal workers by 10% and freeze future pay increases for 5 years.

3. Close 75% of all foreign military bases.

4. Return all troops from Afganistan and Iraq and cut defense budget by 50%.

5. Freeze food stamp payments at current level for 5 years.

6. Cut Medicade payments by 50%.

7. Increase energy efficiency of all federal facilities.

8. Reduce the number of illegal aliens and secure our borders.

9. In the very near future, Social Security payments will be greater than receipts. In order to reduce Social Security obligations, limit benefits only to the worker who paid into the system. Social Security payments to spouses and others would be discontinued. Also, in the future if there is a surplus in any year save the surplus only for Social Security and prohibit the Congress from spending the surplus on the general fund.

10, Give the President a line item veto to reduce pork barrel spending.

11. Eliminate the Federal Department of Education , giving back half of the money to the states.

12. Make all people in jails and prisons work making items we currently import from China.

13. The interest on the debt going forward would be less and tax revenues greater if items 1-12 above were implemented.

charles1050 says

9, Reduce the number of illegal aliens and secure our borders.

How will reducing the # of illegal aliens reduce the budget?...most discussions held on these boards have come to the conclusion that doing so would bankrupt CA, AZ, NM and TX.

Reducing the number of illegal aliens will reduce the federal budget by:

1. Reducing the cost of educating the children of illegal aliens at public schools.

2. Reducing the free healthcare cost at emergency rooms.

3. Reducing the cost to incarcerate illegal aliens in prisons. A recent article on MSN said that it cost California $898 million dollars per year to incarcerate 19,000 illegal aliens.

As a good liberal, I was going to knee-jerk against charles1050's list but overall it does make sense in the aggregate.

Details-wise, it's not very real-world, ie. cutting the defense budget by 50% will throw millions of people out of work.

Granted, it isn't very useful work but this loss of jobs will utterly destroy hundreds of communities dependent on Uncle Sugar.

And then charles1050 wants to freeze foodstamp payments to salt the wound.

The bottom line is it took 15 years to get to where we are now and it's going to take another 15 to get us out, assuming we have the maturity to actually works towards solutions and not just more BS on BS.

Talks about "jump starting the economy" and stuff is just not realistic. The economy is dead, we signed its death note with NAFTA, MFN with China, and a dozen of other stupid things. We need to find a new one.

I'm going to keep a running total:

charles1050 says

1. Eliminate all foreign aid for 5 years.

$23B/year

2. Cut pay of federal workers by 10% and freeze future pay increases for 5 years.

Does this include the military? If so, ~$30B, if not, ~$20B. Lets split the difference and say $25.

[$48B]

3. Close 75% of all foreign military bases.

Could you be more specific? The cost of bases varies wildly. What happens to the staff currently at those bases? Why only 75%?

Assuming straight cuts, this should be about $250B/year

[$298B]

4. Return all troops from Afganistan and Iraq and cut defense budget by 50%.

Do you mean this in addition to the other military cuts? I'll just roll this altogether and assume you're basically saying "Cut $700B from defense", and erase the previous figure.

[$748B]

5. Freeze food stamp payments at current level for 5 years.

ok...

[$748B]

6. Cut Medicade payments by 50%.

Do you mean refuse treatment or change negotiated rates?

Medicaid for 2010 is $290B, so lets just take half off of that, $145B

[$893B]

7. Increase energy efficiency of all federal facilities.

Ok. That would probably have a modest reduction over the long term, but an increase over the short term. I'll ignore it for the calculation.

8. Reduce the number of illegal aliens and secure our borders.

What do you mean by "secure our borders"? How many do you want to reduce?

You didn't even manage to get $1T in savings.

Anyone else want to take a crack at it?

All the king's horses and all the king's men won't solve this problem. It's going to end very badly. It always does, every time. This is why I have multiple citizenships and have moved most of my money to other countries.

bob2356 says

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men won’t solve this problem. It’s going to end very badly. It always does, every time. This is why I have multiple citizenships and have moved most of my money to other countries.

Yeah, because no country, certainly not the U.S. itself, has ever had such high debt levels or such a large deficit and recovered from it.

Ever.

Nope, never happened. Not once.

