The Difficult Deficit

by Val Renda

I have to say, I’m glad I’m not the one having to come up with solutions to minimize our national debt. This survey just proves how difficult it is to cut certain things out of the national budget while keeping others. The first time I took the survey, I realized I only made one cut of $115 billion by eliminating the deduction for state and local taxes. I made this cut because to me, this was an alternative to ending the expiring tax cuts, but on a lesser scale. I know this means that taxpayers would essentially pay more in taxes because they wouldn’t be able to itemize and deduct state and local taxes on income, etc., but it seemed like one of the more plausible options.

I took the survey again, after realizing that I didn’t do a good job of cutting anywhere near the $900 billion, and made cuts up to $533 billion that time. I was unwilling to cut Medicare benefits and Social Security benefits because I felt that the cuts would have too big of an impact, considering the size of the cuts. I also chose to keep the expansion of health insurance coverage. I decided to reduce defense spending because a huge part of our budget is for defense spending, and the proposed cuts over increments of time are reasonable and effective. I also chose cuts to non-defense spending, although this was a difficult choice because I think the amount was more than I would want to cut. I think small cuts over increments of time to certain departments wouldn’t cause too much of a problem. I chose not to create a carbon tax because although it might be effective with reducing carbon emissions, I think it would cause a lot of controversy and I also think that individuals shouldn’t be taxed based on their carbon footprint. Overall, I’m not sure that my cuts would make sense, and I think that it shows that my political values are somewhat neutral, but that I feel certain programs are essential to the nation.

Unfortunately, I don’t fully understand what all of these cuts would mean to different people in the nation, so I’m glad I’m not the one making the final decision. 

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. 

Issue 2013: The Political Super Bowl – A Game All Sides Win By Working Together

by Allie Pizzuto

The major political challenges facing our re-elected President, Barack Obama, are: reducing the out-of-control and rising national debt (and related fiscal cliff issues), tax reform, and gun control.  As an advisor to President Obama or to our Congressional leaders, I would strongly advocate and advise that the White House and Congress work together (well before impending deadlines ensue) and pass legislation that will benefit our whole country without regard to party affiliation or special interest groups (e.g., the wealthy, lobbyists representing corporate America, etc.).  America has been in a state of gradual decline for awhile now, and it is crucial that we get back on track as soon as possible.  All parties (Republican, Democrat, Independent) should join together in a collaborative manner (for a change) to put the American people first and reduce the national debt (not raise the debt ceiling) and cut every spending program across the board, where warranted.  Every American has a vested interest in seeing that the national debt is reduced, and each of us has a responsibility to shoulder the burden.   For example, our federal tax system should be reformed or at the very minimum federal tax legislation should be passed which taxes income in a progressive manner (a wealthier person should pay more taxes).  People who earn higher levels of income and corporations should pay more in taxes in the future to reduce the national debt.  In exchange, spending cut measures will be put in place to reduce benefits under entitlement programs.  This is a fair exchange, especially since the federal tax system will truly be progressive in nature (meaning that the higher the income, the higher the tax burden).  Regarding gun control, how many more times do we need to read about massacres occurring in our educational institutions?  Opening fire on small young children in Newtown, CT – what a disaster!  We should be ashamed of ourselves as a nation to allow this behavior to continue to persist.  Although we may have the freedom and the right to buy guns, that right and freedom is not unrestrained and should never be a protected freedom at all costs.  Although the problem is multi-faceted, the answer is not as simple as staffing our educational institutions with armed guards, as the National Rifle Association recently suggested.  On the contrary, our great nation needs reasonable gun control measures to be put in place.   President Obama recently suggested several measures to diminish the threat of continued gun violence, which includes banning certain assault weapons and subjecting everyone to background checks.  These are reasonable infringements on our right to buy guns.  

Issue 2013: Spending & Jobs

by Justin Goldstein

With the start of 2013 there are big political challenges that must be put in place. First is our runaway spending and our runaway debt. I feel that we should restructure our entitlement programs, because there are too many people using it and not enough contributing to this program. According to the NY Times 50% of American people do not pay a federal income tax, which happens to be a huge problem. Also in the Washington Post, I read that in 2010, 49 percent of American households had at least one member receiving direct government benefits. In addition, according to FAIR, a conservative advocacy group, illegal aliens cost us taxpayers over 100 billion dollars per year. I feel that this is completely unfair for the minority who pay into the system to be burdened by a government who does not control spending. What our country needs are more taxpayers, not to burden the ones who pay our taxes with higher taxes.

Another problem happens to be our unemployment rate. Our president states that our unemployment rate happens to be 7.8%, but that is not an accurate description of unemployment. It does not take into account the people who are underemployed, gave up looking, and working part time now. Our government can do more to encourage job creation rather than punishing the job creators by taxation and regulation. Regulations such as Obamacare create financial burden on all companies that either provide health care or don’t provide health care. Some of the biggest companies that are affected are device manufactures, health care providers, and other health care innovators. For example, the cruise ship industry happens to be a 37.85 billion dollar business per year in the U.S alone. The number of cruise ships built here in the U.S is non- existent. So when people say where could jobs be created? Here is an example of where they can be created. Since Americans happen to cruise quite a bit we should also be able to build cruise ships. This could create many jobs, and they would be private jobs so government wouldn’t have to pay anything.

So if I were an advisor to president Obama the two biggest things I would push for are balancing the budget so that our spending is not out of control and the deficit is not increasing. Secondly is to encourage jobs so that we have more people employed and therefore more tax payers to pay into our federal government. 

Issue 2013: The Economic Challenge

by Kayla Jackson

With part of the fiscal cliff successfully negotiated, there is still potential for a fiscal drag that could gradually take effect with the end of some of the Bush tax cuts, the payroll tax increase, and the sequestration spending cuts still on the table.

The Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan group for the U.S. Congress, has projected that the country will fall into a recession if legislators allow all changes to go through. Some investment houses have suggested the United States' gross domestic product could shrink by as much as 4.5%. Market and political analysts have said that a Congress may succeed in temporarily pushing back the decision by a few months so that the newly elected Congress could pass a viable budget plan. Onlookers have worried that negotiations in Washington D.C. could mimic the disastrous debt-ceiling discussions in 2011 that led to Standard & Poor's downgrade of the U.S. credit rating. 

What we need is stimulus, in the short term, serious deficit reduction, in the long term, and some stability in the future. That's a major problem. We're going to be up against trench warfare and we have not dealt with the long-term deficit problem. In the short term, unemployment should be the number one issue in the country. We have virtually no stimulus and social security taxes are going up. 

The White House is saying they will not negotiate on the debt limit. The Speaker of the House, John Boehner, is saying he's through with negotiations. Obama came out and said that there are loopholes that can be closed and fees and taxes that can be raised. The senator minority leader, Mr. McConnell said that taxes are virtually off the table. There is a collision coming soon. The fiscal cliff resolution took about 18 months to get to where we were; even Simpson Bowles said it was a missed opportunity. The only short-term stimulus beneficiaries in the fiscal cliff negotiations were Goldman Sachs, Nascar, and Hollywood. The losers are the White House and Capitol Hill. 

Some Democrats on Capitol Hill said the president should look to the 14th amendment, and not allow the U.S. to default and keep on borrowing. It's hard to imagine that they're not going to be tempted to look at that as an option. However, Congress is adamant about not negotiating this. The risk is that Congress may undermine what little deficit reductions are already put in place. They're worried about the underline problem, which is that we have an exploding deficit problem. Republicans think the only way that the president can win on the debt ceiling is by mobilizing the business community and putting huge pressure on Republicans in Congress. 

Issue 2013: New Day Same Problems

by Justin Paley

Like many Americans, I am praying that the new Congress and President Obama’s second term will bring some much needed change to Washington. But, sadly, I personally am not very hopeful for this. While some seemingly non-compromising tea partiers, such as Todd Akin are on their way out and some seemingly more open minds, such as Tammy Baldwin and Kirsten Gillibrand, are on their way in, I still don’t think that is enough to change Washington. The same problems that plagued us in 2012 and past years will continue to haunt us. Here is a list of what I think will be the most pressing issues/challenges in 2013:

1.     Fiscal Problems

With our Congress barely able to make a deal of the oh-so-infamous fiscal cliff, I have dampened confidence that this Congress can reach a timely deal on the upcoming fiscal questions. One of those pressing issues will be coming up very quickly. This is the possibility of raising the debt ceiling in February. While I am not hopeful that the partisan gridlock will stop with the New Year, we shall see how the new Congress handles these emerging fiscal questions.

2.     Gun Control

With the recent shooting at Newtown, gun violence is at the forefront of the public’s mind and there is much pressure from a lot of people to enact some stricter gun legislation and even ban weapons completely. While I do believe in the 2^nd amendment, I do think that Congress should impose some tougher gun regulations, especially on automatic and assault weapons.

3.     Foreign Policy

With the election over, the event in Benghazi has calmed down, but is still a pressing issue, especially among Republicans that basically stopped Susan Rice from being nominated for Secretary of State. Along with Benghazi there is still (and probably will be for a very, very long time) a lot of questions to answer in the Middle East such as what to do with Syria (with Obama recently rejecting a peace deal) and other Middle Eastern countries such as Afghanistan. I really don’t know what to do when it comes to the Middle East, but it will be interesting to see what the Obama administration, and Secretary of State-hopeful John Kerry, will do.

My advice for the President and Congress would be one word: compromise. It is a fact that the American people are sick of the gridlock in Washington and we all just want to see something get done. Some of the most Conservative politicians (Ronald Reagan) have found ways to compromise with very liberal politicians (Tip O'Neill). I would encourage all of Washington to look at history to guide them. Look at how Lyndon B. Johnson took advice from Dwight Eisenhower. While they were both from different parties, LBJ considered Eisenhower one of the greatest politicians he had ever met and the two were in agreement on civil rights and made considerable contributions to the advancement of civil rights. History shows that people on two opposite sides of the table can reach and shake hands and actually do something productive and serve the people that elected them. This country seems to be rebounding and it would be a shame if Washington’s gridlock got in the way.

Issue 2013: The Big Four

by Wes DeSouza

As we enter a new year, we move into a new spectrum of issues and controversies that need to be dealt with. Some big issues that are still of very much concern are issues such as fiscal issues, Healthcare reform, and energy. But also due to recent devastating events such as the Newtown shooting and Hurricane Sandy, there are new issues on the table that Congress should very much consider in its new legislative session.

1.)Fiscal issues: After the Federal Government barely averted the fiscal cliff, and the fiscal deal was passed, Congress is forced to move forward. This includes addressing and finding necessary cuts that need to be made.

2.)Energy: Congress needs to start making progress in the arena of climate change and energy conservation. It may seem like there is little political force to push climate change reform, but I think that there needs to be significant conversation about carbon emissions and alternative energy sources.

3.)Gun control: Due to recent events in Newtown Connecticut, this ahs shed light on the major issue of gun control. This means dissecting the Second Amendment and developing polices on automatic weapons, ammunition, and background check requirements. After the horrible shooting, I think that the public is ready and willing to adhere to new gun laws and I think Congress should too.

4.)Disaster response: In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, Congress should bee looking at changing and looking into making new response systems, disaster planning, and looking into more effective relief systems.