Posted on 03/17/2011 4:02:15 PM PDT by Qbert
Senator Rand Paul, R-Ky., unveiled today his five-year path to a balanced budget, leaving several federal agencies behind. Among the items on the cutting room floor are the Departments of Education, Energy, Commerce and Housing and Urban Development.
“There’s a lot of things in here that everybody could agree to, Republicans and Democrats, but nobody’s leading on the president’s side and on our side we felt we needed to put this forward to get the debate started, at the very least,” the freshman Senator explained at a Capitol Hill press conference this afternoon.
The proposal also calls for the repeal of “Obamacare,” but leaves entitlements untouched.
“There’s an argument for every federal program up here… Nobody’s coming up here asking me for money that’s not for a good reason. But the alternative is that we get into a point of financial disaster where nobody gets any money,” he said.
According to Paul, a Tea Party conservative, the proposal will bring spending to the “historic average since World War II” in just one year. He further claims the budget achieves a $19 billion surplus by FY2016 and will bring all non-military discretionary spending back to FY2008 levels.
Paul’s proposal gained support from freshman Senator Mike Lee, R-Utah, who today challenged anyone who opposes the plan to come up with a better option.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.abcnews.com ...
Wow!!
I like his thinking!!
It will be a cold day in hell when these dept are axed.
Nobody in DC has the political will to cut them. Words are just words, when the cutting time comes, nobody but a few in DC have the backbone or cajoles to actually do it. You need more than a few good men
Personally, I like to add about a dozen more but it will never happen, either.
We could cut 50 % of the government tomorrow and I seriously doubt anybody would actually notice and if informed would not care
Wonderful. Now add EPA and BATFE and we are golden!
Nice intro with the Gipper pic.
LOL, true
“Sen. Paul unveils 5-Year budget plan to eliminate four Federal Agencies”
-
X-Department of Education...
X-Department of Energy...
X-Department of Commerce...
X-Department of Housing and Urban Development...
-
4 Down; how many more to go?
He forgot the Department of Labor!
I’m getting a bit gisgusted with the sniping going on at FR just because he “ain’t my guy”. He may not be mine either but at least he made his position known. As for cutting other departments, I agree but let’s start with the most useless, dangerous and vulnerable where a solid case can be made and people will jump on board. He picked the four best cases. Get the ball rolling and Paul is doing that, from the Senate!
I can live with that.
I hope he’s successful.
Nice plan.
But could we stop talking about drafting all these first year Senators? Wasn’t that part of the issue with Zero? He was a Senator for a matter of months before starting to run for President?
Don’t forget, the President doesn’t legislate. A lot of these solutions are going to have to come from Congress and we need solid Conservative leadership there too. If we can flip the Senate and gain a nice majority we can work with Zero’s Republican replacement and fix all these issues.
Rant off!
You may be right, perhaps not.
By drawing attention to these (useless) departments it will hopefully force the bureaucrats in D.C. to defend each.
And for the record, most of these departments are less than fifty years old:
Energy - formed 1977
Education - formed 1980
Commerce - formed 1903
Housing & Urban Development - formed 1965
Excellent point! Same with freshmen representatives, governors and others. Let them mature and do the job they were elected to do. Let them prove themselves as well that they can’t be corrupted.
I don’t know....he reminds me of that delusional kook who led those people in California who killed themselves waiting for the Mother Ship....
Have they not heard of Zimbabwe?
Compare Madoff's puny multi-million ponzi with a 14 Trillion PONZI scheme. Plus, the bulk of the civilized world is in even worse shape. Armageddon.
Now, toss in a few more major earthquakes, and continued war in the mideast...sigh.
“But could we stop talking about drafting all these first year Senators? Wasn’t that part of the issue with Zero? He was a Senator for a matter of months before starting to run for President?”
—But there’s a difference: Zero is a Communist. Communism will always fail no matter how experienced the ruler is. OTOH, you could have a solid Conservative on any local school board run the country and he/she will do a better job than Zero. Obviously experiences helps- but it’s the principles that matter; principles that have succeeded for a long time.
“A lot of these solutions are going to have to come from Congress and we need solid Conservative leadership there too.”
—And that’s the problem. We’re only as strong as the leadership (that is, until enough members finally say enough). I’m not seeing any substantive leadership from Boehner and crew- until I do, I will assume it’s not going to happen.
I can’t say I agree with Rand Paul on everything, but at least he’s taking the initiative and getting the conversation started. If people fear him, for whatever reason, maybe they should bring something compelling to the table and stop taking their support for granted.
I’m not ready to anoint Rand Paul as the next Republican presidential candidate (and I probably won’t ever be) but at least he’s laying out a basis for getting the federal budget under control. Cutting these 4 federal agencies may not happen - yet - but we have to have someone besides posters on FR making these statements and a Republican U.S. senator is exactly who should be doing so. I assume Senators Paul’s proposals will receive a lot of media coverage, which is good, although the leftmedia will, naturally, be apoplectic and act as if he wants to kill puppies but they’ll do that right until the moment the U.S. goes into bankruptcy so why not at least, start the debate? Senator Paul has done that. Kudos to him.
He left out the EPA, Agraculture, and a host of others that should be eliminated along with all that work for them!
I wouldn’t be surprised if Paul has those in his sights as well, but you pick the fight you can win first. I have mixed feelings about EPA. It definitely needs to be curbed, but I’m not sure about completely eliminated. That could be a very hard case to make. It does suggest budget cuts to “restore” these agencies to their original purpose and remove their dictatorial regulating authority.
“It still leaves us with a $14,000,000,000,000+ debt plus interest! If they meet the plan (Has almost never happened).”
—So, what would you do to address it then?
(Keep in mind of course, that Obama, Reid and the MSM will scream that you’re killing senior citizens and forcing people to eat out of garbage cans if you touch entitlements).
Let's not.
In a business, that would be like promoting a hotshot salesman to CEO, instead of the Chief Operations Officer. No board of directors in their right minds would do that.
Rand Paul needs to get some EXECUTIVE experience under his belt before taking on the biggest executive position on the planet. Let's see him manage the government business of an entire state before we elevate him to president of the US.
Same goes for every other prospective presidential candidate. Legislators do not make good presidents. The current ex-Senator is making a complete mess of this country, and the fact that he's never run so much as a hamburger joint is proving to be disastrous.
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