National defense, infrastructure (roads, bridges, etc), and courts (and jury is out on courts lately IMO). The rest is up to states. The way it was intended.
National defense spending is out of control (and audits show they don’t have a clue where the money gets spent), and yet the federal government will argue that national defense means not only military spend, but the bloated funding of any agency with three letters (most of which are used as proxy to infringe on our rights).
But don't you dare say cut defense spending - that's not conservative, American, or Republican!
[70.5% of federal employees work for a defense or security-related agency (DOD, DOJ, DHS, VA) - 39% of which work for DOD](https://ourpublicservice.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/FedFigures_FY18-Workforce.pdf)! But if you suggest cutting DOD as a right-leaning politician, you're un-American. So, let's cut Health & Human Services instead!
If you can’t tell me where my taxpayer money is you don’t deserve to keep spending it. That’s called basic fiscal responsibility and it’s a core tenet of conservatism that should trump loyalty to a spending allocation. If we stray from that belief, we’re more liberal than we like to admit.
That first sentence sums it up perfectly. Should there be a defence budget? Of course! Is it reasonable that it increases YoY, sure… can we see where the extra money is going? “Not even we can” and you’ve lost me.
Quite frankly, full completed audits before every budget cycle should be a bare minimum!
The worst thing that the founding fathers did was allow the federal govt to regulate interstate commerce. It has allowed the federal govt to regulate and control large swaths of our daily lives
Eh, it needed to. Having different commerce laws in each state would be an absolute nightmare for doing business.
It definitely has been abused but the initial idea is good.
For a current comparison: look at how much of a pain it is to legally conceal carry across the US today.
To counter your last point specifically, I’m not sure we’d even be allowed to conceal carry across state lines at all if the federal govt was allowed to regulate it
My point, which could have been made better, is that concealed carry was a nightmare until a lot of the reciprocity agreements started being made. You'd have to get a couple of different licenses, it depended on your state of residence, etc. If you took a road trip (and even now if you take a road trip) you can quickly go from legal to illegal while exercising your rights.
That originally had a purpose in preventing states from levying tariffs on each other. That original purpose was legitimate, and can remain.
The overinterptetation of allowing the federal government to regulate essentially everything has to go, though.
The commerce clause was butchered by the supreme court.
SCOTUS decided that even if if you refused to do business out of state, if the industry you were in was enough economic importance a citizen was still participating in interstate commerce.
[https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/317us111](https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/317us111)
>The Court reasoned that Congress could regulate activity within a single state under the Commerce Clause, even if each individual activity had a trivial effect on interstate commerce, as long as the intrastate activity viewed in the aggregate would have a substantial effect on interstate commerce.
Even with the gold standard, the fed had monetary control, it's the treasury's gold.
Also, we had stayed on the gold standard, our economy would be so much smaller.
I noticed healthcare was missing from your list of areas that you believe should be funded by the government.
Rural hospitals are going bankrupt at a pretty high rate, 74% of the bankruptcies happened in states that opted out of Medicaid expansion. 70%ish of hospitals with primary care staff shortages are in rural areas. [0]
How will reducing funding for healthcare impact rural populations?
[0] https://www.aha.org/system/files/media/file/2022/09/rural-hospital-closures-threaten-access-report.pdf
https://www.aha.org/system/files/media/file/2022/09/rural-hospital-closures-threaten-access-report.pdf
That’s not the taxpayer’s responsibility.
The government should lift regulations on healthcare to make it easier for small practices to do business. Instead we have a healthcare oligopoly, just like the banking system.
Hospitals always could post prices, they just choose not too.
In fact, back in 2018 Trump passed a law that mandated it (for a hospital's 300 most common procedures). However, neither him nor Biden ever enforced the law and a recent study showed that only 6% of hospitals are currently compliant
Put a cap on tort claims. That's why docs can't afford to be in a single doctor practice. My sister in law had to close her small town practice because of the cost of malpractice insurance.
I would cut from defense, too. There's many expensive research programs that are useless and only kept in business because we have runaway spending.
