[magic452]

Increasing tax revenues will do nothing towards reducing the federal budget but will do just the opposite. Give politicians more money, they will just spend more. The problem is spending not tax revenues.

I do however agree that the tax codes need to be tightened up, corporate and personal. Corporate rates could go down and eliminate shelters and other deductions which put work or funds overseas. Lower rate fewer deductions will increase revenue.
But we are talking about the federal budget here and increasing revenues will not address that issue only spending cuts will.

Eliminating overlapping and unnecessary agencies and reducing all other agencies' budgets would be a big help. Problem is the heads of all these agencies love power and the bigger their budget the more power they think they have. It's a game to them. Increased revenue will do nothing on this front but a reduction in revenue would if borrowing is restricted, balanced budget requirement.

Closing overseas bases will no doubt save some money but no where near enough. More accountability in military spending would also help by eliminating waste and mismanagement. But that ain't going to happen for much the same reasons as the above.

Here in Nevada we have been hard hit by the housing crash and recession
and state and local budgets have been heavily trimmed.
"The sky is falling, the sky is falling" everyone cried, but last I looked it was still there. Budgets can be tightened by quite a lot and things still get done. There isn't a agency in the country that couldn't do with a 10 or 15% cut if the department heads really wanted to. Balanced budget requirement.

Social Security and Medicare are the only paces where you can save enough money to begin to address the fiscal deficit and national debt.
Going to need something along the lines of what Bush purposed but a much better proposal than his, it sorta sucked in many ways.

Politicians won't do anything about these unless we hold a gun to their heads. Lately elections don't seem to be working all that well we put new people in and they just do the same darn thing, So maybe a balanced budget amendment would get some results. That some how was not in the poll.

$0.02

Magic