solution to excessive federal spending

committee for a responsible budget has a quiz that lets average joe's like us to address taxes and spending decisions

what congress should do is make each congressman to fill out that quiz to a point that achieves the goal purpose, getting debt to a manageable level within thirty years. and then they will have to average out everyone's response. by doing that, debt will get to a manageable level within thirty years.

a key point, is that every congressman's decision should be open to the public.  the great thing about this quiz, is that nothing on it is radical, so even if they were completely liberal or conservative, no one would be radically hurt. also, most congressmen will be forced by public pressure not to be too radical. if they attack social security, they will get attacked at the voting booth, perhaps. some congressman can escape consequnces cause their electorate doesn't care about the issues, but again, nothing on that quiz is a radical choice. 

Causing everyone to fill out the most extreme results possible to try and bias the average. Even if we use the median, this will require amending the constitution, and averaging a dozen different spending plans is hardly feasible since most budgets designate which projects in particular funding will pay for. You can't build half of a bridge.

Maybe just dock their pay if they can't agree on a balanced budget. I'd be open to that if there was evidence it would be effective.

i dont know how you mean that half a bridge would be paid for. agencies spend what they are budgeted for. if they have the money to build a bridge, they will, but if they dont, then they won't.

i do acknowledge that spending and budgets would be a lot more volatile. maybe doing the quiz should only be done once per presidential term to provide a little more stability. or maybe even every eight years. of course, they can always pass other bills on a case by case basis... which i think would be ok, though i'm not sure how effective it'd be. 

the real politics is deciding how to create the quiz... the quiz as it is is sensible, but everyone will want to game that decision, cause that decision would decide how the cards will fall, politically. a lotta times its not the specifics the public responds to, it's just 'food stamps were cut, therefore that's good', instead of any details. but i think this general framework could work. 

maybe making politician pay dependant on them getting debt manageable is a good solution. i dont know how it'd work, but it's also a good starting point. 

This doesn't work for something like Build Back Better or a high-speed rail plan, where implementing 25% of it will result in something that doesn't serve its intended purpose or breaks down. A lot of plans involve spending money for a particular project, and meeting halfway is infeasible in a lot of cases.

I just don't see how designing the quiz would be more feasible than what we have now. Both are susceptible to human error and disagreements. You say that nothing on the quiz is radical, but Congress has to agree on what that means. It could easily create more problems than trying to balance the budget normally.

u may be right, i dunno. 

I took the quiz and it said: You fixed the debt.

and Savings relative to current law (billions) $18050

I increased taxes, cut defense spending and increased Social Security.

In all fairness, I can see parts of your plan working in a limited number of cases. I'm just hesitant to say it will be better than the current system (though it's an admittedly low bar).

One thing I didn't see in the quiz that I wanted to add was a $2 million tax on Slovenian sex workers that come into the country.

Of course the question is now where to cut defense spending. That's going to come with significant repercussions. It may be better to first fix the overpricing issue with military equipment, though I confess I don't have a great long-term solution to that.

Yeah, cut expenses, increase taxes. Simple, really.

Easy solution. STOP SPENDING taxpayers money ON FUCKING PORK PROJECTS AND BULLSHIT to outside countries that HATE AMERICA!!! 

Like your disability benefits? You’re not really disabled, just stupid and useless.