Budget Season Precursor: What Do You Want to See From Future Budgets?

With Trump's budget proposal due Monday, the "budget season" is about to kick off which provides insight into White House and Congressional spending priorities. Since recent legislation has made structural 1 trillion dollar yearly deficits the norm rather than the exception (due to recessions, wars, and other such calamities), I'd like to gauge where you guys would like to see us go on budgeting/spending from this point on. What would you like to see from the budgets this year and those in the future?

Would you like to see the budget balanced? If so, where would you draw the funds to do so? Do you want to retain/grow the current deficit levels? That's certainly possible provided you accept some tradeoffs, so if that's the case what tradeoffs would you be willing to accept?

Edit: Trump's budget was released.

Highlights include increased military spending, 3 trillion in cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and food stamps, funding for the border wall, and 7 trillion in additional debt over ten years.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/business/economy/white-house-budget-proposes-increase-to-defense-spending-and-cuts-to-safety-net-but-federal-deficit-would-remain/2018/02/12/f2eb00e6-100e-11e8-8ea1-c1d91fcec3fe_story.html

Hopefully that link works ok - it looks funky to me.

How much of the budget goes to interest rates on the loans the US government has? How much goes to pay the loans it has already?

@horgen: 2017 total debt related interest payments are estimated to be in the $275 billion range. It also seems that as the debt grows as a percentage of GDP, interest rates make bonds more attractive, and outside markets stabilize the expectation is that the interest rates we pay on debt will grow in the the coming years.

@mattbbpl: Out of a budget at 4.5 trillion $

Note that the deficit, 1 trillion $, is over 20% of the budget. Damn that is a lot. The amount paid in interest isn't to bad I guess, as a part of the whole budget.

Interesting to read in your link that the deficit in 2019 most likely will be closer to 1.4 trillion $.

No farm subsidies (since rural areas don't need liberals or their money) no fossil fuel subsidies, increased spending on renewables and zero emission energy (especially nuclear), increased spending on transportation projects (especially high speed rail), increased spending on updating infrastructure, vastly increased spending on education, and abortions for everyone. I don't care if this grows the deficit one hundred fold, it will be worth it. But it's never a bad thing to keep deficits under control, so if it takes money away from military spending or finds savings by running programs more efficiently I'm all for that.

invest it all in bitcoin. i hear it's going to $100K debt problem solved!

Clean energy subsidies, healthcare, better internet, better infrastructure, better education, and dialing back the military. Also, efforts to reorganize any of the mentioned areas so that they work more efficiently, more effectively and cost less would be appreciated as well.

I don't see a clear reason why we are suddenly increasing the deficit to over a trillion dollars a year when the employment rate is as high as it is, or at least there's not a clear reason why it helps the middle and lower class. Then again I probably shouldn't expect one now that the GOP is basically using it's power to make the rich richer without regard to how it looks to everyone else.

As to whether or not we should strive for a balanced budget, well, I think it should be more balanced than it is currently is. The problem is that republicans will say we need to drastically cut the budget now that they gave such a huge amount in tax cuts away rather than needing to take in more so that we can actually pay for things. Honestly I think that we're going to plunge ourselves into another recession sooner rather than later due to recklessly making sure those at the top get even higher up the latter and limiting everyone else in their ability to move up the economic ladder.

@Serraph105: "Honestly I think that we're going to plunge ourselves into another recession sooner rather than later."

How so?

Well, as long as Trump keeps deregulating buisnesses and weakening government oversight (like what is happening with the Consumer Protection Bureau right now) and increasing the deficit when QE isn't really needed, it seems like we are headed back to a time when we allowed for huge bubbles like the sub-prime loan bubble that helped lead to the 2008 recession.

I truly hope I'm wrong of course, but we haven't given people at the top much (any?) incentive not make the exact same risky bets that screwed over everyone else because they can still count on making more money despite those bets. You're a smart guy matt, tell me I'm wrong.

@Serraph105: Oh, I had no intention of telling you that you were wrong. I was just curious from which corner your concern came from.

I see that your concern stems from the potential creation and subsequent popping of bubbles which is certainly hard to argue with. I've been hearing concerns about economic overheating/inflation concerns due to significantly stimulating the economy near full inflation (I'm not sure that this one holds as much merit now as it once did for a couple of reasons, but it's out there nonetheless). There's concern about stifling demand further by decreasing the amount of currency in consumers' hands, but that wouldn't actually have an effect until cuts kick in (or interest rates get increased by the Fed in an attempt to prevent inflation). There's also the concern about making an eventual recession deeper by squandering our tools to combat one effectively in times of prosperity, and, of course, there's the common concern about deficits driving up the cost of borrowing/ability to borrow.