Eliminate these programs:
$898B - Health care (medicare, medicaid)
$464B - “Welfare” (mostly unemployment, also remainder of ARRA)
cut by 38B
$788B - Pensions (Social Security, government employee pensions, etc.)

equals 1.4T
I'd do a lost fo cutting of pensions for former congress, since they are primarily responsible for everyone else losing their pension.

Where is my "cut foreign aid" option?

See how easy that was?

zzyzzx says

Eliminate these programs:

$898B - Health care (medicare, medicaid)

$464B - “Welfare” (mostly unemployment, also remainder of ARRA)

cut by 38B

$788B - Pensions (Social Security, government employee pensions, etc.)
equals 1.4T

I’d do a lost fo cutting of pensions for former congress, since they are primarily responsible for everyone else losing their pension.
Where is my “cut foreign aid” option?
See how easy that was?

Sure, are you going to keep FICA and unemployment compensation taxes though? Because if you are, you'll have a big problem trying to explain to voters why they're paying these taxes now that you have eliminated all benefits.

You'll also have a hard time explaining to the largest voting block in the country, the AARP, why you have effectively signed death warrants for 15% of the population.

The "foreign aid" suggestions always crack me up. We spend more money on stationary than on foreign aid.

charles1050 says

7. Increase energy efficiency of all federal facilities.

While I think eliminating foreign aid and closing foreign military bases is a great idea, how do you propose to increase energy efficiency of all federal facilities? Buy solar panels and mount them on the roof? Last I checked, Solar systems were expensive and the federal government isn't going to give itself a rebate for install them.

Kevin says

Could you be more specific? The cost of bases varies wildly. What happens to the staff currently at those bases? Why only 75%?

While I can agree that we have way too many foreign military bases, eliminating too many can have serious consequences for our national security. 75% looks like a good figure to me. As for Staffs, contractors can join the unemployment line in there country, since most of the time locals are the one's cutting the grass and cleaning the building. Enlisted personal can move to other foreign bases or return home where it's far cheaper to maintain them.

12. Make all people in jails and prisons work making items we currently import from China.

Great idea, but how? Sure it's cheap labor, but people who manufacture cheap products work in places called factories. So you either have to build factories in prisons or make factories into prisons. Either way it's a huge, expensive undertaking.

charles1050 says

9. I ... Also, in the future if there is a surplus in any year save the surplus only for Social Security and prohibit the Congress from spending the surplus on the general fund.

Save where? In a underground vault? In a Bank of America saving account? Invest it in the stock market? Personally I think the social security tax should be eliminated, the tax money that was meant for the social security fund should be funneled into the general budget? Why you might ask? The Surplus Social security taxes is being funneled into the general fund anyway, when it comes time to "Pay" it back we will be burdened with not only social security taxes, but additional taxes to cover what we took out of the social security fund in the first palce for other spending. It's all in the same pot to begin with, why are we fooling ourselves thinking otherwise?

charles1050 says

Reducing the number of illegal aliens will reduce the federal budget by:
1. Reducing the cost of educating the children of illegal aliens at public schools.
2. Reducing the free healthcare cost at emergency rooms.
3. Reducing the cost to incarcerate illegal aliens in prisons. A recent article on MSN said that it cost California $898 million dollars per year to incarcerate 19,000 illegal aliens.

Some estimate the illegal aliens bring billions if not trillions in revenue to the economy by their existence alone. Your measure to send them back would save CA 9B in social welfare costs but would definitely bankrupt the state.

http://blogs.chron.com/immigration/archi…
Illegal immigrants' value to economy? $1.8 trillion

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2008/may…
Report: Illegal immigrants contribute billions to state

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news…
Report: Illegal immigrants contribute

I used to be all for sending illegal immigrants back to their countries until I did the research. Now, I am for assimilating them into society. The cost to the economy would be too much.

TechGromit says

While I can agree that we have way too many foreign military bases, eliminating too many can have serious consequences for our national security. 75% looks like a good figure to me.

What "serious consequences" are being avoided?

There are at least 800 known US military bases outside of the 50 states and U.S. territories. Why are 200 necessary?

China currently has zero foreign military bases (but occasionally threaten to build them). Is their national security under threat?

What about India? Their national security actually *is* under threat, but yet they maintain no military bases outside of their own territory.

