Budget Politics

by Ryann Tucker

When I took the You Gov survey for cutting the national deficit, I made a lot of choices that I feel reflected my political values. I think I made a lot of great choices in what I think should be cut. Altogether I'm pretty sure I cut more than 900 billion dollars even though Ms. McMillen advised that it wasn't the best idea. I just wanted to see if I could cut things that made sense and to me, my choices made a lot of sense. I was willing to impose a 6% national sales tax. I felt that this was a great idea because we already have a 6-7% sales tax on items in most states and then in a few states like Delaware there is no sales tax. I feel like a nation wide sales tax is completely fair. It only seems fair. I also reduced non-government spending. I was not 100% sure what this would mean but my goal was to make it to 900 billion and the amount of money that was going into non-defense government spending was a really large number. Third, I decided to reduce military spending, the president has already decided to cut this so I figured that this was a freebie. I think that historically, we have spent way too much money on on the military in the past. So I think its really wise to cut our military spending. Lastly, I was most confident in my decision to raise taxes for people with incomes over 250,000. I think that taxing someone that makes a 50,000 salary and someone that makes a 500,000 salary is not fair at all. The general idea of taking money away from people who can barely feed their families is wrong in my opinion. If it was up to me I would eliminate unnecessary taxes for people that make less than 40,000 a year but that is way controversial for Americans to handle and is ethically wrong for some people to have to pay and others not to. So its only fair to just raise takes for those that can handle it. If you take away 10% of someones money that makes 500,000 a year they still have over 400,000 left for themselves. If you take away 10% from someone who makes 50,000 they have 45,000 but it is difficult to live off of 50,000 a year so I can't comprehend making someone live off of even less than that. 

I decided not raise taxes for everyone, reduce medicare expenses, and take from social security.  My choice not to raise takes was because of what I said before. The idea that those who make more should be required to give more. I didn't want to reduce medicare expenses because personally I think that medicare is extremely important. Old people and everyone else that needs health insurance should be able to receive it. The idea that someone could be turned away from receiving medical attention just because they don't have the money breaks my heart. I think greed is the main factor behind why out medicare/ medicaid system in the US is just starting to become better. I think that big companies are greedy and selfish and want to make money so they make medical insurance expensive. I am a firm believer in the idea that if you are sick you should receive help. There is no reason why someone who is hurt or sick should not receive care. 

I was raised in a democratic household so I already know that my choices were more democratic and would mostly affect the upper/ upper middle class. The only choice that I made that would directly effect them is the raising of taxes for people with incomes of over 250,000 a year.