One Presidential Nominee is Set

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mrstickball said:

Right, but there's enough bipartisan support for nuts-and-bolts stuff in congress that they could easily override vetos, especially if they figure out that they all need to support each other's  pork projects in order to get any one of them passed.

I agree with three of your four proposals, anyway.

Mr Khan said:

mrstickball said: Mr Khan said: Would it really be in the president's power to cut budget that much? Even if the Libertarians swing into the White House, they'd need substantive support from outside. Though if he's willing to abuse executive privilege He did pretty well at vetoing everything the legislature tried to pass until they started slashing things in New Mexico. It'd be hard, but I think he could do it, because there is a lot of pork in almost every government agency. End the war in Afghanistan, the War on Drugs, slash the DoD's budget by 20%, then cut off all stimulus funding and you've probably covered more than half the deficit.

 I would have thought the same thing would happen in Gary Johnson's New Mexico where 2/3rds of the legislature was Democrat, so they already had a built-in majority against him.

Yes, there would be a few over-rides. But he could use the veto to at least achieve a modicum of things to be done. More importantly, he could force both sides to come to the table and actually write a budget, which would then (hopefully) get both sides to agree on some cuts.

There's a big difference between a state government and the federal government.  Most state governments cannot legally operate with a budget deficit, so the legislators themselves have a legal obligation to work together to create a balanced budget, or raise taxes.  The federal government however, can run up a deficite as we all know.  Both parties are guilty of doing it.  Budgets rarely get vetoed at the federal level, this is mostly due to the fact that getting a budget passed is actually a lot of work.  Where vetos usually happen are on appropriations and other spending bills.

Also, in order to participate in the debates, a candidate has to have garnered I believe 10% of the vote.