Where would you cut spending to reduce the defecit?

[Chargincharlie]

THATS IT groundpounder that last post of yours hit the nail right on the head....

[Chargincharlie]

Itchypav put obama right next to that guy they kind of sound alike to me...good video! but its a shame they put down a good warner brother cartoon introduction...

[Chargincharlie]

One more thing all the problems we have in this country Obama is signing a bill to let the GAYS serve openly in the military so once again they are catering to 2% of americans with pelosi right behind him that she got voted out of office so they just throw her in in another title thats the c r a p that just plain drives me nuts with these s t u p i d liberals...

[Chargincharlie]

Oh one other thing obama says he is not muslim well i guess muslims cant wear any jewelery during the month of ramadam that means no watch or wedding ring and guess who hasnt been wearing his watch or wedding ring for the month of ramadan you guessed it OBAMA when asked about it his people didnt no what to say just another one of his liittle lies but on a good note its nice to have people out there that catch this stuff i wouldnt of ever noticed i didnt no muslims didnt wear jewelery during ramadan..

[Travis Bickle]

I like this plan:

Time to Rein in Federal Spending
by Laurence M. Vance, December 21, 2010


The debate in Congress over the extension of the Bush tax cuts has obscured the issue of government spending. After all, it is because members of Congress love to spend money that isn’t theirs that we “need” an income tax to begin with.

Government spending is out of control. The federal budget is fast approaching $4 trillion. The budget deficit is over a trillion dollars. The national debt will soon top $14 trillion, as it rises by billions of dollars each day.

This crisis is not just because the Democrats are in power. Under the Bush presidency for eight years and a mostly Republican Congress for six of those years a $150 billion surplus in 2001 turned into a $1 trillion deficit in 2008. The federal budget increased by over $1 trillion. The national debt doubled. And during the last six years of the Clinton presidency, it was the Republicans that controlled both the House and the Senate.

The fact that the Republicans recently regained control of the Congress won’t mean anything when it comes to reining in government spending since in their “Pledge to America” the Republicans promise to “protect our entitlement programs for seniors and future generations” and only call for a reduction in government spending to the level it was during the Bush presidency.

All the statist proposals in the Democratic and Republican parties to rein in government spending are nothing more than bandaids: baseline budgeting, a Balanced Budget Amendment, automatic across-the-board spending cuts, sunset provisions, spending increases limited to the rate of inflation, spending caps based on GDP, deficit reduction targets, budget enforcement rules, elimination of earmarks, deficit commissions, elimination of unnecessary spending, temporary freezes on certain categories of spending, rollbacks to some previous level, non-binding public voting on spending cuts, and, of course, cutting waste, fraud, and abuse.

The only way to rein in government spending is by the wholesale elimination of departments, agencies, commissions, administrations, corporations, councils, boards, and bureaus with all of their programs and personnel.

Of the sixteen executive branch Cabinet-level departments, a limited Constitutional case could be made only for the departments of State, Treasury, Justice, and Defense. Any legitimate operations of the Departments of Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs could be subsumed under the Department of Defense. This means that the functions and bureaucracies of the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Labor, and Transportation should be eliminated in their entirety. The original four departments (Justice, State, Treasury, and War) might conceivably serve some useful purpose — but only if they were scaled down considerably, and especially the Defense Department, which spends most of its budget on empire and offense.

Next to go would have to be the alphabet soup of government agencies like the SEC, DEA, FEMA, FTC, FCC, OSHA, EPA, BATF, NASA, FDA, EEOC, LSC, TVA, NEA, FHA, NEH, CPB, SBA, NIH, NLRB, USAID, and NTSB.

This means no more funding for income redistribution schemes like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, SCHIP, food stamps, WIC, TANF, housing subsidies, foreign aid, refundable tax credits, Head Start, the National School Lunch Program, unemployment benefits, and farm subsidizes.

This also means no more funding for science, education, medical research, or climate change.

Oh, and there should be no office of surgeon general or drug czar, AIDS czar, or faith-based czar.

In other words, strictly limit government spending to only what is constitutionally authorized — just like James Madison, Grover Cleveland, and Davy Crockett believed.

When Congress appropriated $15,000 to assist some French refugees, Congressman Madison objected, saying: “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.”

