Tuesday, June 19, 2018

Balancing the Federal Budget


            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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