On the waste issue, it all depends on what you mean. First off, is there waste due to outdated technology and bureaucratic inefficiency? Almost certainly, but what fraction of the budget goes to tech and bureaucracy, and out of that fraction, how much is inefficient? For example, out of the 28% of the budget paid out in Social Security only a relative 1% to 2% of that goes to admin, which is less than 1% of the total budget. Probably if you look at the whole budget, admin/tech/bureaucracy is probably in the ball park of 5%, maybe 10% of the budget. So the total savings for efficiency are limited.
Second, how does the level of “waste” compare to most human enterprises? I am fairly sure that many of us can tell some pretty crazy anecdotes about dumb-ass wastage in the private sector. If the federal waste level is no higher than private, then, eh.
Third, are you defining “waste” as stuff you don’t like? B/C to many on this board, our massive defense budget is mostly waste by that measure.
When people talk about waste, I think what is really meant is “money we can cut without suffering negatives consequences”. So for example, inefficiency.
I’m all for cutting that sort of thing, but if you look at it honestly, that’s at most a couple of percent of budget, and if you compare federal waste to private waste, there probably is some difference but I’m not sure how big it is.
The reality simply is, due to our desire to take care of the old and the sick, we have a large federal budget, requiring us to tax and spend roughly 33% to 34% of our economy. However, we just refuse to tax at the level required so we just keep piling on the deficit, which in turn increases the debt which in terms jacks up the interest on the debt, and so on.
Realistically, we could cut a few point off of defense spending and still have a mighty military and with a laser focus on efficiency, we could maybe shave a couple of points off of bureaucratic spending. That would still leave us about 20% short of making up the 25% deficit that Trump’s tax cuts are bringing us this year.
Now, there IS one big thing we could do to bring the budget into line down the road which is control the rate of increase of medical prices. One of the big future costs we are facing is the fact that medical prices keep going up much faster than the rate of inflation and we are already spending a quarter of our federal budget on health care including Medicare Medicaid and ACA combined. If we were to bring those prices surges down to the level of inflation, it would not that difficulty to bring the budget into line in a few years.
However, until we are willing to grasp the nettle of medical price reform, and until we are willing to grasp the nettle of increasing taxes, we are going to eat debt. DEBT!! It’s what’s for dinner!