60 minutes = $188 million in new debt

[Stavros]

Eliminate Department of Energy = <$26.3 billion> in savings
Eliminate Department of Education = <$46.7 billion> in savings
Eliminate Homeland Security = <$45.5 billion> in savings

The US survived for years without a Department of Homeland Security, I think that could be a saving, but you need to explain where schools will come from if the state sector is entirely abolished; and your assumption must be that the private energy companies would replace the gap if you eliminate an energy department. Yes, the department of interior could be responsible for monitoring energy companies and their environmental impact, as indeed they once did, but your overall assumption is driven by the kind of 'governmental minimalism' advocated by Friedrich von Hayek and Robert Nozick -both assumed that, free of governmental control, people would simply get on with it themselves, removing the need for laws, taxes and oversight. This nonsense can't explain when 'freedom' doesn't work: when it is obvious that a family on the poverty line cannot buy the services that are free at the time of delivery: state schools, to give but one example.

Rather than a 'slash and burn' approach, maybe you need a paradigm shift to find othr long term sources of savings, and maybe even the creation of jobs which is what you need most.

For example, Americans are notorious for driving energy-inefficient cars that run on gasoline, you should long ago have begun the transition to electric/hybrid vehicles (as they do in Brazil and Germany) which do 60-80 miles to the gallon with low-to-zero carbon emissions, and please dont tell me the USA doesnt have the brains or the capital to make the best and most efficient cars in the world.

And then there is the railroad: capital cost high, long-term return: high; energy efficient, comfortable, and safe.
The long term ipact would reduce the dependency on oil -and in the process for a while bring down the $ for barrel cost .

Your cars are expensive and dirty and inefficient, and you could transform the American home with subsidised solar energy: solar energy can power a home and actually create more energy than can be used: in the UK the few households that have solar sell excess power to local power companies at a profit: subsidise the capital outlay and the credit source will make its money back plus some, in ten years: carbon emissions will be reduced, dependency on oil, gas, coal and other fossil fuels will be reduced.

You spend billions a year replacing the $1 bill-??? What?? Withdraw it from circulation, replace it with a coin that can be used in machines, but lose your romantic attachment to an expensive piece of paper.

Afghanistan now costs the US taxpayer $10bn a month...Pakistan a $1bn a month...need I say more?

Israel takes $7bn a year -what for? Israel makes billions of its own a year and some Israelis have admitted they dont need your dollars but take them anyway, and how much of the weapons and weapons technology sold to Israel gets sold on to others? Like Menachem Begin selling arms to Argentina when the UK was at war over the Falkland Islands/Las Malvinas. Thank you Israel, and goodbye.

Your congressional system is in need of an overhaul so that legislation can go through without ending up looking like the yellow pages -when the Stealth Bomber was being developed, more than 300 congressional district got their slice of the pie -the admin costs of the project probably cost as much as the hardware!
Like the UK, defency procurement requires too many people, too many contractors, and too many people charging the military $25 for a screwdriver that you can buy in a dollar store for...$1.

The point is that even if you have to slash some budgets, you can also plan a phased reduction in federal spending over 10 years by changing some of the fundamentals -not in government, but in the way you live.

[Faldur]

I use same reasoning for eliminating the department of education as your do on homeland security. DOE came into existence in 1980 and took the worlds finest education system and and placed us 33rd in world wide rankings last year. We did just fine without it, get rid of it.

I feel the same for department of energy, I'm not sure when your $14.5 trillion in debt its time to start talking green energy. In my opinion green energy enforcement is costing this country billions as it is, and will only create more debt. Get the spending under control then implement a defined green plan that will pay its own way.

I agree on foreign aid, eliminate it. We can't prop up the worlds economy with our Master Card. Bring all our troops home, no more Iraq or Afghanistan. We don't need to be building schools in Afghanistan when we need them here.

We don't have the time to look at a 10 year plan. Even as extreme as my ideas are it will still take approximately 30 years at these levels to pay off our debt. This was just one mans opinion of what our government needs to do to get its house in order. The US is going to collapse if we don't take drastic steps ASAP. We've reached the end of the road, and the can is laying at our feet.

[hippifried]

Wow! The doom & gloom is really getting thick. Why fight it?

[Faldur]

Doom and Gloom? You think the country is just going to keep trucking along $15 trillion dollars in debt? No offense but thats the attitude that got us here in the first place.

[Stavros]

I use same reasoning for eliminating the department of education as your do on homeland security. DOE came into existence in 1980 and took the worlds finest education system and and placed us 33rd in world wide rankings last year. We did just fine without it, get rid of it.

I feel the same for department of energy, I'm not sure when your $14.5 trillion in debt its time to start talking green energy. In my opinion green energy enforcement is costing this country billions as it is, and will only create more debt. Get the spending under control then implement a defined green plan that will pay its own way.

Hmmm..maybe the reason why the quality of high school education in the US is so uneven is because policy is too decentralised, but since neither Reagan nor GW Bush abolished the DoE when they said they wanted to asks questions like -why not? As a long term investment, education has no alternative -you may need to review the provision of education across the board before just taking the 'slash and burn' attitude.