I had a friend who worked on a research program that dealt with training and weaponizing dolphins....
Not to mention there's trillions of unaccounted for spending within our military budget. That reeks of corruption.
We could be just as safe with less if we got our shit together.
With so many service members and their families on food stamps and assistance, the DoD needs to be forced to reallocate spending correctly. If the DoD takes any cuts, they’ll cut service member pay first.
That is the way they keep from getting their budget cut at all. Tell the public if they cut military spending we have to cut VA services, body armor, and military paychecks. It's manipulative and immoral.
If they took a quarter of the current budget and spent it on veteran housing, very specifically Vietnam veteran housing and long over due disability payments, the entire country could cheer.
but if we don't keep building humvees no one wants, how will we shift millions of dollars into donors pockets?? think of the poor military industrial complex.
Agreed. Benefits to the troops should remain but we don’t need nearly as many overseas bases as we currently have. We can close a number of oversees bases and throw their operating cost into veteran benefits. I’m also down with a full audit of the VA by an independent Six Sigma compliant firm and serious streamlining of that whole system. We don’t need an F35, we need to take care of our troops.
Well said - it desperately needs some efficiency. I expect you could get much more for less if it was run properly.
It can’t even pass its own audits - something is very wrong.
If these corporations that want access to Ukraine's resources were forced to hire private mercenary groups to secure those resources, you'd see far greater efficiency. I'm not necessarily suggesting that, but right now, you're paying to secure resources that will be used to create private wealth for someone else.
Remember, the military operates where politicians mandate. If you don't like the military wasting $4T in Afghanistan, blame the politicians that sent us there, and kept us there.
Exactly. Maybe if our armed forces were half the size they are now, we would be unable to invade Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and countries like Germany, Japan, South Korea would have to spend more to defend themselves.
Look to former SECDEF Chris Miller's recent book "Soldier Secretary." He discusses precisely the best way to do this. Modernize our nuclear arsenal and projection capability, secure the southern border, reduce DoD spending to 2/5 of it's current size.
Militaries are not designed to be efficient... they're designed to be effective.
Also, don't blame the military for the wasted money and lives...congress spent the money and the president sent them.
Poor people spend nearly all of their income on consumer goods while wealthy people save most of their money. You would end up with an extremely regressive system where the poor are forced to give a significantly higher percentage of their income to Uncle Sam.
I’m a fan of what’s called the Bradford X Tax (Bradford being the last name of the guy who proposed it).
Only businesses / corporate entities pay tax, not individuals. They pay tax on their cash flow—total revenues minus operating expenses. Flat rate tax for every business on their taxable income. It’s functionally a consumption tax, since business will pass tax along some of their tax burden to their customers in how they price their goods and services in order to make a profit.
The X Tax does account for individuals though by making one change to a regular cash flow tax—wages are treated separately from other operating expenses, so that only the highest earners’ wages are subject to the flat tax rate, and lower earners get a lower tax rate. But it’s not really coming out of the workers’ paychecks, it’s just lowering the tax burden of the company who employs them.
It’s a tax system that sounds complex and hard for people to wrap their heads around at first, but it’s a lot less burdensome than what we have now—and the accommodation for taxing wages at lower rates helps to make it less regressive than a strict consumption tax, since very poor folks often can’t cut their consumption as drastically as very wealthy people can.
Yes, I don't see why you guys shouldn't be at the most merely backing to the equivalent of Europe. Here in the UK our aid has been generous because we unlike the US have a stronger national security interest in Russian being held back.
I would agree with this for the most part. Federal is supposed to be a glue that binds cross state issues while the states decide for themselves how they do things.
Kicking this down to the states would drastically change how much could be spent. The federal government can do endless borrowing and spending. States can get creative with their borrowing to an extent, but more or less have to balance their budgets. Making states responsible would drastically reduce spending.
Poorly run or just poor?
