The New York Times has a nifty web calculator for experimenting with proposed tactics for reducing the federal budget deficit. Although simplistic, it is an interesting exercise that counters the idea that the budget deficit can’t be fixed without privatizing social security or eliminating the Department of Energy and/or Education. I’d like to see a larger interactive budget calculator that allows you to tweak all aspects of federal taxation and expenses. It might reveal some interesting results. Here is what I came up with.
The great problem of any proposal by anyone is that it will only solve the debt problem in a temporary manor so long as the likes of Newt Gingrich is still around. Yea we might find a way to solve the debt problem for a few years, but it will be done via cutting important parts of the social safety net and in so doing so will have validated the theory that the only way to cut such problems is to create such enormous amounts of debt that the government is left with no other options.
That is we need a progressive version of the balanced budget amendment.
I submit that we need one tax which is adjusted on a variable rate based on the year to year government spending that is adjusted outside the control of congress, we do this by separating the IRS into a new co-equal branch of government charged with tax collection give rules set by congress and approved by the president, this branch would adjust the variable rate based on the year to year needs of government, issuence of debt would be required to be on a stand-alone bill that needs a 2/3rd’s majority of both houses to pass and it would be required that the terms and repayment method be set in the bill such that the tax collection branch of government can collect the money to service that debt.