Last week, the New York Times launched an interactive puzzle called ‘You Fix the Budget‘. The puzzle looks at the existing budget deficits in 2015 (now projected at $418 billion) and 2030 (projected to be $1.345 trillion) and lets you choose what spending to cut or how to grow additional revenue. And… it’s actually kind of fun.
You have the option of selecting from the following categories (each containing a number of budget influencing options and how much of $ impact each would have on the budgets):
- Cutting domestic and foreign aid (aid, earmarks, federal employee pay, cut federal workforce, farm subsidies, govt. contractors, state aid).
- Military (nuclear, space, navy, air force, cut noncombat military pay, delay programs, reduce Iraq and Afghanistan presence).
- Health Care (medical malpractice reform, increase medicare eligibility age, reduce tax break for employer sponsored insurance, cap medicare growth).
- Social Security (raise age to 68 or 70, reduce benefits for high income earners, tighten eligibility for disability, alternative measure for inflation).
- Existing Taxes (estate taxes, capital gains, payroll tax).
- Add New Taxes (eliminate tax loopholes, reduce mortgage deduction, national sales tax, carbon tax, bank tax).
Not meant to be an exhaustive or extremely detailed list, it’s still great to see all the options that are out there on the table.
I completed the exercise and found it relatively easy to close the deficits without adding any new taxes (letting tax breaks expire was a different story). Now why can’t our wonderful elected officials make it this simple?
Props to the New York Times for bringing this discussion to the public and showing the monetary impact that each option would have on our budget – and making it kind of fun in the process.
Which options did you select, and why? I’m curious to see what you non-partisan young professional geniuses choose.
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