The debate over the federal budget is flaring up again.

Bitter exchanges are beginning to flood the halls of Congress. Republicans are accusing Democrats of wanting to maintain the bloated size of government. Democrats are accusing Republicans of wanting to slash vital public programs and politicize the debate over budget cuts. And the partisan members of each party are accusing their more moderate colleagues of disloyalty.

During the ongoing budget negotiations, the leadership of the Republican Party has shown a willingness to set loose the Tea Party members of their caucus, who have called for drastic cuts to the federal budget. Tea Partier Michele Bachmann — think Attila the Hun, but more extreme — has sought to rally support for her cause of shutting down the federal government until Democrats agree to strip funding for Planned Parenthood and health care reform.

And so the budget stalemate lingers, with the chance of a government shutdown increasing with each passing day.

So far, we’ve seen a lot of finger-pointing but not a lot of good ideas. Rather than criticizing cuts that have already been suggested — and in many cases, rejected — the following are several that I believe will be the most effective and least painful. All may not be workable over the next several days, but Congress should incorporate elements of each into their long-term budgetary outlooks.

1. Let the Bush tax cuts expire.

They’re the largest component of our structural deficits. Eliminating them would halve the deficit from 6.1 percent to about 3.6 percent of GDP.

2. Trim unnecessary defense spending.

It’s normally considered the third rail of politics, but it’s time President Obama showed some real leadership and urged Congress to eliminate unnecessary military appropriations. Even if every single dollar of discretionary spending was cut, this would still not be enough to eliminate the deficit, because it would only affect such a small fraction of our federal budget.

Military spending is much greater. The United States spends more money than the rest of the world combined on maintaining our military. I look forward to the day when schools are completely funded and the military has to hold bake sales to fund their next billion-dollar stealth fighter jet.

3. Get our troops out of Germany and Japan.

Not to mention all the other countries where the United States has residual bases from wars that ended many decades ago. It’s costly and unnecessary, not to mention humiliating for the countries in question. How would we feel if another country wanted a permanent military base on the outskirts of Chicago?

4. Eliminate corporate loopholes.

Despite raking in profits of $14 billion last year, General Electric paid nothing in corporate taxes thanks to some creative accounting schemes. If corporations want the rights and protections of personhood, then they must deal with the responsibilities of personhood as well.

They can start by paying taxes.

5. Cut subsidies to wildly successful oil and gas companies.

Exxon Mobil Corp. made $9.25 billion during the last three months and is expected to make more as the economy slowly recovers. Yet the federal government continues to transfer upwards of $3.6 billion of taxpayer money to them every single year.

I thought Republicans were against the redistribution of wealth, but apparently that only applies when the direction favors the poor and middle classes.

6. End no-bid defense contracts.

Several years ago, a study by Center for Public Integrity found 40 percent of the Pentagon’s $900 billion in prime contracts between 1998 and 2003 were awarded without any sort of competitive bidding. Such abuses have only grown worse since then, and the situation becomes more troubling when you consider the shady political favors that can result — tens of thousands of dollars of campaign contributions to the right people no longer seem like much when you’ll be rewarded with multi-billion dollar defense contracts.

These are just a few suggestions for getting federal spending under control. Complete austerity in the short term is not reasonable. You’re just not going to be able to balance the federal budget while fighting two wars abroad and another economic crisis at home.

Still, it is important that we begin to take action because, when issues like defunding health care reform and Planned Parenthood threaten to shutdown our government … well, that’s when it is time for Nero to start tuning his fiddle.

Jason is a senior in Engineering.