Stop the spending starting with congressional paychecks.

An absolutely critical issue, which impacts almost every other issue, and which no administration (Democrat or Republican) has handled well or is particularly excited about debating.

It is due to this that issues like Gay Marriages and Indecency and Spam E-Mails get undue prominence by pol's in the usually successful hope of distracting the voters.

And does it ever work.

If you doubt me, just take a look at the comments and ratings on this list.

Spending and ear marking are out of control! We are spending too much on corruption and waste in big govt.

Our national debt is approximately 9 trillion dollars- by governement bookkeeping standards. In May a study was published where corporate standards had been used for calculation. By this (real) method, our debt is 59.3 trillion dollars. Solving this problem will be no big deal, so long as every American household can cough up $516,000.00. What a fine job they have done...and some people want to put this same government in charge of our healthcare system. Simply amazing.

"Make sure we don't call it torture!" "Make sure we keep people distracted by calling our opponents extremists!" "Make sure that our lap-dog response involves (right or left) wing!" Real issues involving the future health of the nation, including the budget, are cast aside in the name of pandering to a short-attention-span voting base who seems to be quite content with the entertaining yet ineffective leadership in Washington.

Some interesting quotes from the conservative Cato Institute: President Bush has presided over the largest overall increase in inflation-adjusted federal spending since Lyndon B. Johnson. Even after excluding spending on defense and homeland security, Bush is still the biggest-spending president in 30 years... and The GOP was once effective at controlling nondefense spending. The final nondefense budgets under Clinton were a combined $57 billion smaller than what he proposed from 1996 to 2001. Under Bush, Congress passed budgets that spent a total of $91 billion more than the president requested for domestic programs. Bush signed every one of those bills during his first term. Even if Congress passes Bushs new budget exactly as proposed, not a single cabinet-level agency will be smaller than when Bush assumed office. Pretty damning stuff. Any way you look at it, President Bush and the Republican Congress have been reckless and irresponsible in spending our money. I'm not sure about the rest of you, but a government's discipline in how it chooses to spend my hard earned taxes is pretty important to me. More important to me than say how effective that government is in protecting me and my marriage from the homosexual agenda. This is a big deal people, and we're going to be paying the price for this Socialist style spending for decades.

The budget reflects the social priorities of our goverment. The people of this country should have confidence that our polititions know how to spend money we give them. A balanced budget would restore confidence in government.

the budget deficit is large, but as a % of gdp is not at historic highs. Still, as America is beginning to notice, budget deficits lead to higher interest rates, which leads to higher prices, which lead to economic slowdown. We need to always make balancing the budget a high priority.

More like a federal spending free-for-all rather than a federal budget. Both parties should get serious about cutting government spending and acting in a fiscally responsible manner. Things are getting (if not already gotten) out of control.

I must admit that President Bush's spending habits have grown to be quite liberal but to blame our goverments fiscal problems soley at the Presidents door step is ludicrous in every sense of the word and purely irresponsible. To do so would only be a half-hearted attempt to slanderize the President. With that said it is important to remember that you don't fix finiacial problems by raising taxes at your every whim. Rather, you solve the problem by cutting wasteful spending as the President partially addressed in his State of the Union.

OK- we were told we'd have to make sacrifices,so lets give up every safety net for the Working Class.Oh,but there's plenty of funds for a new Yacht and helicopter for our regular joe in the White House.

Did I mention how important it was to curtail the spending? The US Congress, encouraged by President Bush in his 1st term, spends money like a drunken sailor, like me on bonus day. Until substantially more pressure is brought to bear on your local Congressman/woman, preferably by you, don't expect the federal budget problem to go away. If you do not write, e-mail or call your representative, and you rSenators, you are part of the problem, not the solution. Don't bother shaking your fist at Bush, or any other politician, unless you have done the bare minimum of what you can do personally, right now, each day. It's little enough.

Cut it by 70%.

The federal budget is the most serious short-term and long-term problem facing the United States today. For the uninitiated, the concept of deficit spending is based on making government expenditures consistent despite changes in tax revenues as the latter is subject to many factors. In theory, the government borrows during recessions (ie deficit spending) and pays the debt back (or accumulates reserves) during economic booms. The problem is that the government never does the latter resulting in debt building on debt, effectively allowing current taxpayers to not pay for their current and accrued public benefits, ultimately shifting the cost to future generations of taxpayers (ie generational tax inequity). This failure by government is easily illustrated by the Clinton Administration which governed during one of the longest economic booms, yet failed to reduce actual (not just paper) debt or create real wealth reserves for accumulated, but unrecorded future liabilities. As some general expenditures are mandated by realties or the Constitution (eg defense), in simple terms the culprit ultimately lies in both excessive discretionary spending and the failure to create actual wealth reserves to pay future accrued benefits (eg social security and Medicare). Eventually (and this is inevitable without major reform and sacrifice) this system will collapse. Even assuming that tax revenue is maximized (assuming maxing out is the correct policy which is certainly debatable), the obvious but painful solution remains to reduce general expenditures to affordable levels and to such a level which provides for actual debt reduction and the creation of real trust fund reserves. For a shot in the arm, as there is no sane reason for the government to own or effectively own one-third of all real estate in the United States, at least one-half of this property should be sold over an extended period of time (so as not to crash the real estate markets) with all monies earmarked for debt reduction and reserves. The bottom line is that one's biggest investment is not your house or your car, but rather the government, and that situation is absurd. Continued deficit spending for discretionary expenditures is nothing short of theft from future generations of Americans.