So, forgive me if I say "bullshit" to any claims of the necessity of maintaining military bases to ensure national security.

There is one other country with a significant number of military bases, and that's Russia. Just like ours, cold war relics that are way past being necessary.

The only reason to maintain foreign military bases is to avoid criticism about being weak on defense. It's all about "projecting power abroad". Douchbags like Lindsay Graham are openly advocating for building permanent bases in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So, lately I've been seeing a lot of people suggesting that we go back to 2008 spending levels. In 2008 we spent 3.4T (budget was $2.9T originally, because we like to hide things in appropriations bills).

So that's a $400B savings. Alright. We're still missing $1T.

Combine welfare, SS, education and Medicare into one Government entity.
Federal Schools that educate people in the Medical field from nurses to Doctors, to IT professions from bench techs to Java programmers. Government hospitals that are staffed by people that got their degree from the Federal medical school. Where graduates have to work for a fraction of what they can make int he public sector, for 5 to 10 years.

Make corporations Pay a "Annual Licensing Fee" on using any technology than steamed from U.S. grant money.
As it is now, it's a one way street, our tax dollars go to universities to develop every thing from medical needs to technology. The research is then patterned by these big corporations and little companies never stand a chance. These big companies never pay back on thin red cent.

I bet Google has gotten money from a Grant at some point in their meteoric rise. Along with 90% of Silicon valley.

Medicine and Medical procedures would be 5 to 10% of what they cost now. It would be two different worlds. In an untethered Capitalists society, an Open heart surgery costs millions. I'd bet the true cost in a Federal system would less than 10K, if that much.

Cut out all out sourcing, it is an outright Lie perpetrated on us by Washington in the last two decades that private companies can run things cheaper than the Government can. FACT more than 60% of the money spent in Afghanistan and Iraq were paid to over paid contractors to the job that Military service personnel were already there and quite capable of doing.

There's an old adage "A Government is a business" it's high time we start acting like it again.
Our government doesn't exist to be the sole customer of Wall street banks, Haliburton, Blackwater and the likes.

Prosecute and "Clawback" the money squandered and defrauded in the last decade. Between bank collapses and no bid military contractors.

If I have to pay $1400 a month(Obamacare), I'd much rather give it to my Country in the form of higher taxes, if they at least addressed the items I outlined above. Not that I expect that if my proposal was followed, I would have to pay that much more in taxes. My idea would reduce the costs and outright price gouging in Health care, from private to government forms of it.

You guys get caught up in the buzz words and not the details of what actually needs to be done.
How can you cast an umbrella statement like "Reduce Spending" with out tangible examples?

Tenouncetrout says

Combine welfare, SS, education and Medicare into one Government entity.

I don't see how that would help any.

You could probably lump "welfare" (I assume you mean literal handouts like FDIC, not what the government calls "welfare") in with SS, since it is simple monetary transfer.

But education and health care are radically different things that require radically different leaders.

All in, I suspect merging these agencies would result in a net increase in spending, since you'd just have more layers of management.

Federal Schools that educate people in the Medical field from nurses to Doctors, to IT professions from bench techs to Java programmers. Government hospitals that are staffed by people that got their degree from the Federal medical school. Where graduates have to work for a fraction of what they can make int he public sector, for 5 to 10 years.

That's actually a good idea, but could you imagine the outrage over government owned hospitals? Anyway, I'm for it.

Make corporations Pay a “Annual Licensing Fee” on using any technology than steamed from U.S. grant money.

This is already the case. It's called patent licensing.

R&D grants are probably the most effective form of government spending there is, having led directly to the creation of everything from the Internet to GPS to untold medications.

I'm all for more science and technology spending. Too bad so many in our government are anti-science.

As it is now, it’s a one way street, our tax dollars go to universities to develop every thing from medical needs to technology. The research is then patterned by these big corporations and little companies never stand a chance. These big companies never pay back on thin red cent.

Except for the whole part where this is completely wrong, sure.

I bet Google has gotten money from a Grant at some point in their meteoric rise. Along with 90% of Silicon valley.

Again, you don't really seem to understand how grants work or what their purpose is for.

