In Search of Fiscal Solutions that Match Our Values

There has been much talk of late regarding the fiscal state of the nation. There are many solutions being proposed which have met with considerable resistance from various interest groups, on all sides of the spectrum. For a solution to be agreed upon, it would seem that it should come as a result of examining our core set of values, then assuring that the solution meets those values.

Fairness is one of those values. A program or law that enriches one group of people at the expense of another group will immediately generate controversy. It is for this reason that I present two immediate proposals that will both help the treasury and reduce the inequities that exist in our society.

1) Eliminate Medicare. The populace has spoken loud and clear against government run public health care. If everyone cannot have access to it, then nobody should. An alternative would be to give people of all ages the option of buying into government care. In any case, there should not be discrimination based on age in access to government supported health care.

Savings: $453B

2) Eliminate marriage benefits in Social Security and the tax code. No more survival benefits for spouses, nor ability to file jointly with a spouse for the IRS. If our gay population cannot take advantage of this, nobody else should. Otherwise, they are in fact, subsidizing the heterosexual population. Note that we are not including child survivors in this cutback, as gays are allowed to adopt children in most (all) states and therefore have an equal ability to participate in this benefit. The best data I could find is http://www.socialsecurity.gov/legislation/testimony_060199.html and under full disclosure, I am interpolating a little from there, but in short, lets assume that there are 6M spouses who enjoyed the additional benefits of heterosexuality in their survivor benefits to the tune of $500 per month, then the total savings of eliminating the discriminatory benefit is:

6,000,000 widows/widowers * $500/ per month * 12 months

Savings: $36B

Free market systems are another core value. Yet there is this suspicion of the authors part that there is much government money manipulating these systems. We call upon our military to defend "our way of life". If by that we mean our right to vote and be protected by our constitution, it is a quite valid use of our military. If, on the other hand, we mean our right to live and suburbs and drive SUV's it is quite another thing. We must be careful, when examining military budgets and endeavors, that we are focused on the former, not the latter. When we compare ourselves to other thriving democracies, especially in Europe, we see that we are spending a much higher percentage of GDP on our military than they are. It is obvious that their governments do not support, and even discourage, there citizenry's ability to live in suburbs and drive SUV's, while apparently providing close to equal support of democratic principles as we have.

It has been said that we are in fact subsidizing the defense of many of these countries. We need to look at these facts more closely. If this is in fact true, we need to demand that these countries pay the bill for their defense, if they know something we don't know, we should find out what that is and reduce our own expenditures. In any case, it again breaks the international fairness doctrine to demand that our country is burdened with the defense of the world, while their dollar buys $1.40 of ours. We spend $640B a year on defense,China at $84B, France and the UK come in at $65B, about 1/10 of our spending. Another way of looking at it is that we spend 4% of our GDP, France is at 2.6% of their GDP, the highest in the EU. Let's assume for a change that France might be doing something right, 65 years without waring with their European neighbors, a span having not been seen for a few centuries. There people enjoy security, liberty, the right to vote, essentially all freedoms American's enjoy. Perhaps engaging in cooperative commerce, finance and yes, defense with their neighbors is actually paying off. It should, they learned it from us. So let's say we meet France ½ way and reduce or defense spending to 3.3% of our GDP, after all we have about the same per capita GDP, with more people and oceans separating ourselves from the bad guys. We should certainly be able to get along with other peoples as well as the French can. Given a $14T GDP, at 3.3% of our GDP would bring us to a defense budget of $462B, still a real big number, but much less that it's current $640B one.

Savings: $198B

Another core value of ours is that we have a society of specialists that we rely on. We fund NASA to have a very deep understanding of the physical sciences. Yet when they warn us about the human effect on global warming, we prefer to listen to corporate spokesmen, lobbyists and amateur scientists that assure us it is not so. It seems that the more background and expertise one has in the related sciences, the more likely they are to believe in the global warming phenomenon. But we as a society do not seem to acknowledge this, and therefore it would make sense to disband NASA. If we so doubt their ability in the physical sciences, why would we be funding, let alone allowing, them to launch rockets.

Savings: $18B per year.