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Wait, 65% of the budget deficit? Your own quote has it at 290 billion dollars, that' s approximately 30% of the discretionary budget deficit. Letting alone th
by jbooth 16y ago
Wait, 65% of the budget deficit? Your own quote has it at 290 billion dollars, that' s approximately 30% of the discretionary budget deficit. Letting alone the fact that it's part of an entirely separate budget.
- yummyfajitas 16y agoThe federal deficit was $377.9 in 2008. You do the math. I'll post the link again: http://usgovernmentspending.com/year2008_US.html#usgs302 http://usgovernmentspending.com/year2008_US.html#usgs302
- jbooth 16y agoOhhhhh, we're talking about balancing the 2008 budget.. Well that doesn't make any sense, but I'm looking forward to your answers to my questions above on the mechanics of how that would work. (EDIT in reply: Yeah, that's fine, and I went with it, but talking about percentages of a 380 billion dollar deficit in the context of current events is just plain silly.)
- yummyfajitas 16y agoFrom my previous post: "(Use the dropdown to select year=2008, the last year for which full data is available.)" I don't think I was unclear - jbellis certainly figured it out about 2 hours ago. As for the specific mechanics, I'll refer you to another post in this thread which provides a number of mechanisms: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1745969 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1745969 More or less any of them should work.
- jbooth 16y ago"More or less any of them should work"? You want to burn a $290 billion dollar program to the ground, with consequences like "poor people don't get insulin", and you can't even be bothered to think about which top level line item should be moved around? This is why Al Gore sighed into his microphone that time. Yeah, it lost him the election, but when are you people going to realize that studied ignorance is not the way to solve problems?