LETS BALANCE THE BUDGET!
Central planners shriek that without big government, planes will crash, trains, parks, and Big Bird will disappear. None of this is true.
Here are my (John Stossel's) cuts:
-Eliminate the Small Business Administration
-Repeal Davis-Bacon rules, under which the gov must pay fat union-set wages to workers on federal construction projects
-Eliminate foreign aid
I hear complaints already: All foreign aid? That would increase suffering! The small business administration? Some companies would never begin! Workers will suffer! The arguments are specious, but people believe them, and the lobbyist against such cuts would be ferocious. But they are absolutely necessary if we hope to have a future where the truly needs are helped. So far I (John Stossel) have saved $37 billion.
Uh-oh. Cutting 37 billion barely touches the deficit. We must cut more!
-Department of Education: Kill it and we'd save $106.9 billion (CATO Institute's numbers at
DownsizeGovernment.org). We don't need a FEDERAL education department. Spending 106.9 billion did nothing to improve learning. Education is a state responsibility.
-Department of Housing and Urban Development: $60.8 billion more
-Who needs the Energy Department? If wind or solar power is practical, private investors will rush to invest. The joy of private investment is that if they waste billions on boondoggles like Solyndra, they waste their own money, not yours. Private dollars, not the whims of political appointees, should determine energy investments.
Were up to $293.3 billion in cuts. A good start, but our deficit, as i write this, is $1.4 trillion. We must go further...
-Agriculture subsidies cost us $33 billion a year. Get rid of them. They raise food prices and distorts the economy.
-End the war on drugs. It doesn't stop abuse and it turns out to be a subsidy for thugs. $41 billion according to Jeffery Miron, Harvard Economist.
-Eliminate NASA, Fannie and Freddie, and the departments Commerce, Interior, and Labor (except 26 week unemployment)
-Privatize the Army Corps of Engineers, the TSA, USPS. Lease the costal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Eliminate federal flood insurance, the Corporation for National and Community Service, the FCC, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Humanities... but this still isn't enough...
To really attack the deficit we need to attack the "untouchable" parts.
-Social Security: Catos's plan to raise the retirement age and index benefits to inflation would save $85.7 billion. Heritage says cutting benefits for the richest retirees would save another $170 billion. I'd (John Stossel) would like to save more by privatizing Social Security but my progressive friends would scream, so I'll leave it out.
-Medicare and Medicade: Did you know the Department of Health and Human Services runs four hundred different subsidy programs? Lets use Cato's suggested cuts. $44 billion.
-Defense: We currently spend $721 billion on defense. That's about 1/5 of our budget. We could cut $243 billion if we shrank the military to its mot important role: protecting us and our borders. That's still twice of what China spends, the country with the next most expensive military.
That gives us $200 billion in SURPLUS!! But we don't even need to cut that much. We could grow our way out of debt if congress simply froze spending at today's levels. That budget would balance by 2017. If they limited it to 2% per year, they'd be balanced by 2020. But they won't even do that?!
This was taken from John Stossel's (a libertarian on FOX business ~ don't hate ) book "No, They Can't. Why Government Fails - But Individuals Succeed." This book is one of the best I've ever read. I challenge a statist/lefty/progressive/liberal to read this. I really do because i DOUBT they will... most likely too afraid to realize their precious progressive ideas are bunk.
Direct all anti-Fox jargon to someone who cares.
