With the annual federal deficit
projected to be over $ trillion by 2020, there is great need to find a
solution. The experts at The Heritage Foundation share their answer to the
problem in their proposed congressional budget, “Blueprint for Balance.”
Justin Bogie and Romina Boccia say that Heritage’s proposal “would reshape the functions of the federal
government, focusing spending on its constitutional obligations and nixing
programs that fall outside that scope or favor special interests.” They say
that “there is a solution that Congress can implement this year and sharply
reverse the projected course.” The Heritage blueprint contains these five key
elements:
1. It would bring spending under control
by reducing the growth rate from 5.5 percent each year to 3.1 percent.
2. It would reform the big three entitlement
programs – Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid – that “are simply
unsustainable in their current form.”
3. It would prioritize essential
discretionary spending and cutting wasteful programs – such as those that “benefit
special-interest groups at the expense of taxpayers;” those that can be “more
effectively run by the private sector or state and local governments; and those
that “don’t fall under the federal government’s core constitutional responsibilities.”
4. It would permanently extend the Tax
Cuts and Jobs Act.
5. It would fix the broken budget
process.
In a government that has continually
kicked budget problems down the road, it would be nice to end the dysfunction
that has existed for far too long. Bogie and Boccia claim that Heritage’s “Blueprint
for Balance” “would put the budget back on a path toward balance, and our
nation on a path toward fiscal health.”
The Heritage plan sounds like common
sense to me. However, I am doubtful that there will be enough people in
Congress that are brave enough to adopt it. Cutting the entitlement programs is
a sure loss of office – unless than adequate explanation is given to the
people.
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