:agree: Indeed they do, Steve. The whole thing needs massive restructuring. Send the whole Federal budget into bankruptcy court and start fresh. If that means massive lay-offs...so be it. Put them all back to work in the dreaded private sector and start manufacturing again. Boycott Walmart and buy American again.
This "service nation" experiment is, and will be, a massive failure.:blahblahblah:

OK..You can come out now...Rant Over:beer3:

Probably Not a Very Good Question
 

But, couldn't lots of money be saved if the perks were cut from both factions of Congress? Why does everyone propose freezing wages, cutting salaries, fewer benefits, etc. without addressing those people. Their compensation packages are ridiculous beyond belief, yet are never mentioned. How about a movement along those lines. What's good for the goose........

Please understand, Keedy, that the "everything else" funded by the $550 billion includes...

• Department of Agriculture
• Office of Personnel Management
• Department of Labor
• Department of Education
• Housing and Urban Development
• Department of Justice
• Department of Energy
• NASA
• Department of the Interior
• Environmental Protection Agency
• State Department
• Department of Commerce
• National Science Foundation
• Expenses of operating the U.S. Capitol and Congress
• Office of the President
• Corps of Engineers
• And several other smaller independent agencies.

Like I said, simply cutting and slashing government spending won't be all that easy. Even relatively small cuts to the agencies and departments listed above would result in many, many gored oxen. That's not to say that lots of oxen should be gored. I'm just saying it isn't as easy as it's made out to be.

Dilly, if we were to eliminate ALL the perks and benefits provided to members of Congress, the savings wouldn't be enough to buy even one of the F-22 Raptor fighters that DOD says it doesn't want or need and that Congress voted for anyway.

Steve, if we were able to eliminate all the Medicare fraud (although I don't now how) and save the $60 billion, add in the $30 billion from a 2% cut to DOD and simply eliminate all those foundations and agencies you mentioned (they fall under the "independent agencies" category) with total cost savings of of about $40 billion...we've saved only about $130 billion, less than 10% of the federal deficit projected for FY 2009. Where do we get the REAL cost reductions? A whole lot more than a 2% cut to DOD? Some serious means testing for Social Secuirity? A really serious reduction in government-funded healthcare benefits? A major whack at the Department of Health & Human Services, like slashing the budget for the FDA, the Center for Disease Control, Medicare and Medicaid previously mentioned, maybe eliminate the National Institute of Health, simply whack the departments addressing family services and problems of the aging. We can get along without NASA and maybe the Corps of Engineers, can't we? How about making the national parks float on their own bottoms and fund them totally with entrance fees? Why do we need national public radio? Let the states build the interstate highways. If they can't afford them, drivers will need to learn to avoid the potholes or the dangerous bridges. Why can't the airlines fund the operation of the FAA? They're the only beneficiaries. Why do we spend so much on NTSB trying to figure out why planes crash? It won't bring the victims back to life. How about OSHA? Let the employers police worker safety themselves. If they do a lousy job, the free market will increase their insurance premiums and workers will steer clear of working for them. Might be a few people killed in the process, but so what? We simply can't afford such government intervention in our lives. Speaking of another branch of government--can we really afford all those federal judges, courthouses, staff, etc.? Would anyone care if court backlogs were increased a lot? Hey, that might be a good justification for tort reform!

These are the types of cuts that will be necessary in order to achieve a meaningful reduction in federal spending. Are Americans ready for such reductions? Like I said, lots of oxen will be gored. Gored? Heck no...lots of oxen will be killed.

Short of all that, get ready for some serious increases in income taxes, something we've avoided for a couple of decades, even as our spending has increased so dramatically. The time may have come when the piper will have to be paid.

Anything worth doing does not come easy. Merge and cut..merge and cut...merge and cut...Completely eliminate the Dept of Education...Cut the politics out of EPA and use real science. Cut money that supports ACORN or any other political scam programs...There's tons of wasted "jobs" that are created by hacks for hacks.
I'll have to investigate further and report back.:crap2:

Like I said, Keedy, cutting the federal budget will not be an easy job. Seriously cutting the federal budget will certainly change our way of life.

Maybe everyone reading this thread ought to do as you suggest and "investigate further and report back". I'm certain we're all going to find that it's not an easy project.

Continuing to feed the ravenous beast of Government with more and more tax revenues will accomplish nothing unless the direction is first changed. Today. the average national government employes earns twice what employees in the private sector earn. The easiest way to start to cut costs is to (1) freeze all government hiring except for the Military; (2) Start systematically eliminating entire operating branches of the government (National Park Service, the entire Dept of Education, all backroom processing activities of the IRS, all activities of the Department of Agriculture that are not a part of direct interface with American Farmers, Bureau of Prisons, etc); fire all government employees now employed in these positions and contract with private companies to do the work with savings shared with the US People. If the existing govt employees are good enough, they can be hired by private contractors, if not, then we are better off having them off our payroll. This cannot be done by government agencies - if any of you remember Al Gore reengineering govt and the savings he claimed, you can discover for yourselves that well over 100% of the savings came from slashing the number of Military personnel, reducing our fleet by several hundred ships, etc. All this came back to haunt us during Gulf I.

Private Sector Analysis...Future Gloom
 

Future Gloom
 

The article is correcto-mundo, Keedy.

Once the Fed cuts the short-term rates to zero or near zero, that's one more tool in their arsenal to control or encourage economic growth that isn't working. And it's one step closer to increased taxes. Once the traditional tools used by the Fed don't work anymore, it's time to balance the budget--either by spending reductions, which are difficult as I've pointed out, or by increasing taxes.

