OK...I have a plan to reduce the deficit.

[Sallow]

Yeah, well, the OP started with the Balanced Budget Amendment and that my friend is idiocy.

That he did.

And like I pointed out..throwing out the baby with the bath water isn't exactly bright either.

 

[Kevin_Kennedy]

I've got a better plan

CUT SPENDING!

That's not a plan, that's a catch phrase. The deficit is 1.29 billion this year, give or take a few hundred million. Please show me where in the federal budget you are going to come up with this much spending to cut. Remember, Social Security has it's own revenue stream that almost every year runs a surplus.

Good luck.

I won't be holding my breath.

Start with our foreign policy and go from there.

 

[LiberalNut]

History is lost on these idiots.

ROTFLMFAO!!!

Ummm, the poster was wrong in so many ways that only a moron would take the post seriously. I mean, repeating nonsense about 1920 cause Beck did program or two on it? Tell me genius, why would government spending and taxes have been reduced in 1920? Ya think possibly, just maybe it might have had something to do with the end of WWI? Hmmm? Is that what the idiot was actually advocating, a 3/4 cut in the Department of Defense?

LOL!

 

[Avatar4321]

cause it only took us 12 years to get out of with with all that government spending.

Wrong. The Great Depression ended in March of 1933. There was however another recession in 1937

http://www.nber.org/cycles/cyclesmain.html

The Great Depression lasted from 1929-1941.

But let's say for the sake of argument, your date is accurate.

Solving the problem with government spending - 4 years.

Solving the problem by cutting taxes and spending - <1

Which method do you think we should use?

 

[LiberalNut]

The Great Depression lasted from 1929-1941.

No. I posted the data. Did you look at it? The numbers are staring you in the face. The Great Depression ended in March, 1933. There was another recession in May of 1937. It ended in June of 1938. There was not another recession till the war ended in 1945.

Solving the problem with government spending - 4 years.

It did not. You see, from 1929-1933, the president was a Republican (Herbert Hoover) who ran around trying to balance the budget. As a result, the economy shrank for those years. Then a new president, FDR, was elected in November of 1932. He took office in 1933 and the recovery happened in his historic first 100 days in office.

This is like High School history.

 

[Toro]

If we abolished the IRS, how would taxes be collected?

 

[Missourian]

It will require a Constitutional Amendment that:

1) Would require a National Balanced Budget

2) Would allow deficit spending ONLY in the event of a crisis and would require a 2/3rds majority vote in Congress AND Presidential authorization.

3) Would institute a Value Added Tax, the revenues from which would apply 100% to reducing the deficit.

4) The Value Added Tax would sunset after the deficit was paid off. It could be re-instituted to pay off any new deficit spending that resulted from crisis deficit spending.

5) Would outlaw Value Added Taxes for any other purpose than paying off the deficit.
​

Yes, I know it is difficult to pass a Constitutional amendment, but I see no alternative.

Critique.

OK, here is the proposal again...the major problem is how to define a crisis in such as to leave a contingency for a true emergency while inhibiting Congress from calling everything a crisis thereby defeating the purpose of enacting this measure.

 

[Two Thumbs]

If we abolished the IRS, how would taxes be collected?

Good point.

How were taxes collected before the IRS?

If we went to a flat tax we would still need something like it as a whatch dog. Or it could be absorbed into, for example, the FBI, they could be specialist agents that ferret out tax evaders and put them in jail instead of the annoying assholes that can call you in for an audit.