No base line budgeting, no adjustments for inflation. If 2008 budget was 2.9 trillion, that is the budget for each year, every year for their entire term in office. Politicians would be forced to make some choices on how best to spend a shrinking budget. And that's a good thing.
If we did that for 8-12 years, we would shrink the government by our growing economy making it a smaller percentage of our GDP.
So you say you want smaller government, but aren’t staging sitp-in protests to get it. You’re just sitting back throwing brickbats at other who claim to want smaller government because they’re not staging sit-ins either.
You are not comprehending the point I am making. It's NOT on our representatives radar. You can get many people to agree with "YEAH! we want a smaller government! We want it NOW!"
When the rubber meets the road and it starts impacting them personally, they change their tune. When it is their son-inlaw that loses their federal job down at the department of agriculture, or their daughter's job at the department of health and human services. When their retired parents start asking for money to help pay for prescriptions and their heating bills, they WILL reconsider their wish for a smaller government.
There are 2 million civilian federal workers excluding the post office. 5 out of 6 work outside of Washington DC.
Two thirds of our budget is income redistribution of some type or another.
I'm going to say this again
Two thirds of our budget is income redistribution of some type or another.
It sucks doesn't it? How many voters are the recipients of that income redistribution?
How do you reconcile Libertarian principles and continuing to spend two trillion dollars a year redistributing income? Or do their principles get compromised in some way to avoid being lynched?
How many potential voters would be allied against Ron Paul and his merry band if they were true to their principles and cut this spending to zero?
If RP gets elected,(somehow) is he going to force his idea of of government on the people?
It is a dilemma, one best approached not by flipping 75 years of socialism off like you switch off a light.
That leaves "working to roll back decades of federal government largesse" as little more than empty words. It's been claimed that Republicans (both rank and file voters and the leadership and candidates of the RNC) pay lip service to "smaller government" on the campaign trail, only to abandon it as impractical once in office. Is that who we should be, what we should represent, and the best we can hope for?