Ya Got Trouble, And Way Beyond River City

"Well, either you're closing your eyes
To a situation you do not wish to acknowledge
Or you are not aware of the caliber of disaster indicated
By the presence of a pool table in your community . . ." (From The Music Man, by Meredith Wilson)

Oh, I wish it was just the presence of a pool table.

It never ceases to amaze me how screwed up things have gotten, in that the media controls so much of American life (and I suspect it's not any better overseas). While this problem exists on many levels and on many topics, today I want to limit it to the United States national debt, the past, current, and future budget deficits, and how this ties into the huge train wreck that's coming.

First off, how big is the current US national debt? At the time of this writing, it's $14,485,006,000,000 (those 6 right-most digits change too fast to be accurate). That's just about $14.6 trillion dollars. (How much is that? If you were to spend $14,000,000 (that's $14 million, for those who don't like to count zeroes) every day since Christ was born, you still would not have spent that much.) This data is from the US National Debt Clock website.

I've tried to find data for FY2011, but with the 9 continuing resolutions that have been necessary to keep the federal government going because Congress refuses to do its job and pass an actual budget, it's kinda hard. Plus FY2011 isn't over yet, so actual receipts and expenditures are still up in the air. So I'll have to make do with FY2010 budget data.

First, it's important to understand the difference between mandatory spending and discretionary spending. Mandatory is, well, mandatory; it's Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc., plus interest in the national debt (also included in this is the payroll for Congress and the President--hands off their pay!). Discretionary spending is everything else: Department of Defense (meaning our military's payroll is subject to Congressional whims), the FBI, Homeland Security, the IRS, Departments of Education, Interior, Labor, Commerce, Agriculture, and all the rest.

Mandatory spending in FY2010 was $2.173 trillion dollars. Once again, this is Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, interest, and other mandatory spending.

Discretionary spending in FY2010, for all the functions we think of when you say 'federal government', was $1.378 trillion.

Together these totallled $3.55 trillion. That was the outlay, the expenses.

Total revenue for FY2010 was $2.381 trillion. That's the income for the feds.

So, simple math (albeit using very large numbers, which, like they love to say, do not add due to rounding) shows the deficit, the amount we were in the hole and had to borrow, was $1.171 trillion. (Actually, if you do the math it comes out to $1.169 trillion, but what's $20 billion anyway?)

Now take a look at those figures:

Discretionary spending, FY2010: $1.378 trillion
Deficit, FY2010: $1.171 trillion

So, revenues, income for the federal government for 2010 just barely covered the mandatory spending, for the things that the feds are required to pay out. Or in other words, except for a paltry $207 billion, we had to borrow money to finance all other government operations.

So . . . if we were actually serious about creating a balanced federal budget, and making our government (supposedly of the people, by the people, and for the people) live within its means, but NOT raise taxes and NOT touch Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid (and you can't forget the interest on the national debt, either), the rest of the federal government would need to be eliminated. No Army/Navy/Air Force/Marines, no Coast Guard, no national parks, no Border Patrol, no FAA, no NTSB, no Homeland Security, no TSA, no NASA, no Pell Grants, no federal student loans, no VA, no food stamps/SNAP, no housing assistance, no IRS (well, that wouldn't be all that bad) . . . at least as far as what we know today. Somehow they'd all need to figure out how to operate on an 84% budget cut.

Or why don't we decide what to cut out of the discretionary spending to save $1.171 trillion.

Since it is apparently the public's intent that we no longer have any real interest in space exploration (based on the apathetic reaction of the public to Obama's scuttling of our manned space program), you might as well eliminate NASA. That'll save a whopping $18.7 billion. So if we eliminate NASA altogether we only need to cut an additional $1.153 trillion.

Since, when we come down to it, we really don't care all that much about the environment anyway (the US and Afghanistan are the only countries not to ratify the Kyoto Protocols), and since the EPA's rules just get in the way of business expansion (just listen to any Republican), let's eliminate them, too. That'll save $10.5 billion. Only $1.143 trillion to go!

Everybody hates all the money we're giving to countries that hate us anyway, all that foreign aid. Billions and billions and billions going overseas when we have people out of work here at home. Well, that's in the State Department budget (at least most of it); we don't like foreigners anyway, so let's do away with the State Department. Big money there--a whopping $51.7 billion! So now we're down to just needing to cut another $1.091 trillion.

How about the Department of Transportation? What do they do, anyway? Well, the FAA belongs to them; we can trust the airlines to run their own businesses without any of that nasty federal government oversight, and besides one of their basic tenets to keep airplanes from crashing into each other has been 'see and avoid'--which they do anyway. First plane to land wins! They also have the NTSB, but who cares about them (the FAA doesn't, at least not much). So, let's get rid of DOT! There's another $72.5 billion . . . and so we're down to $1.020 trillion (that rounding thing again).

How about Education? The states having the feds looking over their shoulders; and higher education is already pricing itself out of reach for most of our middle class anyway, so cutting Department of Education will only accelerate that process. We need to become a nation of high-class elitists and low-class unwashed, uneducated peons anyway--that's the way to success! And it'll save us another $46.7 billion, and now we're down to under a trilllion left to save--$973.3 billion to go!