Medicine and Medical procedures would be 5 to 10% of what they cost now. It would be two different worlds. In an untethered Capitalists society, an Open heart surgery costs millions. I’d bet the true cost in a Federal system would less than 10K, if that much.

Unlikely. A simple heart valve surgery takes 3-4 hours, with about a week of hospital time for recovery.

An attending surgeon alone is going to cost about $1000 just for labor on that. Nevermind the whole team needed to perform the operation.

The bare minimum, profit-free cost of such a surgery with present technology is at least $5000.

So, something big, like a heart transplant (the closest thing to "millions of dollars" in heart surgery) is still going to cost $50-100k, minimum.

Cut out all out sourcing, it is an outright Lie perpetrated on us by Washington in the last two decades that private companies can run things cheaper than the Government can. FACT more than 60% of the money spent in Afghanistan and Iraq were paid to over paid contractors to the job that Military service personnel were already there and quite capable of doing.

I largely agree, but when the government does things itself it is socialism. The american public has been conditioned to have an automatic knee jerk rejection of anything socialistic.

There’s an old adage “A Government is a business” it’s high time we start acting like it again.

That's a stupid adage. I can list a million ways that a government is not a business, or like a business, and why you would not want it to be one. A government is also not a person or a household.

Our government doesn’t exist to be the sole customer of Wall street banks, Haliburton, Blackwater and the likes.

Sure, but they aren't, either.

Prosecute and “Clawback” the money squandered and defrauded in the last decade. Between bank collapses and no bid military contractors.

Alright. How? Which payments do you consider to be fraudulent?

If I have to pay $1400 a month(Obamacare), I’d much rather give it to my Country in the form of higher taxes, if they at least addressed the items I outlined above. Not that I expect that if my proposal was followed, I would have to pay that much more in taxes. My idea would reduce the costs and outright price gouging in Health care, from private to government forms of it.

Yeah, I think single payer would be better than the insurance, bureaucracy laden cluster fuck we have today, but good luck getting that passed.

Tenouncetrout says

How can you cast an umbrella statement like “Reduce Spending” with out tangible examples?

Probably the smartest question you've ever asked on this forum. Thank you.

Kevin says

Premise: You can not raise taxes, and the budget needs to be balanced.

The premise is silly. There must be more taxes. The question is what kind of taxes. My vote is to tax the banksters:

Invoke a Wall St punitive tax on all ill-gotten gains of the top 10% payees of any bank that had to get help from either the Fed or from TARP. Include any gain that came from profits related to later losses. Pay down national debt.

Then stop the wars and start reducing military spending.

Kevin says

The current budget is broken down roughly as follows:

$929B - Defense
$898B - Health care (medicare, medicaid)
$788B - Pensions (Social Security, government employee pensions, etc.)
$464B - “Welfare” (mostly unemployment, also remainder of ARRA)
$250B - Interest on the debt
$151B - Research, grants, parks
$141B - Education
$104B - Transportation
$57B - Public safety, courts, etc.
$29B - Miscellaneous stuff (”Bureaucracy”)

Wait a second, is aid to states baked into these numbers, or is that accounted for separately?

justme says

Wait a second, is aid to states baked into these numbers, or is that accounted for separately?

Yes. For instance, Transportation includes highway money paid to states, education includes NCLB, etc.

The actual break down of categories is interesting, because that's how it was presented in the 2011 budget proposal.

For the previous 10 years, the budget was broken down into 2 categories: Mandator and Discretionary. After that, spending was broken down by department.

I'm not sure if merging mandatory and discretionary spending is the right thing or not. I personally don't believe the concept of mandatory spending should even exist, but I'm not a budget director so what do I know.

Kevin says

R&D grants are probably the most effective form of government spending there is, having led directly to the creation of everything from the Internet to GPS to untold medications.

AND AN UNTAPPED SOURCE OF REOCCURRING REVENUE!

Our tax dollars innovate, and Big Corporations raids the brian trust. This wouldn't bother me, but the example our leadership has shown to mainstreet(mom and pops) the last 4 years or more, is outrageous. Uncle Sam has a flat palm on the head of the private sector and has been holding them under water until the kicking and squirming stops.

justme says

is aid to states baked into these numbers, or is that accounted for separately?

