The debt, White House Burning

Maybe they should cut more from NASA's budget also.

Reminds me of the frequent comments I see over at Yahoo! regarding what to do about the national debt. It seems that most of those folks believe that all we need to do is cut Congressional perks and stop giving out foreign aid and that will be that.

I think we will be good if we cut NASA some more and stop Presidential vacations.

Oh yeah. I forgot about that GSA party in Las Vegas. No more parties either.

Unfortunately, instead of having a sensible national debate about governmental priorities related to the national debt, what we are likely to get is what I call the lawnmower approach. That is, Congress is probably going to take a certain flat percentage off of every program. That is, of course, if they ever actually get around to dealing with the problem in the first place.

What they should be doing is sitting down and deciding whether or not the government should be doing everything that it's currently doing. If there are things that the feds shouldn't be doing (e.g., funding artwork), then those programs should be eliminated. Only after they have gone through the budget and lopped off everything that shouldn't be there should they then go into existing programs.

Of course, given the large amount of the budget that they consume, defense, Social Security, and Medicare will have to be dealt with no matter what. But if you deal with them after cutting out all the useless and senseless stuff, it will at least be: 1) less painful than trying to get all of the savings from these three programs and 2) less difficult to work through because the people involved will have already been inured to a program of cost cutting.

And of course we will also need a program of tax reform, both as a way to raise revenue and to simplify the tax code.

I have seen statistics that 49% or so do not pay federal income tax. I wonder if we know what percentage of total income that is. Does that 49% who do not pay federal income tax make 25%, or 10%, or 35% of total US income?

I have read that the annual income levels of some who do not pay federal tax is over $50k or higher.

Anybody know?

I make under $50k and I pay taxes. And that is with a mortgage and three dependents.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/story/2011-10-06/income-tax-nonpayment/506...

I have seen a bunch of tax returns in my job. Some are shocking in how little they pay. Many get much greater refunds than they actually pay in withholding.

One thing is for sure the tax code is nuts. Another thing is for sure there will be no quick and easy fix.