Reason Writers Around Town: Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch in the Washington Examiner on "What both parties must understand about the budget"
In a mini-excerpt from their book The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What's Wrong with America, Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch blast Republicans and Democrats for the decade-long binge in federal spending, and then sketch out a solution. Excerpt:
If history is any guide and if the federal government wants to balance its books, it's got to spend no more than around 19 percent of GDP. So what would it take for the federal government to restrain spending to just 19 percent of GDP in 2020?
According to the Congressional Budget Offices' alternative-scenario projections, it would mean coming up with a budget equal to $3.7 trillion in today's dollars, rather than an anticipated $5 trillion if spending stays on autopilot. How do you trim $1.3 trillion over a decade or so?
Cut $130 billion out of projected spending (including projected increases) every year for the next decade. It's the only way to actually keep the federal government solvent until we get around to fully revising outdated entitlement programs that are set to beggar us more than any stock market collapse ever did.
And to put that 19 percent spending figure in perspective: spending in Clinton's final budget amounted to just a hair over 18 percent of GDP. Nobody back then was surviving on cat food.
Whole thing here.