How to Balance the Budget

The CFRB recently put out a budget simulator that allows you to try and stabilize the budget (60% of GDP) by 2018. Pretty exciting stuff, right?

Well thanks to Ross Douthat, here's what it would take to achieve this goal:

1. means-testing Social Security and raising the retirement age to 68
2. keeping health care reform in place but slashing its insurance subsidies by 20 percent
3. increasing cost-sharing and premiums for Medicare and raising the retirement age to 67
4. passing tort reform
5. returning food stamp spending to 2008 levels
6. slashing subsidies for agriculture and biofuels
7. cutting the federal workforce by 5 percent across the board
8. cutting earmarks by 50 percent
9. converting the home-mortgage deduction to a smaller credit
10. replacing the tax deduction for employer-provided health care with a flat credit
11. increasing the gas tax by 10 cents a gallon
12. cutting foreign aid and military spending by $200 billion
13. drawing down troop levels in Iraq and Afghanistan to 60,000 in 2016
14. taxing life insurance benefits
15. letting the Bush tax cuts expire for high earners and partially phasing them out for the middle class
16. eliminating the state and local tax deduction
17. and cutting out a lot of smaller things as well.

 Piece of cake...