He had a TRILLION his first year. Is a billion only on on budget military items?
The article said a billion on military, sorry. I thought for sure it was more than that...
His first three year budget was to balance the budget and his purpose was IMHO to out those saying the only way to do it is to cut social security and medicare for those who had already been forced to pay in, which he sees as contract rights, to be paid first, not last. He does end it immediately for those who didn't pay in yet, at their option, and people would be idiots not to opt out.
I don't see how stolen money can be any kind of valid contract, especially since even according to SCOTUS the "entitlements" are actually wealth transfers (Note that I don't seriously think SCOTUS has any authority, but neither does FedGov have any authority to do welfare.
Ron's position is at least ultimately libertarian in that it would eventually eradicate the problem. I personally disagree with his gradualism (One of the maybe 5% of things I don't agree with him on) but at least that is a valid libertarian solution. Rand, by contrast, is LAUGHABLY bad on the issue, which is sad because he's at least significantly better than anyone else on pretty much any other issue. But frankly, increasing the entitlements age is STUPID from a libertarian perspective, IMO. Its not even moving in the right direction. Increasing the age makes them last LONGER. If he is too cowardly (Or politically savvy?) to advocate elimination of the entitlements (Even gradually, like his dad) he should be trying to get the age as LOW as possible, all the while trying to cut taxes as possible. "Compromise" with liberals, but in an unusual way, lower taxes AND make entitlements kick in earlier. If they're as stupid as they look, they'll go for it, but if not, do not do ANYTHING (Whether it be a tax raise or an increase in age) to help prolong the programs.
Rand is TOTALLY being anti-productive on this one issue. Every other issue at least he'd make things less bad, but his position on this one is both stupid from a macro "Get libertarianism to happen ASAP" perspective, and from a vote gathering perspective. Most people are idiots and think that if they tell you entitlements will last, they will. So tell them you're going to cut their taxes AND not take away their entitlements. Its technically true, reality would be crushing them, not Rand Paul.
But raising the age is just prolonging an immoral program. Maybe if you got the age so obscenely high (Like 100) that the program actually spent SIGNIFICANTLY less money it might be worth it, but upping it to 70 just plain old makes it "Sustainable" and ensures that we'll be cursed with it longer than we should be.
I'm curious what Rand Paul's rationale is here. Its not politically smart OR strategically smart.
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He was showing up Obama and Romney both of whom STARTED their cuts there (and increased spending elsewhere) Even if you are just referring to miliatary cuts, he cut more than the amount reflected in the budget difference because he also cut out completely the overseas conflicts which are 'off budget' items. His budget assumed he'd be moving troops here and would have to build bases here to do that, and would still be paying troop pay for their contract terms, only keeping them here where money would go back into our economy rather than spraying all over Afghanistan, etc. That was a stimulus to create jobs here, while living up to contracts. So there would have been early expenses, which would be one time costs.
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OK that makes sense, and yeah, it doesn't surprise me that some of the foreign spending isn't reported.
Plus Ron's cuts were baseline cuts, not cuts in increases in spending as Romney and Ryan were talking about. But yeah, it was a budget that should actually have been sellable, had the media allowed it to get out.
I don't think the campaign packaged it properly to sell it either, although their ad was entertaining:
