I take it you are fine with current spending.
And don't mistake me for a republican either. Both sides suck, you just won't admit it.
I personally think both sides suck too. I've said that many times. I don't know why you think I wouldn't say that.
In the last few decades federal spending has been about 21% of GDP (
See table 1.2 starting on page 24). To me, 21% is a bit high but changing it drastically and quickly is too harmful for our country (see what happened in the late 1930s when rapid austerity put us back into a second depression). We should strive for about 20% for now (better than average and we can strive for lower later on if needed). As of last year, GDP was running at $14.87 trillion, so 20% of that is $3 trillion. We are spending about $3.7 trillion this year. So we are overspending by $700 billion.
I personally think it is ok to overspend on some years IF AND ONLY IF you are realistically going to underspend in other years. To do that, we need to put social security and medicare back to where they were originally intended: for when you live past the expected lifespan. On the flip side military spending needs to be realistic (we can be the biggest in the world without being more than the whole world combined). I want to save $10s of trillions, not the measily few billions proposed by Obama or even the TEA party. Neither one is thinking long term and they are bickering about chump change. $700 billion is nothing compared to what is coming down the line. Forget the chump change (especially with the fragile economy that needs that chump change now) and fix the real problems.
In the mean time, we shouldn't fool ourselves. If we are going to support spending (social programs and military) we should take the pain of big taxes. Only once taxes meet spending will enough people be willing to cut spending meaningfully. As it is now, too few people demand spending cuts because few people are paying taxes for the high spending YET. Bush and Obama are both kings of violating that simple rule: they spend far more while bringing in far less. A tax cut does not help ANYONE one bit unless it is matched by a spending cut (because we are just mortgaging ourselves). And we've seen tax cut after tax cut from BOTH sides for the last 10 years with no matching spending cuts.
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