The government is unavoidably heavily involved in healthcare. If not for Medicare, most people over 65 would not be able to afford a private policy if they could even get one at all. This is a piece of the free market that many free-marketeers overlook.

Medicaid (low income) is necessary for a different reason. We have a labor market that allocates wages pretty fairly (an engineer earns more than a custodian, etc…). By design, we will always have people who cannot afford health insurance at market rates. This isn’t Lake Wineboggen where “everyone is above average!”. So what do we do about them? We either help them out, pretend private charity can do the job, or return to the way things were in prior centuries (or third world countries).

In other words, government must be involved in healthcare. I think much moreso than it is today, but those are details to haggle over.

And why is the biggest factor “health care spending”? You mean because some lawmaker “says” we should pay for something that zero tax-payer money should be spent on?

Do you remember this?
Provide for the common defence
Promote the general Welfare
and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity

You’ll notice Defense is first? It says promote, NOT provide general welfare. SECURE the blessings of liberty. Have we gotten so far away from this?

(Understand, I’m not saying we shouldn’t stop wasteful program and overspending in ALL departments, including Defense, but cutting out the waste and CUTTING Defense are two separate issues.)

More specifically, the biggest driver of future budgets is the growth in healthcare spending. And the Obama team led by Peter Orzag are obsessed with this. We’ve got the right guys in place. Its just the political sale is tough.

As for SS, I’m in the camp that thinks we are screwed. It’s just too late. The issue isn’t actuarial, as it is with Medicare. Its that we made bad choices relating to how our pay-as-you-go system will deal with a demographic bubble (babyboomers). We will be forced to either reneg on the deal promised to seniors, or ask non-seniors to carry an unfairly heavy burden. Both stink.

For defense, I’d slash thiat thing like silly. Lots of opportunities there. But again, politics dictate we spend more than necessary.

Just my opinion.

Would you be ready to immediately cut SS recipeint’s benefits on the fly as tax revenue falls? Or their Medicare? Defense?”

Yes, I understand, and “if” we ever do finally get someone with some cajone’s (sp?) in office, the American Tax payer WILL have to bite the bullet for those currently on SS/Medicareaide. But let people YOUNG enough get out from under it and save for ourselves. Man I wish even in this downturn, I had all the money they took in SSI taxes to invest on my own.

There is so many other places to stop spending money, it’s not even funny, but the “earmarks” are used to get people to vote for something they otherwise wouldn’t have, or to payback some high roller who gave them a lot of money during the election. Let states keep their OWN gas money and take care of their roads. Let states handle their OWN school funding (boy would that give our kids a better education in most states). If a locale needs a library – let them raise their OWN money, they will appreciate it more. Quit sending our tax-payer money to dictators and thugs around the world.

It doesn’t “always” have to be Defense, or SS or Medicareaid, just like the cities and states “we’ll cut cops and fire if this bond doesn’t pass”, when there are 1,000′s of OTHER items in the budgets that they don’t need to be doing (but they won’t cut, because in the end, they are pay-off of someway or another).

Man, am I being cynical today huh?

And polls are for lazy opinionists (notice I didn’t say journalists), to “make up” a news story. They will “find” people who will make the poll say exactly when they want – or they won’t report the poll (I know you’ve heard of polls they did, but didn’t release and then it gets found out about anyway – because the results weren’t what they “thought” they would be. I know I have.)

But I worry that some, like you did (not maligning you, even though it sounds like it, so please don’t take offense I’m using it as an example), lump Defense in with SS and Medicare – that’s one of the main problems. They are not even in the same category of what the Gubment is suppose to BE spending money on. Also, from everything I can remember, the only “crying” from defense cuts is from Congressmen and Senators losing a contract for a business in their district, and NOT about actual Defense of the Country. (the F-22 and F-35 being talked about now) The crying about SS/Medicare is from opinionists over-reporting those people who ARE worried about getting a freebee – but more so, because they were promised it 40-50 (60?) years ago when they were sold a bill of (false) goods.

I know, I know…WAY to radical, isn’t it?

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I understand what you are saying and am actually somewhat sympathetic to it. At the Federal level, most spending is mandatory – meaning required by statutes (SS, Medicare). The biggest non-mandatory piece by far is defense.

Would you be ready to immediately cut SS recipeint’s benefits on the fly as tax revenue falls? Or their Medicare? Defense?

If so, good luck getting elelcted!!!!

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my answer: Well, I don’t know what can constitute “proof”. Most Americans know very little about the federal budget. For example, polls back during the Asian Tsanami indicated that Americans thought we spent 30% or 40% of our budget on foreign aid.

Here’s what you can look at though. What do politicians stump for on the election trail? More programs and lower taxes.

If you have a platform on cutting any of the significan budget items (defense, SS, Medicare) you will get punished at the polls. That’s why cost cutting rhetorica by politicians is, well, rhetorical, rather than specific. SAme with taxes. Even Obama offered irresponsible (in my view) tax cuts. it is the only way he could get elected.

I know, I know…WAY to radical, isn’t it?

Tax revenue shortfalls can indeed cause deficits. Budgets, whether personal, business, or government have both a revenue and expenditure side.

If I went involuntarily unemployed in 2010 and consequently spent more than I earned then my deficit would be not be caused by overspending but by under-earning, right?

Most of the uneducated masses in this country (from the Public School system the last 40-50 years) – DON’T know how this works. Get rid of the automatic withholding for a year and MAKE people write a check for their taxes. There will be 95% turning Conservative/Libertarian. But most think when they get $1k back (from paying $4k in) that it works “well”, and they are sticking it to the man because they are getting money back.