Dakota Beacon

Congress has a spending problem, not a revenue problem. In its addiction to pork, congress displays an insatiable desire to spend other people’s money -- and even more money it doesn’t have. Even a fool can see you don’t need revenue if you curtail spending.

On a spending binge for decades, congress and the president expect us to pay for part of their excess and then borrow the rest. Spending money they don’t have, congress added almost $3 trillion to the national debt in the last 2 years. THREE TRILLION. That’s a 3 with 12 zeros. At this rate congress will grow the debt by at least $2 trillion a year for the next 10 years unless corrected. That’s a recipe for America’s economic disaster. Entitlement programs and interest on the debt are the major driving factors.

Dismissing serious federal budget reductions by claiming it hurts the elderly and children is a political canard, a scare tactic, partisan, the same old same old.

“Taxing the rich” won’t solve the problem either. A 100% tax on wealthy Americans or even confiscating all their wealth wouldn’t make a dent in the deficit or the debt.

A reasonable proposal by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, cuts a modest $343 billion in spending from the FY 2012 budget. That’s a start. A few of the proposals together with the associated savings include, but are not limited to, the following.

-AGRICULTURE:

            --Replace farm subsidies with Farmer Savings Accounts - $15 billion.

            --Eliminate the Foreign Agriculture Service -- $2 billion.

-COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT:

            --Eliminate the Community Development Block Grant program - $6 billion.

            --Eliminate the Economic Development Administration - $523 million.

-EDUCATION:

            --Return Pell Grants to their 2009 funding level - $8 billion.

            --Trim Head Start by $2 billion and convert to vouchers - $2 billion.

            --Scale back the Education Department bureaucracy - $2 billion.

-ENERGY:

            --Reduce energy subsidies for commercialization - $6.5 billion.

-GOVERNMENT REFORM:

            --Halve federal program payment errors by 2012, especially by reducing Medicare errors and earned income tax credit errors - $44 billion.

            --Rescind unobligated balances after 36 months - $20 billion.

            --Halve the $25 billion spent to maintain vacant federal properties - $12.5 billion.

            --Cut the federal employee travel budget to $4 billion - $10 billion.

            --Suspend acquisition of federal office space - $1 billion.

            --Trim the federal vehicle fleet by 20% (100,00 vehicles) - $600 million.

-HEALTH CARE:

            --Reform Medigap $6.2 billion.

            --Repeal Obamacare - $5 billion (larger savings in later years).

-INTERNATIONAL:

            --Eliminate the Development Assistance Program - $2.6 billion.

            --Eliminate the State Department’s education and cultural exchange programs - $625 million.

-JUSTICE:

            --Eliminate all Justice Department grants except for those from the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the National Institute of Justice - $7 billion.

            --Eliminate the Legal Services Corporation - $400 million.

-LABOR:

            --Eliminate the failed federal job training programs - $4.3 billion.

            --Eliminate the ineffective Job Corps - $2 billion.

-TRANSPORTATION:

            --Devolve the federal highway program and transit spending to the states - $45 billion.

            --Privatize AMTRAK - $1.9 billion.

-TREASURY:

            --Eliminate the additional child refundable credit - $26.6 billion.

-OTHER:

            --Repeal unspent stimulus spending - $60 billion.

            --Eliminate FCC funding for school Internet service - $2.3 billion.

            --Ban project labor agreements on federally funded construction - $2 billion.

            The US House FY 2012 budget included many of these cuts. If the Senate and the President won’t support it, then let them defend the spending binge and see how the 2012 elections go.

Dennis M. Patrick can be contacted at P. O. Box 337, Stanley, ND 58784 or (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).