America's Budget Deficit?

            America’s debt crisis of 16 trillion dollars may come from great spending in different areas, but these areas such as the military and healthcare are all important expenditures. The key to solving the nation’s problem would be to increase participation from the American public in solving our problems.

The problem with the system is that there are too many loopholes. There are too many people who receive what they do not require in the first place, or attempt to cheat the system. We have recently charged 1,500 medical personnel for falsely billing the Medicare system by 4.8 billion, majority of which actually comes from the taxpayers. These are the people who add to our deficit for selfish, independent reasons, and they do it at the expense of other citizens in the form of taxpayer’s money. While these amounts are meagre considering the size of the debt, the amount is enough to save many people from their situations, and these sums of money will gather with time. In other words, investing in the patching up of loopholes in the system will have a great positive impact.

Although I recognise that there has been great scrutiny of Obamacare being unconstitutional, there still exists a need for the government to intervene in healthcare matters. All the rights of the people depend on their existence, and this is in turn supported by a dependable healthcare system. Since the government’s duty is to preserve the rights of the people, there is an impetus for them to invest in healthcare, which falls under the general health standard.

At the same time, I propose three solutions.

1) First, close all the loopholes in the system. There is no reason to provide the richer portions of society with subsidies that they are well able to pay for. The money that we save from this can be implemented into a more progressive subsidy, where poorer people get more subsidies from the government. In addition, we should reduce pre-emptive subsidy in general. There is no requirement for the government to provide so thick a safety net to insure people against events that may not happen in the first place. We will still provide the services such as checkups and vaccines, but it is not compulsory and we will implement an “opt in” system. At the same time, we need more monitoring on the system, so we can weed out illegal billing of it.

2) Second, I propose to raise the debt ceiling. The nation is going to burst the ceiling in the near future, which means that the country is unable considered unable to pay back its debt. We cannot integrate cuts too greatly at once, because that would cause small businesses to be unable to cut costs so quickly. This means that we should integrate cuts in spending on unimportant areas. At the same time, we should allow more loans to patch up our loopholes, so that we can lower deficit in general in the future.

3) I also propose to increase taxes for Americans. . If we need to stop the deficit once and for all, the people of the country are vital, and it is naïve to expect the government to solve everything while the country sits back to watch. Nearing the end of the Bush-era tax hikes means that both individuals and corporations alike will need to pay more for the government’s service to them. Recognise that the richer people have the ability of pay for these taxes, and the increased amount we tax them will not even be significant for them.

If all groups of society work together to recover lost money, use money more efficiently by redirecting funds to more vital areas, I believe that we will be on the right track to solving our budget deficit.