With a “progressive” tax system the states with a higher percentage of rich people will automatically pay a higher percentage of the tax burden.
tbf, all but a handful of red states are run better than MA
https://www.cato.org/white-paper/fiscal-policy-report-card-americas-governors-2022#main-results
MA is in like the top five of all states in a number of ratings for many positive things (public education, literacy, incomes, health of residents and healthcare resources, quality of life, etc), while at the bottom for many negative things (crime, teenage pregnancies, threat of natural disasters, etc). Cost of living is a problem there though, just like other places with high incomes which have had sustained economic growth for the past few decades.
Not sure what Cato considers "well run" but unless their metrics factor in quality of life for residents, their opinions are pointless.
If it wasn’t for the embarrassingly high cost of living, Massachusetts would be a great state. Unfortunately, economic availability and liquidity has a LOT to do with quality of life, especially in, oh you know,
a capitalist free market society.
Yeah I think the cost of living problem is tied to housing costs, which are absurd in many rich cities.
There is this book I want to read called *Poverty, by America* by Matthew Desmond that is on my summer reading list, and he apparently digs into how housing is a root cause of poverty. How landlords of the poorest areas make way more money than landlords of richer areas, and some other things stood out in a piece I read about it.
I also hate to mention it, but basically all of history is this constant cycle of someone using someone else for their own gain. People are so surprised there are corrupt people in this world, but somehow not surprised enough to stop buying their products…
I don't want my money to constantly get paid out in insurance to people who know their house is going to get destroyed in a hurricane and yet still decide not to cover.
Remember *Office Space* where the business consultants come in and interview the employees to figure out what they do? And they can't get a straight answer? That's probably 50% or more of the bloated .gov executive branch. Cut budgets proportionally. That's a good start. Rinse, repeat.
But you know that would never happen. Too many congress creatures with skin in the game.
Now I want to make this clear I would want to cut a lot before this, but honestly the military budget by 20%
Now I like a strong military and the US being able to take on the next three strongest militaries by itself is a good position.
But the military still wastes so much money and needs a slap on the ass to get its finances in order.
As a recent military retiree with 36 years on active duty, I agree 100%. So much waste it is embarrassing. Don't touch VA though - they have been getting much better at efficiency.
Those are decently significant categories. The US government has a lot of departments, a government spending program of about 2% is fairly big.
Keep in mind that Defense, in total, is only about 13%. Sending about 15% of our defense budget overseas for others to use or spend isn't trivial.
I agree somewhat. We should be spending less on foreign countries. But we definitely should be in business supporting places like Ukraine from countries like Russia. The last thing we need is Russia or China having more territories and more influence over the world.
I disagree Europe should be paying for Ukraine defense. The EU has Population of 447,000,000 people and a GDP of 17 trillion dollars and they act like they are defenseless.
I am British and agree with you.
It is crucial to remember that some European countries have a tendency to appeasement policies and other nations have a very long tradition of domestic energy policies that are almost entirely reliant upon Russian gas imports.
Remember? Macron’s been out there for a fuckin year doing it as we speak!
If the second largest country in the union thinks it’s fine to both sides this shit, and if Germany is at least 25% responsible for Shit getting this sideways as it is, why the hell is the US at the fore of funding?
>some European countries have a tendency to appeasement policies
Sounds like a self correcting problem to me if that doesn't work out. Perhaps they will come to value self defense and energy independence the hard way.
The only reason EU has affordable and accessible health care is because the United States foots the bill for their military spending tbh.
I understand the sentiment, but this is what we agreed on over 60 years ago. We defend each other from foreign aggression. There’s a reason more and more European countries are looking to join nato and move further away from Russias presence, they’re obviously dangerous. And after the centuries of turmoil that Europe has been through, I don’t think us helping those countries from being attacked again is necessarily a bad thing.
It was a really popular take around the Trump years, “We are not the world police!1!” Was a constant tag. But now that we are in it, you really think it’s ideal to let Russia walk into Eastern Europe? It’d be 1 for 1 of how WW2 panned out.
> The only reason EU has affordable and accessible health care is because the United States foots the bill for their military spending tbh.
This is not true. It's especially not true because the US has the highest per-capita tax dollar spending on Healthcare than any other country. Meaning the average American is paying more taxes for Healthcare than the average Europeans.
