Nathan Key

This post makes me smile. I love it when conservatives come up with constructive suggestions for how to cut the budget rather than just railing against the democrats who put it together. Anyway, your top two are my top two as well, if I was forced to talk about total program elimination rather than reform. But both of them are also political suicide.

The space program has a huge impact on the economy of a swing area of a swing state (FL) and it seems that very few politicians are willing to take the side that says it should be eliminated. Pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan is an even bigger political nightmare. It creates a perfect opportunity to blame Obama if we (or our allies) experience another terrorist attack, and to say that he's made America less safe. When John McCain suggested that he'd freeze all spending except for defense spending, this point was illustrated quite clearly.

While my mind tells me pulling out of Iraq/Afghanistan and freezing spending on the space program are two of the quickest ways to cut down the size of the budget, I see reform of expensive budget categories as a more likely scenario. This would mean healthcare reform, defense spending reform, education reform (how is it that we spend more per student than countries with much better intellectual performance?), closing tax loopholes -- the list goes on.

In this political climate, the proverbial scalpel seems to be a more sensible tool than the hatchet, at least for those who have much to lose.

Aren't we already out of money? ;-)

We certainly have some tough budget questions ahead of us. My favorite to inject into a conversation is this:

"We are nearing a time (if we haven't reached it already) where we can significantly extend human life, but at a cost that we can't possibly afford for every single individual in the country. Extending life for a year by delaying the progress of a terminal disease might be possible, but it might cost millions of dollars. We can not afford to spend millions of dollars for the majority of individuals in the country.
Our current policy is to not allow any action or decision that ends human life, and it's a tricky tightrope walk between action, inaction, and inability through lack of insurance. But insurance can't afford to pay out more than we pay into it.
Are we going to be able to successfully come to grips with an inequality in health care?"

From the way I see it, we can either:
(a) Accept inequality in health care
or
(b) Accept that health care will be a much larger expense -- perhaps our largest.

Let's not even get started on social security as a major budget concern. At least that has the potential to be fixed.

We are facing a financial crisis not because of defense spending (which is a Constitutional responsibility of the federal government), but because of entitlement spending (which, ironically, is not). Not only do Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid expenditures total significantly more than defense spending, they're also hard wired to increase every budget cycle. Social Security is now at the point where the annual surpluses have shrunk to nothing, and we are now beginning our fall off the cliff where the federal obligations now exceed the revenue from payroll taxes. The surpluses of the past generations were diverted to other government spending, not saved, not invested for this day. We are headed for a national fiscal train wreck unless we dramatically restructure those programs.

I vote for Sweden's model, which is pretty much a government mandated 401K system.