Posted on 09/18/2005 2:35:41 PM PDT by Mark Noonan
Remember we have a $2.3 trillion budget that's growing by roughly $150 billion/year. Everyone's making DeLay's point by not offering any serious cutting.
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I vote for getting the government out of the Social Security and Medicare business, and then eliminating all farm price supports. That's about a $1 trillion --half the budget.
If anyone has any other ideas, they might want to test them out on the National Budget Simulation Game.
Cut all money for buildings of any kind; make people who want buildings pay for building them (including stadiums and museums, for example). Cut highway money and make all highways toll roads. Make all 'subsidies' state and local responsibilities.
I think most welfare programs are state and local, aren't they? Cut all that are not. People ought to go to private charities and now we know there are plenty of them and they actually do work well. Limit all goodies to a maximum of five years over a lifetime, and no more 'have a baby, get a cheque' -- working people don't get a raise every time they have another baby, why should people on welfare?
Do all the rebuilding under the WPA. Make people put 'sweat equity' into any property that is being provided to them under the new program announced on Thursday night. Cut out all insurance that encourages people to rebuild in dangerous areas. Buy them out in those areas and make them relocate.
Too easy - eliminate everything except the military. Cut waste there, too.
The opportunity for anyone willing to work would be phenomenal.
We have every state in the union represented on FR, and quite a few non-US participants.
I propose a challenge.
Everyone should research the earmarks set aside for their own state (or aid to their country), provide the complete list, and offer up at least one of those to Katrina, and at least one other to overall budget reduction.
If we can do that and simply publicize the pork inherent in the system we will probably solve the entire problem.
I'm from Tennessee. I'll start there.
IMO he was prompting a reply from the "spenders" with sarcasm to prompt a political reaction by the "spenders" to strike reasonable debate to the issues of overspending by government.
You're not talking about eliminating the CIA, the boarder patrol, and the Treasury Dept. are you?
Nothing will be cut, this is just an exercise in futility!
Eliminate all spending on HIV/AIDS. Eliminate U.S. Dept. of Education. Eliminate Socialist Security. Eliminate all foreign aid to non-cooperative countries. Eliminate federal dollars to colleges which don't allow military recruiting/ROTC on campus.
24 billion in earmarks from the highway bill
40 billion by delaying the start of the Medicare perscription plan.
That's 64 Billion. Don't thank me, it's Indiana Congressman Mike Pence's idea.
I'll vote for ya.
Dairy Queen stock skyrockets?...JFK
smaller prison population, for one.
http://www.nea.gov/ Cut this out completely
http://www.epa.gov/ Reduce this heavily
http://www.hud.gov/ (http://www.stpete.org/Comp%20Plan/Housing.pdf) Cut out all the fat for those who have made HUD a multigenerational entitlement from the government. Many of the people living in the "projects" really are not qualified to live there if you were to dig into their finances.
http://www.usaid.gov/ Reduce our Aide to other countries. We are the worlds largest donor in shear dollar amounts and military assistance. Divert some of this towards domestic requirements and let the rest of the world call us names. They'll do that anyway.
Cut into the UN budget. (http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d02294.pdf http://www.un.org/) WE (THE US TAX PAYER) pays for all their office space in New York and elsewhere in the US. We make up over 22% of the entire UN budget and that does not account for our military expenditures for UN missions, where of course we carry a disproportional load. Why pay into an organization made up of third rate politicians who come from places like Iran and Chad, sit on human rights committees and lecture us about what we’re doing wrong?! But I know one thing, Bush won’t touch that one. But he should.
There are many places we can save money even today. It is UNWISE to cut into anything dealing with R&D, education, infrastructure, defense and intelligence as Clinton did. Cut in those “Made Up” necessities like the National Endowment for the Arts.
Let’s suppose we cut the UN budget by 20%, what would that alone save us?
Red6
Crap you thought of it too.
HUD is huge and a lot of it is just shear abuse. There are many who are moochers, freeloaders, hanging in this entitlement system.
Red6
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