Vanke’s Balanced Budget Proposal
Based on extensive research, Jeff rewrote the Federal budget into the interactive spreadsheet pictured below. For full details — and for your chance to fix the budget — click here to download it. The default variables listed reflect or closely reflect Jeff’s platform, with room for future changes, such as decreases in the defense budget as circumstances allow. UPDATE: The spreadsheet’s bottom lines reflect circumstances in early 2010, which have changed substantially since then. However, the spreadsheet still renders very accurate quantitative consequences for various policy changes as well as for the relative relationships between various policies (which are big items vs. small, etc.).
Jeff wants to eliminate the deficit, save Social Security and Medicare, and then lower our taxes:
1. Everyone needs to pay their share. All but the lowest incomes need to contribute to Federal income taxes, unlike 2009, when nearly 50% of American households owed no Federal income tax. At the same time, six-figure tax deductions and capital gains tax discounts need to be phased out.
2. Government needs to be trimmed (trips to Mars, millionaire farmer subsidies) – government growth needs to be limited – and government salaries need to be brought back in line with the private sector.
3. Variable income tax rates need to rise with deficits (1 percent per year) and fall with surpluses.
4. To save Social Security, we must partly focus benefits on lower incomes and raise the retirement age, since we live much longer than 1930s averages.
5. Medicare recipients who are able need to contribute to their own coverage.
In the budget spreadsheet, the interactive parts and results (pictured below) are found under ‘EnterHere’ — click on that tab at the bottom of the open spreadsheet. Click here to download. Everywhere there is a blue box, for revenues, expenses, and budget-related policies and assumptions, you can enter your own position. The results are calculated instantly with each input and reflected in the graphs at the top. For example, if you enter “Yes” for variable income tax rates, then the deficits graph (on the right) zig-zags around 0%, the focus of Jeff’s policy for annually variable income taxes.
