Remember back in the summer of 2011, we faced the debt ceiling crisis and we were threatened with every sort of hurt the government could impose on us. Social Security payments would be stopped; food stamps would be reduced; mail would not be delivered, unemployment benefits suspended or stopped, on and on. Seems like it is starting all over again with the same game plan? Hit the American taxpayers as hard as you can and scare the hell out of them. The problem is that with a little thought and planning, much of our government spending could be reduced and eliminated and there would be no need to slam the poor taxpayers.
I heard an Air Force General claim that training would have to be stopped if the debt ceiling was not raised and planes would be grounded. This is crap and he knows it. The United States has thousands of bases all over the world and most of these could be closed and no one would ever know the difference except that it would take some planning and the savings would be realized over time but it might take some effort on the part of our Congress.
We have a 96,000 page Internal Revenue tax code that has so many loop holes in it that there are too many to mention. We have over two million government workers exclusive of the U.S. Postal Service. What about putting some of these people to work on a review of our tax code? And by the way, we have included in that two million workforce, 100,000 IRS employees that could be part of the review team as well. Am I the only one thinking about this?
Our U.S. Postal Service is literally bleeding to death. The Commissioner is pleading to make changes in the way the Postal Service is structured. We all receive mail on Saturday and much of it is junk mail or catalogues. We have talked about eliminating Saturday mail delivery for years, but again the bleeding and losses mount as we defer and delay and basically do nothing.
I wrote in June of 2011 about the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform that had at that time identified 75 different tax breaks and 30 different tax credits that were offered to business that could be eliminated with billions of dollars in savings. Doesn’t it bother anyone that the General Accounting Office reported that as far back as 2008, two out of every three United States corporations paid no federal income taxes at all?
It appears that our Congressional leaders look for the easy way out. Has anyone ever reviewed our Federal Aid? The budget for the Department of State is $51.7 billion dollars. Part of the budget contains line items like: “Achieving Peace and Security” – $7 billion dollars; “Governing Justly and Democratically” $0.9 billion dollars; “Investing in People” – $4.6 billion dollars; “Promoting Economic Growth and Prosperity” – $1.5 billion dollars; and lastly, “Providing Humanitarian Assistance” – $1.8 billion dollars. Isn’t this amazing and it is all included in a budget with a $1.2 trillion dollar deficit!
Maybe our government is too big. Is it too big for any one person or persons to get their hands around the massive expenditures? I think we have come to a point in time where there is no fat in the dollars to absorb any more waste. Maybe shutting down the government for a period of time is the thing to do? Maybe it is time to find out where our tax dollars are going? Wouldn’t it be something if the government ran well for months under a fixed debt ceiling where the only new money would come from offsetting or reducing dollars already budgeted? What a novel idea Mr. Obama.
