Would cutting every federal department and employee balance the budget?

Alas, the answer you are looking for here is 'no.' The entire discretionary budget for 2023 weighs in at $1.736 trillion, and even still, eliminating every federal department, agency, and firing every employee including the military would not help balance the budget. In 2023 alone, the national debt grew by $1.855 billion to a staggering $34.1 trillion.

Like a college kid with their first credit card, we have spent, and spent, and spent, with no regard for potential consequences. Now we sit with rocketing inflation, and sky-high interest rates.

Economist EJ Antoni says the government plays a 'shell game' with money, maneuvering it around various channels, and hiding true expenses. But there is a basic fix for the problem.

"If we could just get spending back down to pre-COVID levels, where it was just a few years ago, we would have a balanced budget today," he says.

The shell game keeps being played, for example, this last month. The latest monthly treasury statement showed a deficit of over $20 billion for January. Antoni says in reality, the deficit was over $100 billion, when you look at how much the federal debt went up in January.

Getting budget cuts is always much easier said than done though, especially with every politician promising their constituents grandiose projects.

"The most likely way to get substantive cuts across the board is having blanket rules, such as every budget gets cut by a certain percent, even if it is only one percent per year," he says.

But the bigger problems lie in what Donald Trump termed 'The Swamp' of Washington. It has become a town of fraudulent politicians, who most of the time lack common sense.

"It is so important that we not necessarily vote 'the right people' into office but give whoever is in office the political incentive to do the right thing," says Antoni. "That being, all the politicians need to know they will be voted out if they do not vote how their constituents want them to."

Voting Republican also does not always guarantee you a true Republican in office anymore, either.

There are plenty of Republicans who are far more Liberal than Conservative...and their voting records prove that," he says. "Just because you have the appearance of a majority in Congress does not mean it is actually there."

So, if it came down to it, which federal department should be the first to get hacked away?

"It is hard to see why the Department of Education should not be first on the chopping block...but most of these executive branch departments are all unconstitutional anyway," he says. "Nowhere in the Constitution does it say anything that a Department of Energy or Education should be part of the federal government."

Balancing the budget could be simple, and even cultivate some bipartisanship. Instead, it will continue driving us to the brink of economic disaster.