Boz
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Post by Boz on May 25, 2010 15:34:29 GMT -5
republicanwhip.house.gov/YouCut/Seems kind of silly, but what the hell. It's the new Republican populism!!! Sadly, I did not see "Farm Subsidies" or "Ethanol Grants" among the list of things we could vote on to cut off spending. However, it does allow you to submit your own ideas.
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Bando
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Post by Bando on May 26, 2010 18:19:56 GMT -5
republicanwhip.house.gov/YouCut/Seems kind of silly, but what the hell. It's the new Republican populism!!! Sadly, I did not see "Farm Subsidies" or "Ethanol Grants" among the list of things we could vote on to cut off spending. However, it does allow you to submit your own ideas. Or defense spending, or entitlement cuts, or highway funding, or anything of substance, really. All this is going to do is perpetuate the myth that waste and pork are statistically significant portions of the federal budget. We spend a lot because we have decided to spend a lot, not because we lose large sums to waste and pork. |
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Boz
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Post by Boz on May 26, 2010 18:56:58 GMT -5
I agree, except that, just because things aren't statistically significant, that's no reason not to ax them if they are wasteful or frivolous.
But your main point stands.
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The Stig
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Post by The Stig on May 26, 2010 22:39:29 GMT -5
The biggest problem cutting spending is that the 3 most expensive parts of the budget are also the 3 most untouchable: Defense, Social Security, and Medicare/Medicaid. If those 3 things were the only things our government spent money on, we'd have still had a deficit for this past year.
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Boz
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Post by Boz on May 27, 2010 9:24:22 GMT -5
FWIW, eliminating the federal employee pay raise (more accurately, freezing federal employee pay at current levels for one year) won the vote.
It will now be introduced on the House floor, where it will almost certainly die a quick and unnoticed death.
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SFHoya99
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Post by SFHoya99 on May 27, 2010 14:30:09 GMT -5
I agree, except that, just because things aren't statistically significant, that's no reason not to ax them if they are wasteful or frivolous. But your main point stands. I tend to vote Democrat because of philosophy, but one of the most frustrating things about being associated with the party is the weird denial that the world's largest bureaucracy doesn't waste a tremendous amount of money. A big part is the level of detail that Congress goes into budgeting. And a big part is the lack of a budget control or profit motive. |
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SFHoya99
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Post by SFHoya99 on May 27, 2010 14:37:27 GMT -5
The biggest problem cutting spending is that the 3 most expensive parts of the budget are also the 3 most untouchable: Defense, Social Security, and Medicare/Medicaid. If those 3 things were the only things our government spent money on, we'd have still had a deficit for this past year. Well, there's waste internal in a couple of those. Cutting at the House floor level isn't the only option. That said, yes, while I don't condone wasting $19M somewhere, people don't get the proportions. Defense is over half the discretionary spending. There's also a whole slew of things that could be reduced but not cut -- Treasury, Justice, Homeland, etc. before you even get to stuff that even the most crazy of Libertarians would attack. The problem is that we are running a trillion dollar deficit. That's insane, but of course there's no way to politically change that. So we're just going to run off a cliff. |
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Bando
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Post by Bando on May 27, 2010 20:15:23 GMT -5
I agree, except that, just because things aren't statistically significant, that's no reason not to ax them if they are wasteful or frivolous. But your main point stands. I tend to vote Democrat because of philosophy, but one of the most frustrating things about being associated with the party is the weird denial that the world's largest bureaucracy doesn't waste a tremendous amount of money. A big part is the level of detail that Congress goes into budgeting. And a big part is the lack of a budget control or profit motive. My point isn't that bureaucracy doesn't produce waste (any sufficiently large organization, public or private, will), my point is that this waste is not the cause of our budget deficit. The cause is that we have decided to spend money for certain things without raising the necessary revenue to pay for them. Boz and I most likely disagree how to go about bringing that into balance, but we agree on what the actual problem is. Taxes need to be raised and/or spending needs to be curtailed. Saying that we only need to eliminate waste is a cop-out, a magical answer that avoids hard decisions. |
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SFHoya99
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Post by SFHoya99 on May 27, 2010 20:32:08 GMT -5
Agree, Bando. But there's some money there. It might be closer to $100 per citizen, but that's still $100.
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