This site is pretty good AFAICT:

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/year2011_US.html

it says from the $3.8T federal budget there will be $536B transferred to states to spend.

30% of the Fed's $900B/yr health care is transfers.
60% of Education's $140B
10% of $464B Welfare
50% of $106B Transportation

I'd make extreme budget cuts.

Kevin says

Again, you don’t really seem to understand how grants work or what their purpose is for.

NO! It is YOU and 90% of America that forgot what the purpose is for. Grants weren't created to make Union Pacific and the likes even bigger and larger corporations.

Grants are bolster growth, and create new jobs and industry. Small companies and maximize working Americans is the intended reason. Not for corporations already getting billions in investor dollars, to then take these technologies and set up shop over seas. Man meet half way, you know what I'm talking about, don't be Coy with me. Shit like this is why and how were in the shape we're in.

Tenouncetrout says

Kevin says

Again, you don’t really seem to understand how grants work or what their purpose is for.

NO! It is YOU and 90% of America that forgot what the purpose is for. Grants weren’t created to make Union Pacific and the likes even bigger and larger corporations.
Grants are bolster growth, and create new jobs and industry. Small companies and maximize working Americans is the intended reason. Not for corporations already getting billions in investor dollars, to then take these technologies and set up shop over seas. Man meet half way, you know what I’m talking about, don’t be Coy with me. Shit like this is why and how were in the shape we’re in.

Seriously, the grant system is mostly working exactly as intended. Large corporations receive very few R&D grants. Most go to universities.

The government gets a hell of a lot of value out of it, too. Never paying royalties on the tech, getting first access, being able to tell the developers exactly who they can and can't sell it to...

What you're suggesting would simply remove the incentive for companies to take that grant money in the first place, and instead just take on private loans to fund the project. Then the government gets nothing out of the deal.

No arguments against a punitive tax against ill-gotten profits for bankers and wall st? Let's do it, then.

Kevin says

Seriously, the grant system is mostly working exactly as intended. Large corporations receive very few R&D grants. Most go to universities.

The government gets a hell of a lot of value out of it, too. Never paying royalties on the tech, getting first access, being able to tell the developers exactly who they can and can’t sell it to…

What you’re suggesting would simply remove the incentive for companies to take that grant money in the first place, and instead just take on private loans to fund the project. Then the government gets nothing out of the deal.

Are you reading this back to your self? The third paragraph calls your first and second paragraph a liar and a cheat.

In response to Clarence 13X. I see no economic value of 15 million illegal aliens when there are 22 million unemployed Americans who could be doing the same work. Grossly overweight Americans need to cut their own grass, clean their own houses and pick their own fruit. In addition, the sale of illegal drugs that are grown south of the border is a very serious problem that costs the Federal government $$$$ to control.

Tenouncetrout says

Are you reading this back to your self? The third paragraph calls your first and second paragraph a liar and a cheat.

Only if your reading comprehension level is very low.

This is an interesting post-similar to my California budget cut post... Where to cut...

First off, your budget is flawed. You discount massive tax reductions targeting the middle class. Tweaking these revenue streams slightly would balance the budget.

I WOULD NOT CUT IT. I WOULD INCREASE SPENDING ACROSS THE BOARD.

The deficiet and debt are utterly meaningless. What benefit do we gain from balancing the budget? None.

This is the only argument I ever hear from the whinners is "Our children will be saddled with debt..." Guess what they are going to do? They are going to kick the can down the road to their children. And those children will kick it down to the next generation. And so on. Forever.

Balancing the budget pisses off voters who turn around and elect someone who spends like crazy. It is utterly pointless.

SoCal Renter says

And so on. Forever

Well no. Because of the concept of compound interest (exponential growth), we would soon get to where the interest on the debt was greater than the defense budget. But obviously at some point way before then the full faith and credit of the US treasury would be gone.

It's a real problem, and the Keynesian idea that others have mentioned here is correct. That is the idea that the government lives within their means or even at surplus when the economy is booming, and engages in deficit spending in recessions. Although in practice it's overly simplistic and doesn't work. We spend too much when times are good, and our system does not have ways of forcing financial restraint. Further complicated by corruption and recent trends toward globalization and our need to somehow compete with rapidly growing developing economies who have labor costs we can not compete with.

