I assume President Obama is going to spend at least some time in his state of the union speech talking about the budget deficit, and maybe even the notion of balancing the budget. It was something that was done before, long ago, in the Clinton administration. Today, polling results indicate that most Americans want Congress to balance the budget without tax increases, i.e., with spending cuts, except most Americans do not want to see significant cuts to Social Security and Medicare. However, it just might be that this proposed combination – a balanced budget with no tax increases and no cuts to Social Security or Medicare may be impossible.
Don’t believe me?
Try this budget balancing puzzle put out by the New York Times that puts you (the puzzle doer) in the position of balancing the budget now and over the long-term. Let me know how you do. I got my budget to balance in the long run without raising taxes by significantly reducing the size of the military and making a lot of long-term cuts to Medicare, among other things.
I’d be interest to know if you were able to do it and if so, how.
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