Posted on 03/16/2017 6:34:09 AM PDT by pgkdan
“No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth!” —Ronald Reagan
President Trump presents his first budget to Congress today (Thursday). It is, as The Washington Post points out, “historic” because if adopted it would be the biggest contraction in the federal government since the end of World War II. Predictably, a Post story focuses on the number of federal workers it estimates could lose their jobs, rather than on whether those jobs and the programs associated with them are necessary.
The biggest drivers of debt remain entitlement programs and true to his campaign promise, the president is not touching those, at least for now. His challenge will be to ask Congress to eliminate failed programs, because too many members rely on campaign contributions from lobbyists with an interest in maintaining the status quo.
Some federal agencies have long practiced a policy of telling employees to find ways to spend leftover money at the end of a fiscal year for fear their budgets might be reduced. The practice is a contributing factor to government’s seemingly unstoppable growth.
While most proposals for cutting the size and cost of government tinker with spending at the edges while ignoring the main drivers of debt, a beginning can be made. If Republicans start with failed programs and present them as failures that waste taxpayer money, the public might come to trust them when it comes to the bigger things.
Patrick Louis Knudsen, a consultant and visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C., has authored a plan he says can save $42 billion just by eliminating bad government programs and initiating spending reductions in others that may still serve necessary functions.
Knudsen’s recommendations, made in 2013, do not take into account projected savings from changes in Obamacare, but they are a good beginning. Many programs could be managed as well, or better and at lower costs, by the private sector.
The U.S. government, notes Knudsen, contributes money to many international organizations, which could easily be financed by private capital, if anyone is interested in them. These include the International Coffee Organization, The International Copper Study Group, The International Cotton Advisory Committee, the International Grains Council, and my personal favorite, the International Lead and Zinc Study Group.
There are 18 Energy Department programs Knudsen says could be turned over to the private sector.
Familiar targets include privatizing Amtrak and eliminating all subsidies for the Public Broadcasting Service, which once served a valuable cultural purpose, but is, today, in an age of multiple TV choices, as outdated as a VHS tape.
Space precludes naming more programs that could be cut, but visit heritage.org and search for Knudsen’s report which lists them all.
Cutting the size and cost of government is doable if the reductions are properly and skillfully presented to the public. Predictably, Democrats will howl about starving children because they always do, even when Republican proposals merely target the rate of spending increases without ever getting to real cuts.
Is there enough of our Puritan DNA left to eliminate waste? We’re about to find out. If a government headed by Republicans can’t, or won’t, live up to their philosophy of smaller government and more personal freedom, why do we need them? If unnecessary spending and needed entitlement reforms are not accomplished by Republicans, the spending will continue and the debt will grow until the inevitable economic collapse.
I saw Art Laffer on the tube this morning and he says forget about cutting entitlements for NOW. Get tax cuts passed and cut regulations and tackle entitlements once the economy is off life support. I agree with him. Tackling entitlements now would just kill any progress in reducing the size and scope of government in any meaningful way
I agree that entitlement reform is the MOST meaningful way to reduce government but not before the economy is strong enough to deal with the outcome on a personal level.
All the government has to do is get rid of the ILLEGALS, get rid of WASTE, and get rid of FRAUD upon our system.
Washington will have more money than they know what to do with....
A printer friendly link to the Knudsen article.
http://www.heritage.org/node/11666/print-display
He has many good papers at the Heritage website.
Thanks for that!
Social Security is a Ponzi scheme that will ultimately fail. When it first began twelve or thirteen FICA taxpayers supported every Social Security recipient. We are rapidly approaching two to one and less. When every young taxpayer is supporting one retiree the system isn’t sustainable.
When something can’t go on forever it won’t and the waste and fraud is tiny compared to the basic mathematics.
Now, we will hear cries about the "loss of jobs" (meaning "government jobs") in this President's budget proposal, because citizens have not been taught that government jobs drain the wealth of a nation, whereas private sector jobs are wealth creators.
Coercive "taking" power, when wielded against the citizenry by either the government alone (taxing), or in combination with another power (unions, etc.), is destructive of freedom and prosperity.
The following statement by Sir Winston Churchill, upon leaving office as Prime Minister in 1945, was prophetic for Great Britain, and as it turns out, the United States and the world:
"I do not believe in the power of the State to plan and enforce. No matter how numerous are the committees they set up or the ever-growing hordes of officials they employ or the severity of the punishments they inflict or threaten, they can't approach the high level of internal economic production achieved under free enterprise. Personal initiative, competitive selection, and profit motive corrected by failure and the infinite processes of good housekeeping and personal ingenuity, these constitute the life of a free society. It is this vital creative impulse that I deeply fear the doctrines and policies of the socialist government has destroyed. Nothing that they can plan and order and rush around enforcing will take its place. They have broken the main spring and until we get a new one, the watch wil not go. Set the people free. Get out of the way and let them make the best of themselves. I am sure that this policy of equalizing misery and organizing society--instead of allowing diligence, self-interest and ingenuity to produce abundance--has only to be prolonged to kill this British Island stone dead."
In the early days of America's experiment in liberty, its Founders warned of oppressive taxation by those elected to represent the people. Under their "People's" Constitution, the people were left free, and the government was limited.
While Europe struggled with oppressive government intervention, the genius Founders of America recognized enduring truths about human nature, the human tendency to abuse power, and the possibilities of liberty for individuals. Richard Frothingham's 1872 "History of the Rise of the Republic of the United States," Page 14, contained the following footnote item on the condition of citizens of France:
"Footnote 1. M. de Champagny (Dublin Review, April, 1868) says of France, 'We were and are unable to go from Paris to Neuilly; or dine more than twenty together; or have in our portmanteau three copies of the same tract; or lend a book to a friend: or put a patch of mortar on our own house, if it stands in the street; or kill a partridge; or plant a tree near the road-side; or take coal out of our own land: or teach three or four children to read, . .. without permission from the civil government.'"
Clearly the government of France at that 1868 date laid an oppressive regulatory and tax burden on citizens, robbing them of their Creator-endowed liberty and enjoyment thereof. Frothingham observed that such coercive power constituted "a noble form robbed of its lifegiving spirit."
Thomas Jefferson warned Americans:
"To preserve [the] independence [of the people,] we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses, and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes, have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account, but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:39
Note Jefferson's very last thought here. He declares that when government taxing and debt have reached certain levels, in order for individuals to survive, then their chosen "employment" becomes "hiring ourselves to rivet their (the government's) chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers." Might that account for why it is government employment levels which have risen at such great rates in recent decades?
Inasmuch as government creates no wealth and has no money, the pay for every job in government must first come out of the pockets of hardworking citizens in the private sector or be borrowed (to be paid back eventually from the pockets of future generations).
Ahhh, guess that's what you call "redistributing" wealth! In Jefferson's words, it's called "rivet(ing) chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers."
Part of the “fraud” is the FACT that the government (mainly the libs) have allowed people onto SS that have NO RIGHT to it. They never paid into it, and now take from it. This needs to be fixed. That, plus the DC government stealing money from SS to spend on vote-getting trash.
SS can work if it is used for what it was intended and WHO it was intended for.
Social Security is a fraud, it has always been a fraud and it will always be a fraud. It is a pay as you go, rob Peter to pay Paul, socialistic pyramid.
If you want it to “work” you better expect much lower benefits in the future (In real terms if not in nominal ones) because the money just won’t be there.
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