state + local

Wow, thank you Rep. Bills for advocating cuts that are profoundly unpopular with many in both parties. Although there is near consensus on both sides of the isle that we are driving over a financial cliff with over 15 trillion in total U.S. debt and continuing trillion dollar annual deficits, no one is willing to make the hard choices. In fact, conventional wisdom states that advocating these types of cuts is political suicide and a sure way to minimize one's candidacy. I heartily applaud Rep. Bills' integrity and efforts in ths endeavor.

I think a more likely to succeed approach would be to propose across the board cuts in all agencies and departments and a tax increase. Say ten percent cuts and a ten percent tax increase. This would have everyone share in the sacrifice. Possibly bigger cuts to defense and larger tax increases for people making over $250K. But then this would not specifically attack the people the GOP hates.

Mr. Bills has yet to mention exactly how is proposed policy shifts would come about. It is not conceivable that any of the Libertarian or the Tea Party agendas will produce the outcome stipulated. Quite to the contrary, both agendas will subsequently torpedo the economic capacity as well as any of the remaining political ability the Republicans have not already destroyed even further.

That should send the economy into a tailspin. Repubicans only wish is that they could do it before the election so they could blame it on Obama. Over the past 3 1/2 years they have been trying to sabotage the economy as much as possible so they could achieve Mitch's number one goal of making Obmma a one term President. They will tell you different but their record of filibusting everything and voting against their own proposals tells a different story. Power is more important then the people they serve.

Just what we need, another oversimplified solution to complex problems.

Typical Minnesota liberal answers.  We need bold action, politically he won't win because he makes sense.  Liberals will never understand that it's their own big government entitlement policies that put us into this position.  You can point out countless examples, yet they don't believe it.  Look at new York and California, both high tax state liberal states where businesses and the wealthy are leaving in droves.  Look at Europe which is in turmoil, only Germany who cut some of their welfare policies is successful, and now has to bail out the others, ahem not unlike California for us soon.  Raising taxes isn't the answer, especially not now as the economy will no doubt go back into recession.  We need entitlement reform, the repeal of obamacare, and the discarding of Dodd frank.  We need less government and more personal respondsibilty and less liberal finger pointing.  Bush didn't cause the economic collapse, it was in the making for years, the tax cuts didn't drive up the debt, as we had record revenues in 2007 and we roared back from 9/11.  The wars were expensive, but a drop in the bucket compared to out of control entitlement spending.  To be honest it is also the only true constitutional role that the federal government has.  I am not going to say republicans aren't to blame, they had all the power and didn't do anything 10 years ago.  On top of that bush a spent like a liberal and gave us the Medicare drug plan and the highest education spending in history.  Then when the economic problems occurred from the "everyone has a right to a home" liberal policy we had to enact emergency measures with the controversial tarp program that did ease the pain as the so called great recession wasn't as severe as that in 1982.  After this Obama comes along and continues the emergency spending for 3 years, doesn't pass a budget, and enacts restrictive regulations and the worst possible entitlement there is, healthcare.  There is plenty of blame to go around, but blame doesn't fix problems, action does.  It's going to no doubt sting to get this country back on track, but it's something we must do, and do together.  My guess is liberals will hate what I say and give me thumbs down, but that is precisely why we continue down the path into the financial abyss.

Looks like another politician the Israeli Lobby has in its back pocket. Cut foreign aide, to 5 billion and give over half to Israel? Better proposal would be to end all foreign aide. We have children going to bed hungry in the US, why not take care of our own first?

I can see maybe cutting foreign aid, but sending half of that already cut aid to Israel? I can think of several other countries that would benefit much more from that aid than Israel. I also don't think we should COMPLETELY cease foreign aid either... And how exactly will getting rid of the Department of Education help?

Why limit the cuts to the four agencies Bills is suggesting? I mean, really, do we need the FAA (what's a plane crash every now and then)? How about the FDA (our food is fine, mostly, and the drug commercials say our drugs are safe)? We don't need the SEC, because we know the financial institutions would never do anything wrong. OSHA? If a worker gets hurt, it was probably his own darn fault. While we're at it, we might as well get rid of the army, navy, and marines, 'cause we've got nukes, don't we? Think of all the money we'd save! Besides, the US is overpopulated anyway.

One more comment, about Bills proposal to means test Social Security. It is already being means tested. If a person makes enough money, there full Social Security, becomes taxed as regular income. If that isn't means testing Social Security, I don't know what is.