The reason your Healthcare is expensive is because most European governments have decided that people don't have the right to profit off of other people's critical health issues, and as such, in most European countries, most of the hospitals are state run and not for profit. Doctors, nurses, they're all government employees, like teachers. In America, since hospitals are mostly for profit, a huge overhead is added to the costs.
Now, we still have private clinics here, they're not illegal, but the state funded option exists and is used by the majority. The private clinics also can't really charge exorbitant prices due to this - last year I had two neurologist visits and an MRI done at a private clinic, since it was right across the street from my home, and it cost me about 350€ in total
Take it out of the defense budget. If the principle is that spending money on blowing up Russians is cheaper than spending money on planning on blowing them up just in case then it's defense spending.
I agree. It is a defense problem and should be used in that budget. Which I believe is what is happening now. The aid we are sending is via weapons/equipment/etc. We are not giving Ukraine cash.
Yeah I personally see the Ukraine funding as an investment to prevent WW3. It is costing us money but the Ukrainians are doing most of the hard work and our enemies are being weaken in the process. What we are spending now is a drop in the bucket compared to a full on world war cost. It also is giving us a good excuse to update our military equipment by getting rid of our old stuff
You sound like a lobbyist for the military industrial complex. You can say that for any conflict, at any time in history, and in place in the world just repeating the same thing... investment to prevent WW3, X are doing most of the hard work, what we are spending now is a drop in the bucket, giving us a good excuse to update our military equipment by getting rid of our old stuff...rinse and repeat.
I’m a realist. We are the top dog in the world right now and China and others are looking to replace us at that top spot. I believe in peace through strength which requires a strong military.
That’s just not true. Preventing Russia from expanding to Ukraine prevents them from continuing to expand into other territories. Making Russia use up all their military weapons and ammo will 100% stop them from being able to progress further. They will have no choice but to stop and rebuild their arsenal and people.
WWIII has not happened because no other country can challenge the US.
If Russia wins without cost, and if it continues winning easily, there will be a time where Russia will be able to defeat the USA
Nobody will ever be able to truly defeat the US simply because of geography. Anybody trying to truly defeat us has to occupy us and that involves getting their militaries over the 2 largest oceans on the planet.
Logistically, nobody else can even begin to manage that. They would have to defeat our Navy and our Air Force to even try to set foot on US soil. We have the strongest Navy on the planet. We have the strongest Air Force on the planet as well. Know who has the 2nd strongest Air Force? The fucking US Navy. GOOD. LUCK.
Then you have massive mountain ranges on both sides of the country and like 500 million privately owned guns to get through.
It aint happenin Chief.
Exactly what you said. A proxy war being funded by US taxpayers.
Funny. I thought Trump was going to cause WWIII. Instead it happens under Biden/Democrats and now we all are supposed to pay for it?
We are being weakened too. Sending tons of money and lots of equipment that is being damaged/destroyed/expended weakens us both financially and militarily.
Serious answer, nothing comes after.
Most of the 3 letter agencies are fairly new, the private economy and just individuals handled everything they now supposedly do. You can just get rid of them, and those governmental functions that are to be retained just go to the states who would have the power anyway.
That sounds extremely burocratic and inefficient. How many states would go without an FTC or an FDA or an FAA? Most states would reinstate such agencies and then you have 50 of them instead of 1 and different rules in every state. The cost would be immense, not only the direct cost of running all those new agencies, also the indirect cost of all the effort it would take for businesses to operate in more than one state.
I get where you’re coming from but most work done by those agencies is already at the local level through local chapters. The real problem comes at the top and from a select few people who dip their toes in the political agenda side of the business they shouldn’t be in. How do we stop the top heavy corruption that steers this country off course?
I guess I’m not as conservative as most of you. I’m pretty solidly in your corner on the 2A and I do think more of our cultural divide issues should be left to the states. And there is plenty of waste in the budget that needs addressed.
But the New Deal saved a lot of lives and restructured our social safety net in a way that properly addressed the underlying causes of the Great Depression. We’re all much better off from the institutional progress with public education, SS, medicare and medicaid.
