But the democrats gave into like.. what.. 63 billion in cuts already? This isn't over money, it was over planned parenthood. IF there was real interest in dealing with the deficit we'd see cuts in military spending. There have been none. And military is what makes up actually the biggest contributer to the deficit. Yes, the social security/whatnot is bigger, but a portion of the taxes is mandated to go there and it's paid off every year by that. There are problems with it and medicaid and other programs, but NOTHING IS DONE TO THE MILITARY BUDGET!! Especially nothing significant.
About half that, actually. $63 billion (which, incidentally, is utterly fucking negligible in the face of the ONE POINT SIX FIVE TRILLION dollar deficit that Obama wants) was what the Republicans were asking for. They settled for like $38 billion now, with another $10 billion in a more amorphous form. So woo fucking hoo, they managed to trim like 3% off of the deficit.
For this year.
That was totally worth nearly shutting down the government.
And, I might point out, that they did
not defund Planned Parenthood, or the other sticking points that had the left screaming that this had nothing to do with budget cuts. I might also point out that when you have a program that one side considers
absolutely essential to their party platform that it makes a great deal of sense to target that program, then "graciously" (or ungraciously, depending on how you want to spin it) allow it to persist in exchange for getting something
else you want.
Politics is a cynical game, best played by cynical people.
Cynical,
corrupt people.
As for the military budget? Well, I have mixed feelings on that one. In Raestopia... yes, there would be cuts. Very targeted cuts. Mostly I'd pull us out of our foreign misadventures as quickly as was feasible, and begin the process of drawing down the Army and National Guard.
Yes, that means that I would be largely leaving the Air Force, Navy, and Marines alone.
Why?
Because the Air Force and the Navy are our primary instruments for the rapid projection of force. They can't take or hold territory in particular (that's the Army's job), but the Marines can sub in for that as needed, and their primary role of establishing beachheads would be something I'd like to preserve.
The Army's job, as I mentioned, is to take and hold territory. That's a job that, frankly, we don't need to concern ourselves with right now. And it's a job that, in an emergency, we can train people to do inside of six months.
I cannot fathom a circumstance where we could not wrangle six months to face off against a threat dire enough for us to require a large ground force component.
So yeah, given my druthers, I'd cut the Army in half. Probably similar reductions to the Guard. Their operational budgets would shrink enormously, procurement would shrink proportionally, development would be pretty much the same, and that would be that.
And y'know what?
All told, enormous draconian cuts to the Army might save as much as $140 billion dollars.
Out of the aforementioned ONE POINT SIX FIVE TRILLION DOLLAR DEFICIT.
The scope of this problem eludes some people.
And then the problems with the whole tax loop holes. I think it's something like 2/3rds of the country's corporations pay near 0% in taxes and a lot of them get money from the government in subsidies and whatnot. It used to be that 30% of the government's taxes came from corporations, currently it's like 5% or less.. and all of them continue to get subsidies -_- Hell, oil companies? They take oil out of the gulf and don't pay us royalties AT ALL. They take OUR oil and we don't get royalties for it? WTF!
9%, last year, if I recall correctly. Which is lower than it ought to be, true. And certain taxes that were abolished for valid reasons should be reinstated for valid reasons. The oil windfall tax, for one.
As for trickle-down (or supply-side, to use a less pejorative term) economics...
There's a problem with simply saying they don't work.
Because they worked for Reagan, and therein lies the rub.
The economy is an enormously complicated system, and it's not a purely mathematical system at that. There are strong elements of psychology and sociology present, which is to be expected whenever people form an integral part of a system.
So Reagan, bless his Alzheimer's-ridden little head, enacts a series of tax cuts and tax code rationalizations, culminating in his 1986 tax act. During the 80's, we had a decade long period of economic growth. Keynesians, of course, point out that we were coming out of a recession and that the growth was simply an expression of the apparent cyclical nature of the economy. Supply-side economists say no, Reagan's reduction of the top tax brackets induced greater growth and investment, and ultimately increased tax revenues.
I might add that they did, in fact, ultimately increase tax revenues, which lent a great deal of weight to the idea that we were well past optimal on the Laffer Curve. Though changes to the AMT might also have something to do with that, oddly enough.
Reagan also spent the Soviets into oblivion, which means that the federal debt roughly tripled, even as the deficit shrank.
But regardless, you can pick a point in history and point to it, saying "Look! See! This historical example proves that (insert economic theory here) is accurate! It works!" And the problem there is that it's extremely difficult to tell if they're right, or wrong, because the system is, as I said, enormously complex, and almost impossible to
test in a controlled setting.
Or, in short, as with most things, answers are rarely black and white.
He seems to be fighting for the people too 
