An across-the-board 1% cut in federal spending for five years would balance the federal budget at Clinton-era spending levels without any harmful tax increases.
Cutting spending across-the-board puts everyone in the same boat and eliminates the politics that has thus far made spending restraint impossible.
This would be a real cut from the previous year actual, not from the inflated current services baseline. If a program spent $100 billion in 2012, it would spend $99 billion in 2013, $99.1 billion in 2014, $98.2 billion in 2015, $97.2 billion in 2016, and $96.3 billion in 2017.
Americans have cut their spending by far more than 1% during the recession, yet government spending has grown by 20%. A 1% spending cut for the federal government--a penny out of every dollar--is all it takes.