Wednesday, April 15

Which federal spending would you cut?

It's easy to complain about wasteful government spending; I do it constantly.

But it behooves us whiners to offer specific ideas rather than bitching in the abstract. Here is a huge image of federal spending. Where to start?

My first act would be to cut the defense budget in half. This will be a mess and need to be done gradually over several years, but that'd be the eventual goal.

I'd abolish the Department of Education and put every school on the path to charging its own competitive fee. Schools that can be privatized will be; those that cannot be easily privatized will get full local control (by the state or by the minicipality; however the local laws work). The entire budget of the existing DoE would be voucherized for families to pick the school they prefer.

These vouchers would work roughly like this: Every family at 150% of the poverty rate and under gets additional funds to pay for school lunches. Everyone between 150% and 400% of the poverty rate will get compensation on a sliding scale. Families above 400% of the poverty level will get nothing. These funding levels will have to be coordinated with local property taxes and other sources of school funding so that communities are close to carrying their own weight.

I don't see food subsidies listed under the Department of Agriculture, but I'd phase them out at a rate of about 15% per year, down to absolute zero.  Ethanol would be junked.

I'd get rid of the TSA's useless security theater and rename the Department of Homeland Security to something less Orwellian.

I'd have to kick the health and Medicare portfolios over to someone who knows more about those behemoths.

I wouldn't touch Social Security for at least 10 years. I don't like the system, but it's relatively solvent and asking people to trust their money to private plans is a nonstarter right now.

My other big ideas are on the revenue rather than spending end. I'd abolish the regressive FICA tax, flatten the income tax to some degree (so it's less progressive), get rid of most deductions, and then adjust the top-level rates uniformly to satisfy the level of revenue needed.  Filing federal taxes would become so simple, most people's 1040s would fit on a postcard.

Sigh...I can dream. Where would you start?

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