On Energy you have not addressed the practical things which I did -you can't dimiss it as 'green energy' as if this was a nonsense when it is working in Brazil and Germany; can you really just carry on driving gas-guzzling cars and lose sleep at night on gas prices and you dependence on exports? Change the cars! Change the fuels! I also suggested a home improvement scheme which over 10-20 years would not just reduce the deficit, but bring down domestic fuel prices and be environmentally friendly -surely there can't be something wrong with that?I regret to say I think you are substituting creative thinking for slash and burn out of an ideological aversion to government, but you won't get rid of government, and you can't transform the deficit overnight; a phased re-structuring could help, and as you asked for practical solutions, so did I propose some.

[Faldur]

In education I really feel the states are better off controlling their own in the manner they each see fit. It would be easy for Washington to dictate a national basic curriculum and let the states take it from there. In my opinion they would be smart to introduce some competition incentives, and a solid ratings systems so parents can make choices in where their kids are educated. But I definitely think the DOE is completely unnecessary.

On energy, all fine points made Stav. I am wide open for anything that would improve the efficiency/air quality. The only thing I would want would be means testing to avoid having program costs negating efforts to get spending under control. Again do not feel we need the department of energy, all these efforts can be done under existing departments.

[hippifried]

Yeah, doom & gloom. The US isn't broke, or insolvent. Everybody's hung up on the number, but when you adjust for the inflation that everybody loves so damn much, we've been carrying this same size debt for the last 70 years. I'm 60, & I've been listening to this same crap all my life. I saw the big board, with the countdown to national bankrupsy, on "Sam & Friends" in 1959. (That was the original "Muppet" show BTW, doing 10 minutes of political satire that kids liked too.) Anyway, we're still here. Still talking the same Chicken Little sky is falling shit. Doomsday just keeps getting pushed back as it gets near. I never got to meet my grandfather, but according to my dad's descriptions, he was talking the same shit back in the '20s & before, claiming that the Federal Reserve was going to lead the country to communism or something. I see no reason to believe that there's a wolf attacking the sheep this time.

The Republican plan is way beyond slash & burn. It's scorched earth. It's this longing for a mythical idyllic time that happened before anybody alive was born, where everybody lived in a Norman Rockwell painting or the "little house on the prairie". It's bullshit & always was. We can't cut our way out of debt. We'll be in a lot worse shape if we can't compete with the rest of the world, & we can't compete if we go backwards over foolish fears. Cutting education is capitulation to China & Europe by ignoring our potential. Refusing to get a handle on energy usage is capitulation to international conglomerates that have ne reason to look out for our interests at all. Republicans are acting like a bunch of frogs, throwing their hands up in surrender. Well I'm not ready to surrender. If y'all want to be a bunch of pussies, do it from home & get the hell out of everybody else's way.

[Stavros]

I think if there is a signal difference from the 'then and now' approach to the deficit, it is that the underlying strength of the US employment market was at times more bouyant than it is now -particularly in the 1950s and 1960s. If jobs are to be the engine of the growth that balances budgets and restores confidence, then the loss of 'traditional' manufacturing jobs that were once the foundation of much of American industry does not offer the same degree of hope.

However, if hope is to be the new currency, then I have tried to suggest that people 'think outside the box'; the US tends to try the things that work only after they have tried using all the ones that don't, and I think the Anglo-American politician WS Churchill said something along those lines.

For heaven's sake -the talent in America! The capital resources! What's stopping you from breaking the impasse? I don't get it.

[Faldur]

Couldn't disagree more Hippi. With our S&P credit rating in jeopardy, the fed printing money like its toilet paper, value of the dollar falling like a rock because of all the printing.

We will reach a point very soon where 1/2 of all revenues collected by the government will go to service the debt. And continued burying our heads in the sand and saying its all ok and normal is bullshit. We need to lead the world, (yes like we always do), back to sanity and start showing true leadership in returning to spending sanity. A balanced budget, with surplus going towards debt reduction. You progressives thought that was a good idea when Clinton did it, what happened?

We have borrowed another $9 billion dollars in the two days this thread has been around..

[trish]

If you’re having trouble keeping up with your mortgage, dismantling your house won’t help. Letting the roof go, not painting the sills etc. will just create more expense down the road. Tearing down departments and striping the government will just cut services, and create unemployment in both the public and private sectors. The further dip in employment will cause the economy to stall and dip yet again. The U.S. is under-invested in infrastructure. There are dams, levies, bridges, highways, schools etc. etc. that require maintenance. We can let the house go, or we can maintain it. Letting it go to shit isn’t going to help us meet the deficit. You can’t make payments simply by not spending the money you don’t have. You have to make revenue too. Investments made now to maintain our infrastructure now may add to deficit now, but in the near future the investment will pay off in two ways. 1) Broken bridges and busted dams are a lot more expensive and inconvenient than ones that are functioning and maintained. 2) Keeping people employed puts money in circulation. There’s nothing better for business then people who have cash to spend. Remember, money trickles from the hands of ordinary working people into the hands businesses, companies, corporations, CEO’s and stockholders__not the other way around. (1) and (2) apply as well to governmental agencies which provide valuable service; e.g. FDA, CDC, DOE, etc. Without the FDA (for example) we’d soon find out how expensive mad cow disease can be and how a little investment at the proper time can save lives and livelihoods.