Interestingly, we should be paying attention to what economic tools are working and those that don't seem to be effective anymore. The long-held theory has been that reducing interest rates will hype spending on capital goods, either housing, cars or major appliances by the consumer, or capital spending by corporations. Rates are near an all-time low right now and not too much increased spending has resulted. Maybe those with their fingers on the pursestrings have become motivated by something other than interest rates. Someone better find out what it is--in a hurry!

Proposals Anyone?
 

I tried to solicit proposals for balancing the federal budget with little success here. How about this...

An across-the-board 10% cut in the budgets of the Defense Department, Homeland Security, and ALL the other agencies of the federal government. That leaves interest on the national debt and Social Security untouched--for the moment anyway. It would include a 10% mandatory cut in Medicare payments.

Heck, we've all worked in companies that at one time or another, we experienced 10% cutbacks. Why not the government?

The spending reductions would total about $1.35 trillion. That's about the amount of the deficit last time I looked.

What do you think?

What I mentioned was a start, but it can go a lot deeper than that without meaningful change in our way of life.

You can go into any one of the "deparments" and make cuts in the headquarters and agencies which would not affect their operations an iota. Each headquarters is staffed with congressional liaison, policy, public relations, and similar types which serve no purpose other than to publicize the department/agency. Having them at the "Department" level in competition inter-departmentally is wasteful enough, but having them at every subordinate agency as well is downright sloth.

Want a real laugh - go to the Government Printing Office and review what is published, who gets it (in copy-counts in the thousands) and how much of that just gets thrown away because nobody ever really wanted or needed the product. But, agencies blow fortunes there on publications which for the most part do nothing other than tout the political appointee heading the agency.

Another ROFLMAO would be a trip to the General Accounting Office just to review the list of vacant office buildings (rented and owned by the fed), as well as the list of upcoming construction projects which are already superceded by events, but still under contract to do. Yet, this waste continues because some congressperson's backer is the recipient of the funds.

The easy way out is always to raise taxes. That's what monopolies of needed products do rather than get more efficient. The Fed needs to act like a competitive business would - constantly reviewing costs, getting more efficient to reduce overhead - in order to keep the cost of their services/products more attractive than the competitor. Until that mindset occurs - and something has to make that happen - the easy way out is to dump it on the backs of the public - just like in feudal times!

But no government ever tightens it's belt. All they do is increase taxes. Never even look at the cost side. Look at your property taxes every year for the past 10 years. There will be headlines when "the rate" goes down. But the amount of money you pay still goes up because your property value went up. Then the bottom falls out of the housing market. The tax base drops. Never even a discussion about also cutting cost. Just "we need to raise the rate" because values have dropped. I have worked for several companies over my career. Every time revenue drops, we find ways to reduce cost to maintain margins. Same with the home budget. But never with government.

Until they do I will not support any tax increase. If they made a concerted effort to decrease spending, I would support a tax increase to balance the budget. But the way you want to do it VK will cause more problems. Tax increases will cause federal revenue to drop unless the economy is growing. Just go back a few years to Jimmy Carter. Exactly what he tried. Inflation and unemployment went to double digits, and interest rates hit very close to 20%. That is where we are headed again and no one will even go back to look at why it happened and what can be done to prevent it. I have zero faith in our elected officials. They are there for the power only. They all must go ASAP.

How about eliminating the so called Czars, their staffs,
 

their offices, their benefits? These are nothing more than short cut organizations around other organizations already in place to do the very same thing. They also allow the bypassing of Congress in specific instances as the report directly to the POTUS. So we have an oblique message that they too know the Congress is an ineffective body. And like most big organizations....they never fix or eliminate what does not work...they just add staff around it....hence gargantuan increases in spending. This usually gets caught sooner or later in organizations that need to show a profit. In the case of the government....the sky is the limit. No end to their money supply....no accountability for spending....and no objections from the constituency.

I would love to see a survivor mentality approach be taken by the government as is done by big and small for profit businesses every day.
Unfortunately the incompetents in Washington are not capable.

btk

Just want to give kudo's to 4 consecutive posts. Great ideas and articulated very thoughtfully. Do not have much to add as I have had other coals in the fire this morning.

Seems to me that there are two things that really need our attention.

Jobs......Real jobs that don't have the government emblem on the paychecks.
Government restructuring...A better system that utilizes our hard earned money efficiently.

The Villages Is Different, Of Course
 

My property taxes here in the Sumter County part of The Villages have decreased--both the millage rate as well as the actual tax bill--each of the years that we've lived here. Since "One Sumter" was passed, the new group of County Commissioners seem to be doing an outstanding job of controlling county spending while at the same time maintaining or even improving services. I've attended several commissioner's meetings and it's pretty clear that they give each and every dollar spent here serious thought, considering all the alternatives available.

Don't get me wrong. I know that the primary reason why our property taxes have declined is because tax revenues from the fast-growing Villages part of the county are increasing far faster than the county budget. The "truth" will be told when the population of the county stabilizes, of course. But in the meantime, we enjoy our little "bubble" of prosperity here in central Florida, where many of the experiences that we've come to expect from government don't seem to apply here.

There is a good article in today's Daily Sun which demonstrates how gov't can "tighten it's belt". Sumter county made massive spending cuts to avoid any tax increases. Very impressive.