I've long advocated the "reorganization by budget cuts" approach. Congress is too lazy to do the authorizing properly? Fine - institute across the board 10 percent cuts to the top line. Let the agencies figure out how to live with ten percent less. That's 600 billion the first year. Then you repeat as needed. They can't cut ten percent and keep the structures they have. Nor will they accomplish anything near what's needed by closing monuments and museums.
Jesse Ventura, when he was governor of Minnesota, cut the state's funding of NPR, noting it was 2% of the total NPR budget. He quipped something along the lines of "any company that cannot survive a 2% budget cut doesn't deserve to continue."
Pay now or pay a much harsher consequence in the future. We are not a wealthy nation right now. We are acting irresponsible and this will affect the dollar as the world reserve currency. But we can thank Tricky Dick for the start of this by removing the gold standard.
One of the biggest problems we face is that too many people want our massive fiscal problems fixed solely by impacting others. This is why SS and Medicare are still untouchable but for the obvious things like improper payments and bureaucratic waste. Correcting those is good and necessary but won't really be enough.
SS and Medicare are untouchable for the simple fact that Americans are not willing to see the elderly die in the streets when they become too old or otherwise unable to work if family wasn't available to take care of them. That's how it was in the "Good Old Days" which is a great book to read by the archivist Otto Bettmann.
It's one thing to look for waste. It's another thing to throw the baby out with the bathwater when you order arbitrary spending freezes and layoffs of federal employees. The investigation and gathering of facts ought to come first.
You don't think that Musk and Trump behaving like bulls in a China shot with a "shoot first, ask questions later" approach isn't going to backfire? The suits are already flooding the courts. I don't doubt that there's a lot of waste to cut but Trump like Reagan has the political capital to get things done but that won't happen if he gets stymied in the courts for cutting in an absurd way.
I've long advocated the "reorganization by budget cuts" approach. Congress is too lazy to do the authorizing properly? Fine - institute across the board 10 percent cuts to the top line. Let the agencies figure out how to live with ten percent less. That's 600 billion the first year. Then you repeat as needed. They can't cut ten percent and keep the structures they have. Nor will they accomplish anything near what's needed by closing monuments and museums.
Jesse Ventura, when he was governor of Minnesota, cut the state's funding of NPR, noting it was 2% of the total NPR budget. He quipped something along the lines of "any company that cannot survive a 2% budget cut doesn't deserve to continue."
Pay now or pay a much harsher consequence in the future. We are not a wealthy nation right now. We are acting irresponsible and this will affect the dollar as the world reserve currency. But we can thank Tricky Dick for the start of this by removing the gold standard.
One of the biggest problems we face is that too many people want our massive fiscal problems fixed solely by impacting others. This is why SS and Medicare are still untouchable but for the obvious things like improper payments and bureaucratic waste. Correcting those is good and necessary but won't really be enough.
SS and Medicare are untouchable for the simple fact that Americans are not willing to see the elderly die in the streets when they become too old or otherwise unable to work if family wasn't available to take care of them. That's how it was in the "Good Old Days" which is a great book to read by the archivist Otto Bettmann.
It's one thing to look for waste. It's another thing to throw the baby out with the bathwater when you order arbitrary spending freezes and layoffs of federal employees. The investigation and gathering of facts ought to come first.
How well have such efforts worked out in the past?
Don't fall prey to nirvana fallacies.
You don't think that Musk and Trump behaving like bulls in a China shot with a "shoot first, ask questions later" approach isn't going to backfire? The suits are already flooding the courts. I don't doubt that there's a lot of waste to cut but Trump like Reagan has the political capital to get things done but that won't happen if he gets stymied in the courts for cutting in an absurd way.
I'm sure many of us have fantasized about having Gerard Butler's telephone! 😉 Great article.