As you all know, we face a budget deficit in Atlasia that must, under our Constitution, be cut. How should we go about doing this?
Cut unnecessary programs. Sheesh Ford, that was an easy question, can't you do better than that?
But seriously, once you get the answer above, you need to ask which programs need cutting. But before I get to that, I would say that raising taxes is not an acceptable way to do it, at least in most cases. Taxes should only be raised when money can't be found for the most necessary of programs.
Now, on to which programs are not necessary. Ebowed is correct in mentioning the drug war, which while not the only program area that can be cut is one that should receive cuts. Another area to cut would be farm subsidies, which I personally would like to have halved in increments of 10% of the current rate per year for five years(to minimize the effect, quick change would probably be bad for the market) - this would also be best done if we could get our foreign trading partners to agree to do the same, so the international market remains balanced. I am also for Medicare and Medicaid reform - these two programs are extremely expensive and I feel they cover too much, like Viagra and whatnot. Reducing the coverage of these programs to only necessary drugs and treatments should result in a reduction in costs. I am also considering other reforms to propose to these, but I have not come up with anything solid yet. Last but not least is pork barrell spending. Now, we haven't had much pork under the Atlasian government, but we do have it(becayse we inherited all laws and programs of the United States), so it must be found and eliminated.
Surely, there are other things that can be cut, but the above are the most prominent in my view.
