Sunday, November 20, 2011

Supercommittee 2.0: What would you do to meet the goals of the Supercommittee by Wednesday?

Click "Next" at the top of the following page, and make the hard PUBLIC POLICY choices:
http://crfb.org/stabilizethedebt/


http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/11/supercommittee-republicans-offer-backup-plan-democrats-reject-the-offer/

23 comments:

Chris DeWinter said...

I would cut new spending completely, increase taxes, and raise the age of social security. I would reduce the regulations placed on businesses by the EPA and place tarrifs on foreign made products to help out American businesses.

Paige said...

On the simulator, I chose many options and ending up getting "The Debt will reach 60% of GDP in 2018." It was really surprising to see how much has to be done in order to lower the debt. One of the main things I agree with is lowering defense spending and aid to other countries. There are many countries who depend on the US to help, which is kind of sad, seeing as we can't even help the poor in our own country.

JakobL said...

On the simulator my major cuts were on defense and on the budget path. I think the USA should focus more on there own problems in their econmy than having troops all over the world and spreading their money all over the world. They should focus more on the economy in their own land than improting everything out of China and produce/export more by themselves. The GDP in the U.S. is mostly a result of services and not of producing/exporting. For my that's the most important thing that i wolud focus on.

Jwolf said...

On the simulator, I increased taxes, and decreased spending on health insurance. I increased sharing for Medicare and eliminated outdated programs that increased spending. I also cut ship building and reversed the "Grow the Army" initiative. I believe that we do not need to expand the army, I think that we should get out of the war, that will reduce spending immensely. The US should focus on getting the deficit down without raising taxes. We should keep programs like the space program that may help us conserve our resources in the future.

jboyle said...

On the simulator I chose to reduce spending in areas of Medicade, reducing the number of troops, health care and reducing the amount of money going to public education. I would do this because I believe that the war overseas has gone on long enough. I also believe that they should reduce the amount of money going towards health care because I believe that the people need to stop relying on the government and because if they don't the government is going to run out of money.

aschulist said...

I would raise the social security age one or two years. I think that would be a very resaonable way to save a lot of money. More importantly, however, I would cut spending across the board. In my opinion, the government spends way to much money to fund programs that I don't even think they should have. It gives them more power and it's a waste of tax payer money. Plus it has created this ridiculous amount of debt that we are now struggling to get rid of.

aspone said...

To meet the goals of the Supercommitee by Wednesday, my main priority would be to stop new spending. I think this should be the main focus of the Supercommitee. More spending is not helping the American people because with increased spending comes increased taxes. I would then try to raise as little taxes as possible; however, I realize that some tax increase is necessary to increase our revenue. The spending I would cut are in areas such as Medicare and the new health care bill. I

Kelly M said...

To meet the goals of the supercommittee by wednesday I would lower the spending of money in other countries. The US should think about spending money on our own country before we spend more money in other countries.

sli said...

Incresing the tax and decreading the health insurance might help. However, what I think is America should limit the budjet on troops all around the world. Constitution doesn't define America as the "world police", so why have to deal with everything and spend so much defense money toward other countries and why not do something that really benefit the America?

Anonymous said...

I think that cutting defense spending is the key. We do not need to be the international police with troops everywhere. We must take care of our own country first. So we need to decrease the presence of our troops around the world in certain location and slim down the defense spending.

Sfrasher said...

To meet the goals of the Supercommittee by Wednesday, my overall goal would be to raise the age of Medicare recipients, and to reduce the number of troops that we have overseas. By raising the age of Medicare recipients, it would save a lot of money that the government desperately needs right now. We, as a country, would also save a lot of money if we reduced the number of troops overseas. I believe that we still need a presence in foreign countries due to the “unstableness” in the Middle East but I think that the number of troops we have overseas is very excessive. This will eliminate a lot of the defense spending. Overall, these would be my two proposals.

Big Al said...

On the simulator i could only get the tax to 70% and i did in the most ethical and considerate way. Getting to 60% will put a severe strangle hold on many government jobs. It seems like if we want to succeed we need less government. Schools may have to become private vs. public. That will put an end to no child left behind, but schooling is exspensive. If we cut the government progams and we become more independent

J.Mason said...

Smart spending, the government likes to spend on everything and anything, make cuts were they are needed, increase taxes if needed. Cut certain spending on programs that are not a national threat and that are not used or as important.

Jbandoszeski said...

If i had to meet these goals of the supercommittee i would cut a lot of spending from social security and health care. Another thing that i would do is reduce the amount in troops in Iraq and Afghanistan as much as we could by 2015, possibly end the war by then to save as much money as we could.

npaape said...

The Supercommittee needs to come up with an agreement to compromise to reduce the deficeit. An example would be instead of giving away so much money to foreign countries to help our own country.By doing this we can save billions of dollars to repair what has been lost. I think we need to look at the pension system along with healthcare at the government level. By doing this maybe can see some savings in the budget.

Paige said...

Responding to Jbandoszeski, I wouldn't cut health care spending, because our nation's health care system is already terrible as it is. Also, I feel that social security is important and therefore should continue spending.

tFugarino said...

First of all i would cut budget spending by the national government. Yes they do put some money towards respectable funds but most of it is just money that tax payer pay the government and it gets waisted. I would also Raise the social security age to save money.

sli said...

I agree with pliberski because cutting the health care spending would let down people who need us to be there, the elderly, the disadvantaged and the disabled.

KKotecki said...

Although the Supercommittee did not meet their deadline, it was quite evident that they were not going to agree on an outcome due to the difference in opinions. In my opinion, the spending needs to be drastically decreased. The Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security programs would need to be reconfigured so that there is not a large amount of money being sucked into them. The new programs will need to be monitored so that there is not as much, if any, fraud happening. This will help to reduce the waste of federal money. Jobs need to be increased so that the amount of taxpayers increases, therefore increasing the money made on income taxes. If the economy is healthier, then the federal government will receive more money, helping to reduce the deficit. However, if the rich are taxed too much, they will not help to create jobs and the federal government will not receive as much money. We need to get rid of the loopholes with taxes so that we can increase the revenue without raising the tax rate. Although other countries need help, so do we. Other countries need to become less reliant on the United States and much of that money could go to help reduce the deficit. The main thing that needs to be done is to cut the waste out of expenditures. We need to examine where we have military bases. Do we really still need military bases in Germany? Our country needs to be less reliant on the government and that will reduce much of the money that goes out unnecessarily.

neve57 said...

It was inevitable that there would not be an agreement in the supercommitee. What I would do to cut spending, is drastically change social security, Medicare, and Medicaid; or cut it out completely. The retirement age has to be higher in order to not lose money when we get older. Or instead of cutting the programs, we could raise the tax rates of the two in which money goes in.

bhlava said...

I would raise taxes and the age of social security. i would also do what i could to stop as much new spending as possible, while spending only what is truly necessary.

APrichard said...

The fact that one loop-hole to taxes was common knowledge to the supercommittee may come to fix this situation present. It could be possible to simply fix these loop-holes such as the jet tax found to help reach the goal of 1.2 trillion dollars. Also a decrease in troops should be a possibility as we seem to have been at war consistently since the end of 2001. I also feel that preventing increased spending in the present would do a great deal of help with this overall goal.

jryan said...

On the simulator I was able to get the debt under 60% by making multiple cuts in budget departments. I also decided to cut many of the foreign aid programs including sending troops to Afghanistan since we need to focus on our internal problems rather than our external problems. However, this debt will reach 60% in 2018 according to my results.