Reason.tv: Budget Chef Presents: How to Balance the Budget W/O Raising Taxes!

Trim the fat and save pounds and trillions of dollars

Using just a big piece of pork, a large knife, and a small knife, the budget chef shows how to balance the federal budget by 2020.

As a special treat, he does it without raising taxes from the current Bush-era rates!

It seems like a complicated preparation at first, but it's so simple that almost any elected official should be able to pull it off like a pro!

Domestic and foreign investors will love this, and it will also help create a stable environment conducive to long-term, sustainable economic growth.

Between 2011 and 2020, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that total federal outlays - for defense, agriculture subsidies, Medicare, Social Security, you name it - will total a whopping $42.1 trillion (in 2010 dollars). To bring outlays down to revenue, we need to cut a total of $1.3 trillion in total expenditures over the next 10 years.

That sounds like a really tall order until you realize that it cutting just 3.6 percent a year for each of the next 10 years. To put it in dollar terms, it means cutting about $130 billion a year from budgets that will average over $4 trillion.

That's not so hard now, is it? By making small, systematic cuts to a federal budget that is larded up with more fat than an Ponderosa buffet, we can balance the budget without even nicking essential services.

"Budget Chef" is written and produced by Jim Epstein, Josh Swain, Meredith Bragg, and Nick Gillespie (who also hosts). Approximately 2 minutes. Go to Reason.tv for downloadable versions and subscribe to Reason.tv's YouTube channel to get automatic notifications when new material goes live.

This video is based on "How to Balance the Budget Without Raising Taxes," by Nick Gillespie and Reason economics columnist Veronique de Rugy of the Mercatus Center. Read that December 5, 2010 piece for detailed breakdowns of spending amounts.