All of this talk about deficit reduction talks and debt ceilings got me to thinking; why the hell can't those fools in Washington figure this thing out? Then I realized that it's because once a politician gets elected, he spends the rest of his term trying to get re-elected. So, I thought I'd spit this out, maybe email it to the President and the Speaker of the House and see what kind of traction it gets. I'm going to balance the budget in 5 steps. Draft this into law tonight, sign it tomorrow, and we'll be covered just in time for Bele Chere.

1. Let the Bush Tax Cuts/Obama-continued Tax Cuts expire for EVERYBODY. These are the single largest contributor to the deficit, so logic dictates that if you eliminate them, you're at least halfway to solving this problem. By putting tax rates back to where they were in 2000, we'd only raise taxes by ~5% and they'd still be lower for the top-earners than at almost any other time since 1932.
2. End the Occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan; the second biggest contributors to the deficit. It's been eight years and ten years, respectively, since we've invaded these countries. If they haven't figured out how to govern themselves by now, they won't. I'm pretty sure everyone can agree that we can't just occupy them forever (despite Halliburton's deepest wishes).
3. Close the tax loopholes that allow hedge fund managers and other rich individuals to pay a smaller percentage in taxes than the secretaries, assistants, and laborers that work for them. Start making people like Warren Buffett pay their fair share (which Mr. B. himself suggested Congress do last fall).
4. End unnecessary government subsidies. Millions of tax dollars go towards Big Agriculture to produce more corn, milk, and wheat; 3 things that there were never a shortage of in the first place (and therefore didn't need subsidizing). If we took a fraction of the money that we would save from unnecessary subsidies and put that towards creating an energy infrastructure based on alternative fuels and renewable energy, that would solve problem #2, while creating jobs as well.
5. End stimulus tax cuts. If you really want to stimulate the economy, next time you've got a few billion dollars lying around, use it to put people to work. The Great Depression ended because the government invested in its infrastructure, first through the New Deal, then later, World War II. America didn't pull itself out of the Great Depression by giving people money to buy cheap Chinese crap.