A budget is essentially an itemized estimate of revenue and expenditure.
A budget deficit occurs when spending exceeds revenue.
The United States federal government has signed off, with approval from the Senate and House of Representatives, 40 federal budget deficits in the last 42 years. This has created two incredible statistics:
♦ The federal debt now stands at approximately $15.3 trillion (as of March 2012), which is more than the national Gross Domestic Product.
♦ The federal government has paid $5.96 trillion in taxes during the same period for the debt.
Johnson, who has been quoted as saying that the country is ‘essentially bankrupt’ and is ‘on the verge of a financial collapse’, believes that the out of control national debt can only be contained by adopting stringent fiscal policies and getting our troops back home from their expensive excursions in Afghanistan, Iraq and other conflict zones around the world.
Massive budget cuts, one of the hallmarks of his governorship of New Mexico, will once again feature strongly in his economic plan, with military spending being the primary target.
If elected, Johnson intends to present a balanced budget to Congress on his first year in office.
“My first promise as president of the United States is submitting a balanced budget to Congress.
That would include a 43%, that would entail 43% reduction in military spending. What’s a 43% reduction in military spending? That’s nuclear warheads from 2,300 to 500 hundred. That’s reducing military footprint on the planet, that’s us being in foreign countries, that’s the conflicts that we’re currently involved in, extricating ourselves from that conflict, that’s research and development, that’s intelligence, that’s the military that are in uniform and that’s the civilian support staff that goes along with that.
Believing that the biggest threat to our national security is the fact that we are bankrupt and if we don’t balance the budget, we’re gonna find ourselves with nothing.”April 1, 2012: Johnson speaking at the Libertarian Party of Ohio State Convention
“I think we should balance the federal budget tomorrow. I think we’re on the verge of a financial collapse in this country. I based that on the fact that we have $14 trillion dollars in debt, that we absolutely cannot repay if we’re racking up $1.6 trillion dollars in new debt this year and years to come.
So, I would advocate balancing the federal budget tomorrow. I'm optimistic. I think Americans are optimistic. We went to the moon, we can balance the federal budget. We can fix this. If we don’t do it, we’re gonna be left with nothing. So all this budget debate here a couple of weeks ago, was about less than one penny of the 43 cents that we need to cut from federal spending. And it turns out with the budget analysis, that it turned out to be less than one one hundredth of a penny. So we’re not addressing the problems that we faced, and that starts with Medicaid, Medicare, reforming social security and defense. And I mean cutting those areas."
April 22, 2011: Johnson on ABC News’ Topline
