The problem they have introduced to us, through that strategy, is the government now has so many 'responsibilities' we can't afford to pay for them all, and we are now borrowing over a trillion in new debt every year.


Even if you completely cut DOD spending out we would still be running a deficit. Even if you cut DOD and discretionary spending out we will still be running a deficit. These social welfare programs, when added up together, dwarf everything else. The two biggest programs, Social Security and Medicare, are there for the disabled and retired. If those two programs did not exist, and we still took in the same amount of revenue, we would be running a large budget surplus, and we would have virtually no public debt.


This is one thing no one ever mentions when we think of welfare...everyone thinks of it as food stamps and the single mom with 10 kids. Those programs, aimed at that demographic, pale in comparison to what elderly people are getting. I guess the Greatest Generation, who are children of the Great Depression, never thought to save up for retirement, and voted themselves in a guaranteed standard of living into retirement. This program was never designed to be a 'pension fund' where you didn't have to save for retirement, and Medicare was not designed to be the sole medical benefit a person would have once they got old enough and quit the workforce.


Our budget woes are NEVER going to be fixed until those two programs are curtailed enormously. I did a bit of research a while back, and looked at what percent of the budget they took up, say when Reagan was president, and they were significantly less than they are today. The population growth is too small to meet the demand, and while wages are going down those people are getting COLA increases.