USING A NIFTY site called the National Budget Simulation, your editor managed to improve the budget in five minutes better than Bush and Kerry combined. The site was originally a project of UC-Berkeley's Center for Community Economic Research, and is now hosted by Nathan Newman, one of its creators.
I was frankly too busy to spend much time on this but increasing social spending and reducing the budget by $17 billion in five minutes isn't too bad. Here's what I did:
I cut ten percent or $40 billion from the Pentagon and an additional $5 billion from the Iraq budget. I then increased spending ten percent in the following areas: natural resources and environment, education, training, employment, and social services, Medicare, and social welfare.
I also cut the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts by ten percent.
Perhaps I should run for president but only serve five minutes a day. That would save even more money.