Name
Instructor
Course
Date
Budget
Federal Budget Exercise
The proposed budget is $1,319 billion for the year 2015 and a tax rate of 24%; the projected budget has a deficit of $ 583 billion. This deficit is a bit lower for the 2015 federal budget by $42 billion implying that some changes need to be made to come up with a viable value. The changes were made on the following; the defense budget was reduced from $752 billion to $721 billion, homeland security was positively adjusted from $47 billion to $49billion; this is done to enforce more security to the citizens. Since US forces have been gradually coming home; it was prudent to reduce the defense budget to allow citizens enjoy more security in their country. As much as it would be difficult avoiding tax increase because it is used to increase government expenditure, the $1.2 trillion dollars proposed in the federal budget was a bit high for the citizen. It would be prudent if the tax increase was set at a maximum of $1 trillion dollars or below.
Federal Budget Challenge
There are specific changes that were made to come up with the budget. The first policy was to increase the allocation of social funds from $47 billion to $ 49 billion for the homeland security to improve the social welfare of the citizens. Medicare also got a boost to have a minimum funding of $65 billion; education sectors and the research institutions got an increments in the budget allocation to help the various agencies involved to improve service delivery to the citizens. However, the defense allocation was slightly reduced since the war in Afghanistan has relatively gone down and the US army has been coming home thereby reducing the expenditure on military and defense. The method used in the budget allocation was based on the economic situation of the US and the entire globe hence making it more realistic. In addition, a number of factors have been considered in the budget such as political stability of the country, the general hunger, and global warming, thereby making the proposed budget a popular one. To ensure that the economy grows and the deficits become shrank, it is important to formulate a comprehensive immigration reform to stabilize the country’s broken immigration system. To reduce the debt and deficit levels of the country, it is important to finance new investments and tackle the fiscal challenges. This would ensure a fall in deficit levels to approximately 1.6% of the GDP and thus stabilize the economy’s debt share.
The Budget Hero
The budget policies that were implemented to achieve the results majorly focused on diverting more funds for national security. The advancement to giving priorities to national security and increasing payment for the armed forces ensured security for the United States while at the same time protecting its interests across the world. Good salaries for the armed forces gave them the motivation to advance towards achieving the country’s military mission in Afghanistan and enable Afghanistan become responsible for its own future. Giving priority to security matters also ensured the country maintain a modern, ready, and able defense forces to counter any form of threat including cyber attacks and terrorism. Part of the funds diverted to armed forces was also used to support medical care for the veteran soldiers, assist the soldiers to transition to civilian life, and reduce the veteran’s homelessness. The federal budget challenge led to a reduction in the country’s debts and a shrink in deficit levels. Most voters do not know how revenue and spending choices are influenced at the federal level because they are never involved in decision making on budget matters. The federal budget is normally formulated at the interest of political leaders and implementation of certain budget priorities will most likely get compromised if such priorities are moving against their wishes.
