Congress Activity

NameProfessorClass4/10/2018 How to Balance the Federal Budget: A Minarchist PerspectiveIn the Frontline video on the Fiscal Cliff, we become aware of a very real problem. The problem is just as relevant now as it was under Obama: the United States is over 21 trillion dollars in debt and climbing (US Debt Clock.org). How did this happen? We must admit that the Iraq War was part of it, costing about 2.4 trillion dollars. However, we must admit that even this is but a small fraction of the overall debt. If we look at U.S. spending as a whole, the entire budget for the fiscal year of 2013 is 3.45 trillion dollars (House Budget Committee, 10). The Obama administration, for some reason, decided that raising taxes was the only solution to the problem. However, Paul Ryan and the new Republicans disagreed. They pointed out another possible solution: to cut spending.The Federal budget for 2013 consists of 625 billion for Defense, 808 billion for Social Security, 492 billion for Medicare, 265 billion for Medicaid, 221 billion just as interest on the debt, 576 billion is non defense discretionary, and 467 billion is in “other mandatory” which consists largely of welfare programs (House Budget Committee, 10). In reality, most of these categories of spending are socialist programs. The fundamental problem and disagreement is that no one is sure what the role of government is. Obama and the Democrats have been wanting to expand the size of government by i…