Budget reform? This video is as good a point to start as any, Rand Paul early in the thing.
Rand Paul shown railing against "The Deficet" when the S.O.B. had just been a part of the tax thing, bigger on the deficit in importance than any other thing done [nothing actually] by Congress up to then.
Rand Paul might, in his full remarks, have discussed the unnecessary boost in military spending when the opposite is needed, downsizing the military and ending regime change war and cutting the fat from the officer corps, generals first and on down the totem pole. If he did, bless him, but then criticize concentrated mainstream media outlets for not wanting focus directed there.
End the deficit easily. TAX THE RICH. THEY CAN PAY SO WHY SHOULD YOU?
TAX THEM AND MAKE IT ONGOING AND FAIR TO THE REST OF US.
A band of hypocrites did the dastardly deed, party affiliation being largely a non-factor in the military fat, a Dem party stand on the tax debacle having earlier been staged to make hay while the sun shines, knowing tax insult to regular people would be done and the Republicans, not them, would have to take the hit for throwing kisses at the rich, particularly those who fund campaigns, both parties.
Did I say hypocrites? What other term would you, as a reader, use?
CONSIDER: Is there waste in the military; how about the cost of a monstrously insulting BS giant mother of all parades, for a clown? For a clown's amusement. If it ever happens, which it should not. Why glorify and grant immense welfare subsidy to the California death contractors and their ilk elsewhere in the nation? Save money; pull the rug out from under the military-industrial-complex. You know, the one Eisenhower warned us of a half century ago.
___________UPDATE___________
With the creeps [Paul Ryan and fellow travelers] wanting to gut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, five simple things could be done without imposing higher taxes on the bulk of the population to keep them funded:
1. Raise the interest rate on the special treasury bonds held by the Social Security Trust Fund. Not all treasury bonds would have interest so raised, just those "backing" Social Security.
2. Reimpose the Social Security tax in a fair way. Keep the rate and cutoff as is, but then reimpose the tax, same rate, on gross personal incomes above a million dollars per year. That's on pre-loophole money, and if you get more than a million pre-loophole, you can pay without any noticeable squeeze. Country clubs could charge less for memberships, if needed.
3. Reimpose the Obamacare [Romneycare] taxes the Republicans wiped out in their monstrosity of a tax bill.
4. Tax every trade of bonds or corporate shares; and tax the short term trade gimmick of posting a buy/sell order and flushing it within milliseconds before any other trader can accept, making a trade. That gimmick is used to manipulate buy/sell spreads and trending, without the purchase or sell orders being real and honest. They are ghost offers which only bias the market. Rates of such taxation need not be massive to discourage abuse, as well as raising revenue at the same time. If retirement funds in the market would grow less rapidly it could be offset by an overdue increase of Social Security funding.
5. Tax fossil fuel consumption so that the incidental costs of climate change and pollution are not socialized to us all, but are imposed on the perps. An ancillary benefit would be clean energy growing without subsidies for it, but growing in comparison because simply fair impositions for the presently socialized costs of fossil fuel use would be attached to the enterprises causing those costs.
(A sixth thing would be to aggressively make the RENTEC bandits pay the taxes they are claimed to owe. Quit the stalling. The Mercer funding of Cruz and then Trump should not buy an indulgence; remember, the sale of indulgences was Luther's major complaint against the Roman Church. That "make the buggers pay" step would be a one-time thing, not ongoing, but do it because it would be helpful short term and more importantly, it would be just.)
