Here's how to balance the budget, lower tax rates, stimulate the economy, and reform campaign finance the right way.
1. Eliminate tax expenditures. All those deductions, credits, and exemptions which make your tax return so complicated and which are a boon to tax preparers. Tax expenditures add up to $1.4 trillion a year.
Every. Year.
What can the government do with $1.4 trillion? It can give most of it back to the people in the form of tax cuts. It can use some to pay down the $20 trillion debt which was created by these $1.4 trillion in tax expenditures in the first place!
2. Raise the Social Security and Medicare eligibility ages to 70, and index to 9 percent of the population going forward. We are living decades longer than our ancestors who created Social Security, it is just plain common sense we should be working longer.
Only 5.4% of the population were over the age of 65 in 1935. By 1965, when Medicare was added, 9% of the population were over 65. Today, that figure is approaching 15%. This is an unsustainable trend which will bankrupt our treasury.
3. Reform healthcare insurance to be just like auto, home, and life insurance. You pick up a phone and call whatever insurance company you wish, and buy what health insurance you need. You should not be hostage to your employer who offers a single option, take-it-or-leave-it policy which disappears if you leave or lose your job. This is one more reason to eliminate the employer-sponsored health insurance exemption in our tax code which encourages this boondoggle which drives up the cost of health care.
This current Republican idea of "buying insurance across state lines" is a carefully worded hoax. It in no way means you will be able to call any insurance company in America that you wish, like you do with auto, home, and life insurance. This hoax is designed to benefit insurance company profits, not YOU.
These simple reforms would not only balance the budget, they would provide an astronomical surplus. A surplus which can be used to lower tax rates for everyone, pay down the debt, and provide aid to our citizens with catastrophic illnesses. Lower tax rates, a budget surplus, and lowering debt would provide massive stimulus to the economy. And without the ability to put tax expenditures in the tax codes, special interests would have no incentive to bribe our politicians to do so, thus reforming campaign finance the right way.
Now watch Koshbot come along and call me a "far left drone". BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!
