if you don t have an attitude within the congress that wants to limit spending, you re not going to limit spending. and basically, congress wants to spend money because it s easier to get votes if you spend money than it is if you don t spend money. one of the solutions to help our annual budget situation is to set a target for the nation s debt levels. we should talk about something like stabling the debt at, say, 60% of gdp. that s a reasonable amount to shoot for. it s higher than we ve historically been at. but it still would require an aggressive amount of debt reduction to get there. that s the goal we need to think about. the european monetary union sets a public debt no higher than 60% of countries. countries who exceed the target must take action to reduce their debt or face sanctions. that level is intended to reassure creditors while allowing room for new borrowing. to address emergencies or respond to other events like a recession.
and more importantly, how does he get his whites so bright? find out with cheer. surprisingly bright at a new lower price. so, cut spending or raise taxes, both very unpopular choices in washington where there is an election cycle around every corner. the last time we cut the debt was in the 90s under former president clinton. that was the last time we actually had a budget surplus. and some say the economy was going in the right direction to help that along. the reason tough spending rules also require congress to pay for things as they go, also known as paygo. there are two different types of categories and budget tools that can really help fix the situation. there is one category of tools that enforce budget rules.
column a or column b or a combination of all those things. let s look at this area in purple here, mandatory to spending. we ll have to pay social security, medicare and medicaid as well as interest on the national debt. so the yellow area is discretionary spending, things like social programs or spending. or we can cut defense spending. that is a tough thing to go nowadays. bill bradley, you were in congress and you had to make the tough choices. you were elected to serve the people, and it s very difficult to make some of these tough choices and also continue to run in the election cycle, isn t it in. yes, it is. unless there is a freight train coming at you that concentrates the mind. for example, in the early 1980s, social security was about to go bankrupt. and we had to act. and so congress did act. and the way i always look at it, you go where the money is. and if you have this gigantic budget deficit, you go to programs for the elderly, you go to health care, you go to defense
both parties, it doesn t make any difference. but the reality is this is very tough to do, and that s one of the biggest problems. you say cut defense spending. people don t want you to cut defense spending. social programs? no way. taxes? forget about raising taxes. dan rosten cow ski, the former chair of the ways and means committee used to tell a story of a discussion over cutting social security or medicare or medicaid, and he said that a senior citizen in his district climbed up on the hood of his car and screamed at him, don t cut my social security! so you see how hard it is, and it s a question of priorities. where do you start, who do you start with? you almost need a kamikaze congress who says, we re going to cut all these things and then we re going to leave because we won t be re-elected. but elections r dan rosten cow ski. that is a colorful character in
those have been really effective in the past in limiting budget growth and keeping deficits from becoming a greater problem. pay-go and spending caps are positive measures, but they only help to keep the problem from getting worse. many other steps will need to be taken. congress, just by nature, are good with the next selection but they re not good for the next generation. and as a result, congress for a long time has been ignoring our long-term problems. and the long-term problem is that we are putting so much debt on the books, our kids can t handle it. there was an $8 million federal mandate that shouldn t have gone on the books unless it was paid for. the estimated cost of the medicare d prescription drug bill was 395 billion over ten years, which was the only cost that was debated and considered. the cost of the program exploded beyond ten years, adding between 7 and 8 trillion in unfunded promises. when we should have been digging our way out of the problem, we dug deepe