Many ways to trim a budget

Who are the entitled and who should make the sacrifices? The Republican politicians think that children, seniors and middle-class working Americans should be making the sacrifices, but not the richest 2 percent of this country.

It wasn’t middle-class workers or public employees who caused the deterioration in America’s fiscal picture: It was the Great Recession, caused in large part by malfeasance of Wall Street billionaires, along with two wars and a prescription drug program that was not paid for. Multinational corporations alone avoid $37 billion in taxes annually.

But these corporate Republicans think programs for federal job training, community health centers, infrastructure, programs that aid women and newborns, and NPR should be gutted.

Instead of cutting programs for the citizens, we should cut subsidies for oil and gas companies for a savings of $45 billion over 10 years. Cutting coal subsidies would save $2.5 billion over 10 years. Cutting agriculture subsidies, $30 billion, much of which goes to big factory farms. Targeting $60 billion in specific defense cuts would be a 7 percent reduction.

By raising revenue and scraping the Bush tax cut for the top 2 percent of income earners, we’d save $91 billion. Removing the cap on the employer side of the Social Security payroll tax would save $76 billion.

Applying a new 2 percent surtax to adjusted gross income above $1 million and an additional 3 percent to adjusted gross income above $10 million would save $29 billion. Not reducing the IRS budget by $600 million would result in the IRS collecting $4 billion through tax enforcement programs and also save jobs.

Problem solved. Budget balanced.

Joan Brody

Schaumburg