Balance budget

Back in late 2012 the government could not agree to cut into the deficit so they agreed to a sequester to force cuts. They said that if no agreement is reached there will be automatic across the board cuts of 1.2 trillion over the next nine years. The President felt that congress would not agree to this since half the cuts were to come from defense but they did agree and now the President wants out of the deal. The argument against across the board cuts is that it does not prioritize and thus some projects deemed very important are just like less desirable projects. Of course if you try to cut projects based on importance every item has it constituents and the fights begin and when the dust settles nothing is cut. A better plan is to limit annual increases in spending to the inflation rate but that is seen as an impossible task. When President Obama took office the total spending for 2009 was 2.14 trillion and in 2015 it is expected to be 3.90 trillion. During this time the average annual inflation rate has been 1.8%. If government spending has increased at this rate the spending this year would be 2.38 trillion instead of 3.90 trillion and we would have a trillion dollar surplus and a balanced budget. Instead we have a 600 billion dollar deficit. It is not an impossible task to balance the budget and in the process save social security and Medicare from going broke.