Boring. Both parties spend too much. Either side pointing fingers is highly hypocritical.

To put in plainly, our budget and our fiscal house all together is a mess. It amazes me that my fellow citizens do not take our current budgetary problems seriously. The deficit is at an all-time high, federal spending is at its highest level in history, and the national debt is climbing. In 1980, federal spending was at $590.95B. By 2000, it had climbed to $1.8T dollars, and that number has continued to go up over the period of the past three years. In 1980, the national debt was at $909B. Today, it is approaching $6Trillion. This is an increase of over $5Trillion dollars. If something is not done about this, future generations are going to be bearing the burden of paying for the mistakes that we make today. We are not even paying down the debt now--- we are paying off the interest. The interest on the national debt is the 3rd biggest expendature on the budget. In addition to this, the federal budget is loaded with pork and waste. Hundreds of unneccessary agencies, several wasteful departments, several agencies that should be privatized. $400B over the next ten years will be spent on a Medicare package. Where is that money coming from? There's no doubt in my mind that its just going to be tacked onto that debt and passed onto future generations. The fiscal problems that we have today are prime examples of the consequences of the desire for the government to solve all the people's problems. In addition, billions every year is being spent on obsolete military equipment. In the final analysis, it is quite a shame that this important issue is not taken seriously by the average American. Even moreso, the budget does not even seem to be an important aspect of Presidential or Congressional elections. The ultimate national goal should be for a debt-free America and a balanced budget. Steering away from that goal is, as VirileVagabond so candidly points out, a theft from future generations and a betrayal of the founding principles of this nation.

I would like to see more spent on Education and poverty. Less on defense and social security. Don't get mad I'm not advocating throwing old people in the street who truly need it. However there are tons of mom and pops who take the cadillac to Florida to their condo on the beach every year, and truly don't need social security which is by the way WAY more than welfare. Social security is the biggest spendature of the federal budget(more than half.) It would save a gillion tons of cash each year to means test it.

Communist Manifesto? Man, that guys way off. The federal budget is necessary for those creature comforts like the military, intersate travel means, or foreign relations. That said it is not only important to have a federal budget, but it must also be balanced both in financial terms and in what we spend it on. Currently it is neither. We are massively in debt and yet the best solution that the Republicans can come up with is to spend $100 on a war with Iraq followed up by a proposed $550 billion tax cut to the richest Americans. We are also spending $379 billion a year on our military. That is higher then the next 25 highest spending military powers COMBINED! How many planets do we have to conquer? And don't get me wrong I am all for more money for the troops and I would like to see them make substantially more money, but this isn't being spent on that it's being spent in contracts handed out to defense companies. All this while we can give the same quality public education to our children as Uganda. Oh and to those who say "Being against military spending is being against the troops": The first death in this war was veterans benefits.

The way that the government spends our tax dollars no doubt is a very important issue. It is very difficult for the government to run surpluses every year. In the 1990's we ran surpluses primarily because the economy was great, there was money out there for everyone. Global instability and a cooling economy caused the government to receive less tax receipts starting in 2000, thus causing a deficit. The Federal Budget won't be balanced until there is more certainty in the domestic financial markets at home. Once the economy starts improving, the deficit will begin to receed. The deficit wasn't caused by President Bush or his tax cuts, those tax cuts were a drop in the bucket compared to the many billions, almost trillions of dollars the government spends. If anything, they are benficial to all Americans. Indeed, no institution private or public wants to run debts, but now the economy isn't good and we have a war to fight. it's inevitable, there will be deficits. Government waste is a problem; the defense department alone wastes a lot of money on contracts from bidders that don't offer the lowest price. While I don't advocate cutting back the defense budget, I believe that the Pentagon can spend its money better. If they do that, we won't have to cut back on federal aid programs as much to balance the budget. One thing is true, debt is a cycle; interest payments accrue, causing the debt to really burn a hole in the treasury. A debt free America should become a national priority, for that will solve a lot of our fiscal problems.

definitely more important than gay rights, for example......

You had better believe the Federal Budget is a major government issue, whose money do you think they are spending? I agree with others, I do not like giving up my hard earned money to pay income tax, but if they are going to steal it from me anyway, they better use it wisely. I understand that like any organization, the government requires funds to operate. I mildly accept this fact with still some level of pain. The Federal Budget has become something more than running the government, it is for running personal agendas. The government needs to draw a hard line in the sand and starting saying no. Every issue they take on to try to solve every program created to appease some group’s complaint is a burden on the budget and the taxpayers. If they will run the government, not people’s lives, they will find they have a huge surplus and can grossly reduce the tax burden.

I'm a federalism & think that the federal level should get more of the power the states have today. In many cases this could be essential for not violating fundamental human right, for instance when it come to death penalty. I wouldn't be surprised if death penalty would be history if it was raised to a higher level. :-)

The federal leviathan is fed by the unconstitutional confiscation of our hard-earned money by the IRS. The heavy graduated income tax with which we are cursed, and the Federal Reserve System are both planks in the Communist Manifesto. As such, they are decidedly un-American. The fact that there is any debate in Congress over what to do with the budget surplus is absurd. GIVE IT BACK! IT'S NOT YOUR MONEY!

It will be interesting to see if, under Bush, the (barely) Republican Congress is able to restrain spending. They became very poor custodians of our tax dollars under Clinton after they lost their political battle over the budget in 1995. All the same, this year's budget and whether we run a surplus or deficit is not nearly as important as reforming the long-term entitlements programs that commit us to huge deficits in ten years if we don't do something fast. For that reason, I need to rate this as a relatively unimportant issue.