No. of Recommendations: 9
One simple adjustment is to return to the historical level of government spending equal to ~20% of US GDP. Right now we're at 25%.
That's part of the problem, though. Too many people believe that such an adjustment would be "simple."
You're talking about (roughly) reducing the federal budget by about 20%. That's around $1.3 trillion dollars per year. That's an impossible number to achieve without major cuts in programs that no one would ever vote to cut. It's just too big.
If you take the major mandatory spending programs off the table (Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, veteran's benefits and pensions, interest on the national debt, and the like), the entire rest of government is about $1.7 trillion. Of which about $800 billion is defense. Which leaves about $0.9 trillion for the entirety of the federal government. You could eliminate every single non-defense program outside of the mandatory programs - and still be about half a trillion short.
It's not just not "simple." It's nigh on infeasible to think that could ever happen. The numbers are too big. You'll never get the votes to cut the things you'd need to cut. The party that's ostensibly on the side of cutting spending (GOP) isn't just refusing to cut defense - large swatches of the party are livid that the debt limit agreement doesn't raise spending enough. But all the mandatory programs are off the table, too: the consensus in the current "worker's party" version of the GOP is totally supportive of Medicare and Social Security and veterans benefits and all the other mandatory spending programs. Sure, they might in theory handwave towards trimming Medicaid - but Medicaid isn't big enough (about 10% of the budget) for adjustments to the program to solve this problem, and there's no political will to take an axe to it.
It just can't be done. It's the GOP's big budgetary lie - that we can meaningfully address the deficit solely by reducing spending without making changes to programs our voters love (Social Security and Medicare and vigorous defense spending and veterans' support). It's the inverse of the Democrats' big budgetary lie - that we can meaningfully address the deficit solely by increasing taxes on only the rich, without increasing taxes on huge swatches of our voters who are quite certain that they're already paying their "fair share."
Both of those big lies are....well, they're lies. The numbers are too big. Too much of the federal government's spending is too popular for the GOP to credibly cut; but the federal government's spending is also too big for the Democrats to credibly fund it only with taxing "the wealthy." So they both lie, and say that it's possible for the American people to have what they want (tons of really expensive entitlement and defense programs!), not have to pay any more in taxes, and reduce the deficit somehow.