Let's speed the process a little here. Department of Homeland Security--we hate those people anyway, with all their 'pat-downs' and crap; besides, didn't we kill bin Laden? Al Qaeda's not a threat anymore, so let's get rid of Homeland Security--$42.7 billion. Department of Energy? Who cares? Let the powerplants run; big business always has our best interests at heart anyway. That'll save another $26.3 billion. Department of Labor? They're just another hold-over from the commie/pinko 'labor movement' era, and who needs unions anyway? Like I said, big business always has our best interests in mind, so kill the Department of Labor, and we save another $13.3 billion. Also at a potential savings of $13.3 billion is the Department of the Treasury, and that includes the IRS, and everybody hates them, so kill them off too. Together these four cuts will save $95.6 billion, which brings us down to $877.7 billion to go.

Department of Agriculture? We need to end all those subsidies anyway; subsidies are the antithesis of a free market economy; the government should never have gotten involved in that anyway. Savings: $26 billion. Housing and Urban Development? Who cares? Let things develop naturally, and that'll save us $47.5 billion. Health and Human Services? Oooh, smacks of 'Obamacare' and 'socialized medicine' . . . Quick!! Kill it now! We can save $78.7 billion right there! These three total $152.2 billion, and that means we only have $725.5 billion to go.

The VA? Their budget is $52.5 billion. Well, we let big business reneg on their obligations to their employees, let them plunder their pension plans and slash retirees' medical care, so what makes our nation's veterans think they're special? Cut them loose, and we're down to $673 billion to go (not quite halfway).

Bunch of little ones next: Small Business Administration (small businesses? Who cares? If they're any good they just get bought out by big businesses), Department of Commerce (what do they do anyway?), National Science Foundation (like we need more science or innovation . . .), Department of the Interior (they just get in the way with all their 'tree-hugger' crap--log all the forests! Drill all the oil wells! Who cares what's left for future generations!), Army Corps of Engineers (their levees and dams are all just gonna fail eventually anyway), the General Services Administration (well, this one at least makes sense--if we're going to cut all these other departments, we won't need GSA, will we?), and the reserve for natural disasters (so what if some podunk town gets wiped out by a tornado? Sucks to be them! Besides, that's why we have the Red Cross, Salvation Army, and all those other bleeding hearts). We're talking about balancing the budget here! You've got to look at the big picture! All these add up to another $50.2 billion! Cut them all and we're down to $622.8 billion to go.

Oh, wait, DOJ! Department of Justice! Yeah, can't forget them. What kind of justice system do we have when people like O.J. Simpson and Casey Anthony can go free, anyway? And the FBI just gets in the way of business, 'legitimate' businesses (just ask the Mafia; they're all legit), and the free exercise of political rights (like bribery of members of Congress). So get rid of them; they're nowhere near as good as the folks on "NCIS" or "Law and Order", anyway. Savings: $23.9 billion, and we're down to $598.9 billion.

And that's pretty much about it . . . except for the biggest of the bunch, the Department of Defense. Since their budget in FY2010 was $663.7 billion, we can cut the remainder of the deficit right here, and still have $64.8 billion to fund the military. Well, we never should have been in Afghanistan and Iraq anyway, and we can just pull out of there and leave them to their fates (like we did with South Vietnam!). Yeah, yeah, foreign policy disaster and all that, but we've got to balance the budget! And we can't touch Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid, and can't raise taxes--not even to close loopholes for billionaires! Who cares if the Taliban take over again in Afghanistan? They didn't do all that bad the first time, and besides, we killed bin Laden; Al Qaeda's no longer a threat anyway. Just let the Iranians take over Iraq; they're the most peace-loving government in the region anyway (at least as long as everyone gives them what they want--and who are we to judge?).

Now, having thrown most of the 4 million federal workers out of their jobs, tax revenues are going to suffer, so we might need to eliminate the rest of the military, too. And since those 4 million federal workers pay their bills, eat food, drive cars, etc., that'll affect probably another 12 million jobs, but hey! at least we balanced the budget! And we didn't raise taxes or cut Social Security!

-------------------------------------------------------------

The fact of the matter is that if we were to attempt to cut all classes of federal spending--including the mandatory ones--enough to balance the budget without raising taxes, all federal agencies would need to take a 35% budget cut. How many of our seniors who live on Social Security could take a 35% cut in what they get every month? It'd be a double whammy for them, since nearly all are also on Medicare.

And above all, don't fall for the politicians' crap about how this or that will save "$500 billion" because there's alway a caveat of "over 10 years" that they either leave unsaid or leave in the fine print. Those cuts would be only a few billion this year, and bigger cuts in later years--except those bigger cuts won't happen; it'll just be in the future where they can eliminate those cuts without anyone noticing.

Finally, and returning to what I was originally talking about before I drifted off to indulge in a sarcastic tirade of 'budget cuts', the point is that the media--and the politicians--are not talking about any of this. They're just doing their usual sound bites and 'news as entertainment' crap, when the real issues are not reported, or not reported in full. Just a coincidence? I don't think so.