NOTED

This quote from conservative commentator David Frum: "The United States provides less assistance to the unemployed and the poor than almost any other democracy. It spends 60% more per person on health care than almost any other democracy -- and gets worse results. The problem is not that Americans use too much medicine. People in other countries use more. The problem is that Americans pay too much for the medicine they use. Go where the money is, cut where the waste is grossest."

In addition to that, I might add that we let the energy companies take far too much of a profit off resources everyone in the country owns. If you skimmed just a few billion off the top of the company profits, they would not be hurting (really) and it might help balance the budget.