pector@ihuxw.UUCP (Scott W. Pector) (02/03/84)
OK now. I saw on TV that the federal budget from Reagan is approximately
$950 billion. The military gets $230 billion of that. The deficit for
the year is $180 billion. The total deficit is over $1 trillion. The
interest on the deficit is about $100 billion a year now (I think).
My question: To reduce the total deficit, you can't have any yearly
deficit to add to it, and you have to account for yearly
interest on the deficit (or should I say on government's
borrowing). To my mind, this says that you have to spend
more than $280 billion less than you take in. Even if the
military gets nothing, you still have to cut $50 billion
or raise taxes. All this to allow you to begin to reduce
the deficit size from the previous year, or just to stay
even. Assuming that my assumptions about how much more
needs to be taken in than spent are inaccurate (please
correct them if need be to make the problem more accurate),
what should be done about this? Raise taxes? What should
be cut from the budget? Or is the deficit acceptable as
it is?
I'm interested in what people think. Respond by mail to me or to this
newsgroup. I'm curious to see how people trade off social programs for
military for administrative costs for ....
Scott Pector