Experts Tier round 2: Is there any hope that the US can eliminate its national debt in our lifetimes

As we enter into the final round, I will only bring new comments for the new comments that my opponent has been brought up. Apart from that, I will address as much as I can by referring back to the other rounds of the debate. 1) Political Dichotomy "Which was quickly wiped out in the Bush years immediately afterwards" My opponent mentions that the surpluses we"ve recently had were quickly wiped out. This is not a refutation of the dichotomy of the political environment. While it shows that it CAN happen. It, in no way , proves that it WILL happen. As such, I showed that we CAN balance our budgets, and since this debate is about HOPE, my burden is not to show that it will or is even likely. Only that it is possible. "Hell the polarity in Congress right now is so high that the budgets are being passed with TRILLION dollar deficits in single years. " Using my opponent"s own source [1], we can also see that the deficit was cut by 52% in just 4 years, or $732 billion ($1,412.69 billion to $680.27 billion [3, in my R1]). We"ve already cut $732 billion from the deficit, another $800 billion is not so impossible. ""other natural factors like wars and recessions"" Wars are not natural factors (and even recessions aren"t completely natural). They are manmade, with manmade triggers. Every war has a manmade cause that we can choose to respond to or not. To get involved or not. The last time someone tried to invade the US, was over 200 years ago in the War of 1812. All wars since have been us getting involved in other wars. I"m not arguing if they were justified or not, or if our involvement was ultimately beneficial to the world or not, but that they were choices that we made and that we could have made the other choice. We can choose to not be in Afghanistan; to not get involved with Iran, or North Korea on military levels. We can choose to not have bases in Germany and Japan or in any of the other 50 countries that we currently have bases in [2]. "And where exactly did you actually see me say the word 'never' again? Cause I didnt say the word never, and If youre going to start putting words in my mouth then I'll just go ahead and ask for the conduct point from voters right now" From my R2, ""hope" means "chance" or "possibility. "" You"re side of this debate is that there is no hope, no chance, no possibility. If you are only arguing that it is unlikely but not that it can never happen, then you are forfeiting the debate. Though you also later went on to say, "isnt based in reality or the realm of probability at all. " So don"t ask for conduct for never using the word "never" when you entire side of the debate is based on that and you basically say "never" (in just more words) later in the very same round. "But the problem is that there IS NO SUPPORT by people calling for military spending to be reduced by $500 Billion right away" It doesn"t have to. As outlined in my R3, we can simply maintain the same level of cuts that we"ve done for the last 2 years for the next 5 (then allow growth based on population and inflation) and (along with the social side) reach debt free with over 40 years to spare. I have shown that there is growing support for military and social cuts (from R2, which you did not refute that the support for cuts is there), and that when support for something gets high (drug legalization joke), a single party cannot stop them (e. g. gay marriage, decriminalization of marijuana). "Yeah, in this is CONGRESS that we are talking about. The entity that will let you down no matter what"" Entire paragraph is an Ad Hominem. I know that it is popular and cool to attack the government and say that they are the most evil people in the world, but it is a complete stretch and fallacy attack to do so. 2) Events "The US is by far, BY FAR the most powerful and well equipped military in the world to the point that no other individual nation on Earth could come even close to rivaling it pound for pound" It is therefore illogical to believe that the US no longer needs to be the dominant military force"" Is-ought fallacy [3]. I never said that we weren"t the most powerful military, only that we don"t have to be. Since my opponent had no other objections in the events category, I will leave that one alone. 3) Not enough time "But im arguing that that wont happen since politicians devote all of their efforts to preventing cuts to these areas since that is what their voter base values the most. Spending cuts on very touchy parts of the budget are the most short-lived trends in politics. The longest span the US has ever gone in successive years of reductions in military spending was 5 years (1991-1996), and it wasnt even cut at rates of 5% between years, it was at half of 1%" In 2005 dollars, from 1989 to1996, we saw military cuts in every year but one. Over the 7 year period, military spending went from $493.6 billion to $380.8 billion, averaging a 3.7% decrease per year (including the 1 year it increased) [4]. Again, while it may not be likely, it is possible and there is hope that it can happen. "If you look at military spending in the recent past, the largest reduction in military spending EVER was about $150 billion, and it took place over 12 years" This is historically false. While my opponent suggested that the largest cut was only $150 billion and it took 12 years, he only looked back to the 80"s. We"ve made $500 billion dollar cuts before. In 2005 dollars (meaning adjusting for inflation) our military spending was its largest in 1945, $846 billion [4], it was cut to $166 billion in 1947. The military took an 80.4% cut (79% if not adjusting for inflation) in 2 years. When adjusting for inflation, we"ve never spent that much since, and even if we let inflation skew the numbers, it took 23 years before our spending was back to that level (1968, Vietnam). "Healthcare spending meanwhile has almost NEVER been reduced, and over successive decades has consistently grown more and more expensive. " Healthcare spending wasn"t touched on at all in the previous round, so I may be long here. While we did briefly touch on life expectancy and baby boomers, budgets themselves were not discussed. It is true that we"ve not been good historically with cutting healthcare spending, the support from both sides show that a change will occur. There is greater support by both parties than there is for recognizing gay marriage or legalizing pot. "Fully 74% of Republicans and 88% of Democrats agree that "it is critical to preserve Social Security even if it means increasing Social Security taxes paid by working Americans. "" [5] Whether it is cutting the spending or raising the taxes for it, Americans are in huge support to make it more cost efficient. 4) We owe more money then what exists "The point of the argument was as I literally said: "To put into perspective how big the national debt is since people cant readily wrap their head around how big of a number 17 Trillion is. "" That may have been the point, but you used, and sourced an economically false reasoning to back that up. == Conclusion == We've made sudden military cuts (right after WW2) and we've made gradual cuts (late 80's and 90's). We can see there is overwhelming support to correct our healthcare spending. I've made some mathematical arguments that would pay off our debt within 30 years. There are, of course, countless options to get it paid within 70 years. Will it happen? probably not. But there is no question that it is possible and there is hope. [1] . http://money.cnn.com... [2] . http://www.globalresearch.ca... [3] . http://philosophynow.org... [4] . http://www.usgovernmentspending.com... [5] . http://www.nasi.org...