The New York Times has a must-see-and-play-with interactive tool for showing how the current deficit and future projected deficits can be managed.

It’s an neat tool to check out because it shows very clearly how some popular targets are really just drops in the bucket, like foreign aid and medical malpractice reform.

Closing the projected 2030 budget shortfall is very difficult unless you start messing with social security. There needs to be someway of raising the retirement age without adversely impacting those who careers rely on their bodies to function adequately. You simply can’t expect sanitation workers and UPS drivers to work until they are 70.

Anyway, I played the game and managed to at least close the 2015 projected shortfall of $418 billion, 3/4 from tax increases and 1/4 from spending cuts:

• Eliminate farm subsidies – $14B
• Reduce troops in Iraq and Afghanistan by 30K by 2013 – $86B
• Obama’s estate tax plan (lower than Clinton’s; higher than nothing) – $24B
• Obama’s investment tax plan (lower than Clinton’s; higher than nothing) – $10B
• Expire Bush tax cuts for income above $250K/yr – $54B
• Expand ceiling for payroll tax – $50B
• Millionaire’s tax (new top bracket, instead of top bracket starting at $375K) – $50B
• Convert mortgage-interest deduction to credit (less benefit for high-income hh’s) – $25B
• Carbon tax – $40B
• Bank tax – $73B