Go to the link I provided before to see what you are saying actually compares to reality: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/12/20/choose-your-own-fiscal-cliff-adventure/
Seems to be missing a lot of the simpler cuts that could be made that aren't included in the default "fiscal cliff", unfortunately.
If you want to see what massive spending cuts do without repealing the Bush tax cuts then select extend the Bush tax cuts for low/middle and upper income people. The result is an average deficit of around 750 billion for the next decade.
What do you consider "massive spending cuts"? Well over a trillion in spending cuts could be achieved, with further tax cuts, and without so much as touching the funding of Medicare or Social Security, the end result being a surplus by 2016. Of course, that's unlikely to happen, especially since it requires the cutting of many sacred cows (The DoD, Housing, and Medicaid in particular), but it wouldn't run "an average deficit of 750 billion over the next decade".
Now let's just go crazy and imagine that democrats had complete control of the budget. We cancel the sequester entirely and extend the payroll tax holiday for a year. Then we eliminate the home mortgage interest deduction and take global warming action with a carbon tax and a gas tax. The result of this would be that we would shrink the deficit down to very small levels and erase it in 2021. Incidentally the CBO report indicated that this option would lead to a robust economic recovery in 2013 as austerity stops dragging us down. The result of all of this is that deficits are higher then if we just let the Bush tax cuts expire and did nothing more. And this is even after you've sacrificed the sacred calves like providing wounded veterans with decent health benefits.
This is assuming that carbon and gas taxes don't cause the companies that would otherwise pay the most to pull a Depardieu and make a break for it, or at least find ways to avoid paying it. And assuming the CBO's "robust recovery" predictions are realistic (protip: they aren't, and I'll get to that).
Then let's try the full libertarian approach... First we completely destroy Medicare, turn it over to the states, make the federal contribution max out at $5.5k a person and raise the age by another two years. Then we gut social security, raise the age two years for both partial and full benefits, lower the growth rate dramatically. Then we cut federal employee pay for both civilians and the military. Then we cut both highway and NIH funding. We're basically giving the libertarians every concrete proposal they've asked for (so none of the pie in the sky crap that can't be judged.) This would greatly increase the poverty rate, especially for old people and undermine a lot of essential government functions.
Those are some odd things to cut from first, all things considered. Especially considering that you didn't even mention the DoD cuts that would easily be the largest and first to go.
But I'm sure that the CBO is just a bunch of liberal crooks.
Nah, if 2000-2009 is of any indication, they're just unreastically optimistic. Lets see:
The "Bush Tax Cuts expire and suddenly revenue!" scenario that you're basing your argument around also assumes that (A) There is already a "robust recovery" occurring for those new revenues to come from (there isn't) and (B) This tax increase will have no effect whatsoever on the economy (see: the Laffer Curve). If you even predict mildly negative things such as a not-so-robust recovery or marginally less revenues from taxes, then the predicted deficit shoots up to several times what it was originally predicted to be. God forbid there be anything incredibly drastic, like a modest economic contraction of some kind in the next 5-10 years, because then the deficit REALLY shoots up.
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Topic: American Election Megathread - It's Over (Read 751546 times)