President Cleveland vetoed a bill passed by Congress to provide financial assistance to farmers suffering from a drought. In his veto message Cleveland stated:

I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power and duty of the general government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit. A prevalent tendency to disregard the limited mission of this power and duty should, I think, be steadfastly resisted, to the end that the lesson should be constantly enforced that, though the people support the government, the government should not support the people.

And Congressman Crockett responded to a congressional attempt to help the widow of a naval officer:

I will not go into an argument to prove that Congress has no power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member upon this floor knows it. We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of the public money.

Just a cursory reading of article I, section 8, of the Constitution, where the powers of Congress are enumerated, is enough to see that Madison, Cleveland, and Crockett hold the solution to the problem and every member of Congress that defends the welfare/warfare state — that is, every member of Congress except Ron Paul — is part of the problem.

Government spending must be reined in, by dismantling the illegitimate functions of the federal government. It is possible, it is necessary, and it is time.

Laurence M. Vance is a free-lance writer in Pensacola, Florida. He is the author of The Revolution That Wasn’t. Visit his website: www.vancepublications.com.

[Travis Bickle]

Gp,

Are you in favor of that plan 100%?.... or are there some items such as Social Security? NTSB, SEC, FTC, that you are in favor of?

[Groundpounder]

Gp,

Are you in favor of that plan 100%?.... or are there some items such as Social Security? NTSB, SEC, FTC, that you are in favor of?

Social(ist) Security needs to be privatized like Chile did way back in 1981.  The only enforcement agency of the Federal government should be the FBI.  Any truly necesary enforcement currently done by the alphabet soup agencies can be consolidated there.  Most of the regulations put in place by these agencies do more harm than good (i.e. the new "net neutrality" reg by the FCC).  The many unelected bureaucrats need to justify their salaries.  The easiest and most visible way for them to do that is by cranking out regulations, needed or not.  No unelected official should be able to impose any regulation on American citizens.  Any such restriction of freedom (any time any activity is "regulated", it is a restriction of a freedom.  occasionally such restriction is justifiable and constitutional) should be voted on by congress and of course must pass muster with regards to constitutionality.  Congress should not be allowed to delegate their duties to unelected officials.  It is their responsibility.

The only way to rein in government spending is by the wholesale elimination of departments, agencies, commissions, administrations, corporations, councils, boards, and bureaus with all of their programs and personnel.

Read that over and over - as many times as it takes for it to sink in.

in their “Pledge to America” the Republicans promise to “protect our entitlement programs for seniors and future generations”

The Repugnicans really pizzed me off with that one.  But we've all known for a while that as a party, they aren't any better than the Demoncrats when it comes to fiscal responsibility, they just have different spending priorities.  Hopefully enough of the newly elected Tea Party types along with Ron Paul and a few others who believe in a small Federal government that operates within the limits set forth in the Constitution reject that "contract" and can bring about some meaningful cuts.  Entitlements make up a large majority of the federal budget.  They must be at a minimum an equally proportionate amount of the cuts.  As far as I'm concerned, no one except for a military veteran is "entitled" to one red cent from the federal government that they didn't work for, therefore all "entitlements" should be done away with.

This means no more funding for income redistribution schemes like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, SCHIP, food stamps, WIC, TANF, housing subsidies, foreign aid, refundable tax credits, Head Start, the National School Lunch Program, unemployment benefits, and farm subsidizes.

Any such "income redistribution" is wholly unconstitutional and would have been struck down as such if FDR wasn't successful in castrating the Supreme Court in the 30's.  The best chance we have for reining the federal government back within its constitutional limits is for the Judiciary to grow a set again.  That probably won't happen in my lifetime though.  And don't give me any bulls#!t about "judicial activism" either.  There is no such thing.  One of the main functions of the Judicial branch is to ensure that laws passed by the Legislative branch and signed into law by the Executive branch do not violate the Constitution.  Checks & Balances, remember?  This country is not a true "democracy", it is a republic.  It is not governed by "majority rule".  The Constitution protects the rights of minorities from being trampled upon by the majority.  That's the way it's supposed to work anyway.

[Groundpounder]

After I posted my last reply, I saw this in the listing for this thread:

1776 Views

That made me smile just a little.