People want to blame the Fed. By the way, do research on any part of that animation patrick posted today to see how accurate it is. That is, if you have too much time on your hands. People actually believe that stuff ?

marcus says

Well no. Because of the concept of compound interest (exponential growth), we would soon get to where the interest on the debt was greater than the defense budget. But obviously at some point way before then the full faith and credit of the US treasury would be gone.

Here we go again, doomsday in some obscure near-distant future. Not going to happen. No one can even provide an estimated date of this "collapse" in US faith and credit. Compound interest growing exponentially and overtaking all other spending will not happen.

charles1050 says

In response to Clarence 13X. I see no economic value of 15 million illegal aliens when there are 22 million unemployed Americans who could be doing the same work. Grossly overweight Americans need to cut their own grass, clean their own houses and pick their own fruit. In addition, the sale of illegal drugs that are grown south of the border is a very serious problem that costs the Federal government $$$$ to control.

Yep, I guess there really is no way to balance the budget without raising taxes.

There must be more cuts we could make to the military budget though; we spend so much more than anyone else. How about put a permanent cap on military spending such that it could never be more than the combined totals of the military budgets of the next three countries (that would be China + UK + France = 234b). That would get us a lot of the way there...of course we would no longer be able to unilaterally invade other countries but that's fine with me. We'd still be able to defend ourselves against any conceivable attack.

SoCal Renter says

marcus says

Well no. Because of the concept of compound interest (exponential growth), we would soon get to where the interest on the debt was greater than the defense budget. But obviously at some point way before then the full faith and credit of the US treasury would be gone.

Here we go again, doomsday in some obscure near-distant future. Not going to happen. No one can even provide an estimated date of this “collapse” in US faith and credit. Compound interest growing exponentially and overtaking all other spending will not happen.

That is correct. The markets will stop lending first.

PersainCAT says

bdrasin says

Yep, I guess there really is no way to balance the budget without raising taxes.

you COULD cut
$898B - Health care (medicare, medicaid)

$788B - Pensions (Social Security, government employee pensions, etc.)

Heh, ok, I guess if you keep SS/Medicare taxes but don't actually pay bennies, but that takes us deep into fantasy land. If you eliminated the programs you'd lose the tax revenue (which currently is more than they pay out).

I don't see how you can consider military spending an investment in the future. I see it as the opposite: it makes the future worse.

PersainCAT says

seriously though if u look at what jobs are lost cutting social security/pension u only hurt the old, they have great political clout but i doubt their loss of income would be as traumatic to the economy as say cutting defense

That is a pretty reality-challenged assertion to make.

The old are largely highly dependent on their health benefits and pensions. Cutting their social security is literally stealing their savings since everyone has had to put ~10% of their incomes into the program since 1984 and 6-7% since 1971.

Social security has built up a $2.6T fund of excess FICA contributions, not paying that back as benefits would be the greatest theft in history.

The old are also dependent on their health care. Not many people on medicare can afford current health care prices, so medicare is both improving the health of the elderly and also supporting health service incomes (and profits).

You pull the $900B/yr spending from health care and the US health system would utterly collapse.

i bet it would just slow/stop growth in that sector.

I don't think you understand that well how economies operate.

People who don't have money to buy something do not buy it. Producers can lower the prices if they have a producer surplus (and health providers certainly do) but this lower price results in lower profits, with secondary effects therefrom -- like less money health providers spend back into the economy via their consumption.

So that $900B/yr in health care expenditures has a much greater footprint in our economy than just the millions of health industry jobs supported by it.

Defense, too, supports millions of jobs, both within the DOD, its private contractors, and the communities servicemen, contractors, and private employees spend their money into.

Cutting any expenditure is going to be very very painful to any local economy thereby affected.

i see the DoD more of a jobs program then anything here

yes, it is, but the problem is that the DOD's output is not real-world wealth (something that satisfies human needs and wants) nor is much of it even wealth-preserving (like health care, which restores health to people).

Just having a "jobs program" does not give one a stable economy. We could be paying people to dig holes in the ground but that in the end is not sustainable either. What we need is an economy that can pay its way in the world -- producing the wealth that we trade for the wealth that we consume -- and our $500B/yr trade deficit is indicative that we do not have such a thing now.