Posted on 02/22/2013 8:40:56 AM PST by SeekAndFind
The U.S. government is one week away from the sequester deadline, when $1.2 trillion of across-the-board spending cuts will go into effect.
The budget slashing is set to hit everything from NASA to food inspectors, and members of both parties are alternately playing the blame game and trying to come up with a solution to avoid the cuts.
Still, it's worth noting that there are some things the government spends money on that could definitely go. Each year, the conservative Heritage Foundation combs through the budget and points out some particularly egregious expenditures and redundancies.
Here are forty cuts they've identified that the government can totally afford to make.
* The government wasted $115.3 billion in improper payments, paying money either to the wrong person, in the wrong amount, or for the wrong reason.
* Amtrak lost $84.5 million having food and beverage services, a total of $833.8 million in 10 years. It has never broken a profit on serving food.
* The Conservation Reserve Program of the Department of Agriculture pays farmers $2.1 billion every year not to farm in order to reduce soil erosion.
* The Department of Agriculture spent $2 million on an intern program for the Office of the Chief Information officer. One intern was hired.
* The government spent $1.7 billion maintaining 77,700 unused buildings.
* The Government Accountability Office found 34 areas where federal agencies have overlapping goals or duplicative services, costing billions annually
* There are 80 economic development programs operating out of four different agencies alone. Many of these programs have overlapping or competing missions
* Seven different agencies have more than 20 different programs addressing homelessness
* Within the Department of Transportation are over 100 economic development programs in five agencies in the Department of Transportation alone
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Keeping Obama’s skinny ass and his wife’s broad beam in Washington would save millions.
Bookmark!
Obviously, we can't afford to cut that.
Hell. Fire some FBI special agents. Shut down some schools.
Form a team of twenty self-employed accountants, give them six months to survey the scene, and go with their recommendations.
Or if cutting out all those things is too complicated, to take care of the $50 billion on the discretionary side, just cut half the Education Dept budget. Or just cut it out completely and that would take care of the other $50 billion on the military side. It would still leave enough money to pay for several janitors to clean up the place so it could be put on the market!
What the author fails to account for is that almost all of those expenditures are made to political cronies for political purposes. If you were to go back in time and tell LBJ that his war on poverty would destroy black families, start the dollar’s decline and wreck American society he would still do it. The same is true with almost any government decision. These decisions are made on the points of political expediency, not for the general good. Even with perfect knowledge of the future, politicians will always leave the hard decisions for later or for the next office holder.
If we had a leader that was in his right mind, he would start selling federally owned lands to Americans, for conservation and/or development.
Guys, this is a silly article. So are comments thus far.
These numbers quoted are absurd. The debt is just about 17T and people are swaggering around at how they found 10B in supposed waste. Even one guy just said let’s cut 1/2 the govt — and I doubt he realizes that would only be about 1.6T.
In other words . . . cut 1/2 and you do only 10% of the debt.
Now additionally, don’t delude yourself. If you cut 1/2 the govt (which HAS to include your parents Soc Sec) then that is money not spent in the economy and GDP IS going to fall. Don’t now lash out with Austrian or Keynes words because no one cares whose name means what. If you cut Social Security, old people can’t pay for things. Period.
If GDP falls, so does tax revenue and that 1/2 cut you just did won’t even dent the 1.1% deficit. Obviously spending more money doesn’t fix anything or it WOULD HAVE, given deficits run for 20 years.
In other words, in conclusion, THERE IS NO ANSWER. This is all going to fall. Billions worldwide are going to die, and soon, and there is nothing that can be done about it.
Uh, correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the vacationer-in-chief promise to cut out the waste and duplication several years ago?
RE: In other words, in conclusion, THERE IS NO ANSWER.
How about starting with the above 40 programs? Let’s start with that.
The easy way to do it is cut every department 5% across the board.
Forget the pick and choose, just pass out the instruction to the department heads.
Just to get the ball rolling, make it 1% so anyone complaining will look foolish.
Billions. The total bill for the Sun King and his Wookiee’s vacations were OVER a billion dollars last year, with all the hangers on, infrastructure, multiple jets, etc. . .
I think we should eliminate nearly all Federal government programs and departments and then, on a case by case basis, reinstate all the ones we find we just can’t do without.
Yeah, we're headed for a crash, but we wouldn't be told about it officially in advance. It would cause world wide panic. Maybe that's why the feds are stocking up on ammo and having zombie killing practice. They've even ordered targets that look like children and pregnant woman to practice on. This would also explain why oboma doesn't seem to care about where the nation is heading. He and his family are living high on the hog and engaging in every type of spending spree they can think of.
The socialists have run out of other peoples money. They've scarfed up as much as they can from innocent to people and businesses that create jobs to buy their votes, but now they can't honor those freebie promises they made anymore. The parasitic voters are going to get very hungry when those EBT cards no longer work. Those people will be just like starving zombies. They'll eat anything.
There is something to be said for realizing all efforts are futile but I do not think the U.S. is at that position presently so I don't agree with you.
I do agree that if cuts are not made we are in trouble. The first step are acceptance that cuts can be made, no matter how insignificant in terms of cuts vs the problem (as you correctly point out).
If the list contains any of the following items, I’d be in:
1) Abolish the Department of Education.
2) Abolish the Department of Energy.
3) Abolish the Environmental Protection Agency.
Then we’d start talking real money.
It’s all a lie. The 1.2 trillion is spread out over a decade. The cuts are also in projected budgets. There will be no actual cuts. And only 22 billion in these fake cuts are for 2013.
The current scenario regarding the federal budget is as follows:
Revenue: $2.3T
Spending: $3.2T
Debt: $16.5T
Cuts: $0.044T
If this were to translate to an average family’s annualized budget in the US it would look like:
Income: $45,000
Spending: $62,609
Credit Card Debt: $322,826
Decrease in spending: $861
How will that family ever buy groceries given that $861/12=$72 reduction in spending every month!
I’d bet that budget looks fine to the teenager of the family. Wait, that translates well to the behaviour of our President.
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