To fix the federal deficit, a good Democrat will most likely

[Onlooker]

[ShadowLiberal]

1. Cut our military to near nothing like it used to be before WW2, problem solved

We didn't used to have such large deficits back when we didn't believe in having a standing army. In the early days of the US we literally only had maybe 3,000 at most people (out of tens of millions US citizens) who called the military their career. During a war the job of those 3,000 was to quickly train a massive number of new recruits for the army, recruits who would go back to their old private sector job once the war was over.

Since WW2 we've fought in wars more and more frequently because of our large standing army, and the attitude it helps generate that we're the world police who should get involved in almost all wars. Our founding fathers considered large standing armies a sign of a tyrant government. George Washington warned to stay out of European politics & wars, back when Europe used to be almost as chaotic as the middle east is today (the countries of Europe used to have wars with each other quite frequently back in Washington's time).

Plus the military eats up more of the budget then even medicare of social security. Deficit hawks may argue that medicare and social security will keep going up too much for us to afford it over time, but they miss the fact that military spending has been going up like crazy as well over time. You can't project military spending over the next few decades like you can social security and medicare, because the military doesn't plan decades in advance that we'll invade Iran or whatever on a certain date, and a lot of military spending is in the form is congressional pork to go to local military bases, or to pay for some military research for something, you can't plan that decades in advance. If our attitude keeps up that cutting even one cent of military spending endangers our national security, then trust me, military spending will continue to increase at least as fast as medicare and social security will.

[Blue_Tires]

5. +1000

ending our excursions in the sandbox and slashing the defense budget would have saved enough to fund damn near everything else...

[Kennah]

2. Repeal the Reagan tax cuts ...

... bring home the troops abroad, all of them, return Dubya's foreign policy X-Box games ("Team America: World Police 2" and "Nation Building 3") as the Netflix charges are really racking up after 9+ years, start trimming the military back to the levels under the Clinton years for starters.

[denverbill]

3. The wealthy were PLENTY wealthy 40 years ago with much higher tax rates.

They have been freeloading since Reagan's time.

[cottonseed]

4. I'd introduce the Reagan/Bush1 Economic Recovery Act

Roll back tax rates to the Reagan years, and defense spending to the Bush 1 years.