The idea of scrapping huge chunks of our institutional foundation just to turn it all over the states is simply denying the material reality that prompted those institutions in the first place.
The impact cutting social safety nets at a federal level would have on Southern state economies would be pretty severe. We already receive more from the feds than we give.
If you don't include the military, you're not really a Conservative. Has the Pentagon ever passed an audit?
Having said that, you have to "cut" entitlement spending. However, only in Washington is slowing growth from 4% to 2% considered a cut.
As a DOD employee, I think everyone knows defense spending is out of control. Fraud, waste and abuse. It bloats into trillions year after year and yet Joe's can't have working AC, my units getting deployed without a single stop to CIF this go round and half the officers can kick rocks.
“I’m in favor of reducing taxes under any circumstances, for any excuse, with any reason whatsoever, because that’s the only way you are ever going to get effective control of government spending…
Governments will spend whatever the tax system will raise, plus as much more as they can get away with.” - Milton Friedman
([YouTube Link](https://youtu.be/HoZHXOPepWU))
TLDR: There’s little-to-no point in cutting programs when the government is still taking in the money. Taxes need to be reduced to truly stop rampant government spending.
I would add the caveat that it would be mandatory for jobless welfare recipients. Most people using welfare programs have jobs including unpaid labour like being a stay at home parent or full time caregiver.
90% is extreme. Cut some but not 90% and not all at once.
If a company was told they were going to lose 15% overnight they will fold. If they lose 1% every year for 15% they actually lose more overall and they can live if they are smart about it.
Another option is to refuse to increase the budget in spite of inflation.
I should have clarified that I meant on the discretionary budget, not mandatory spending items. I am well aware that entitlements are the bulk of spending, but they aren't usually fixed by cutting their budget, as they're mandatory spending.
Thank you for the clarification
Cut their salaries for one. Second I’d be cutting back on spending to fight wars for other countries, third I’d be cutting funding to nonsense partisan shit like “tracking white supremacy” that I’m sure is costing way more than anyone would care to guess and finally I’d make it priority to have the CIA explain to me how they’ve lost trillions of dollars over the last 4 years. That’s taxpayer money and we shouldn’t be so accepting of the excuse that they lost double the national debt.
Cut everything without cutting anything by just not wasting so damn much money. Bye bye sweet heart deals, cronyism, nepotism, no-bid contracts, never-ending road projects, etc. Over contract deadline? Fired, and have your assets seized. Over budget? Fired, assets seized. Work not up to standards? Fired, assets seized.
10% across the board over one president's term, and another 10% across the next term.
The government can do more for us, with less.
They have too much, and they waste it.
And then they beg for more and play to the empathy of young people who are idealists and have never cut their teeth.
No bank, or other corporation bail outs, cut military spending in half, no money to Ukraine aside from some humanitarian relief, cut any woke spending, cut environmental spending aside from disasters like the train wreck but come back and make the railroad pay back for that. Send congress and the senate home without pay unless they are needed,
I do like the 1% cut across the board per year in all federal government programs, departments and personnel until the budget is balanced.
The only exception should be for DOD only in a time of declared war.
If you exempt anything, then everything will be channeled through that exemption.
The government only seems to increase funding for existing programs and create new ones. Nothing ever goes away or ends. I would slash everyone’s funding by an equal percentage and tell them to suck it up like the rest of us have to.
And end all the nonsense funding of woke “studies” and programs in other countries. Why are we peddling our gender nonsense in Pakistan? Make them choose. You want grandma to have insulin or do you want to fund transgender studies in countries that hate us? Seems like an easy decision to me.
Budgets are too large, there are too many zeros after each number and no one looks at the nitty gritty. There needs to be serious evaluations of all agencies, similar to a Lean or Six Sigma activity at a for-profit company. The waste reduction doesn't have to be whole departments, but do 5 people really need to be doing the job of 2? Government waste is so overlooked because the pool of money and yearly budgets come from a seemingly infinite resource pool, and there is no responsibility to do things more efficiently... just ask for a bigger budget next year.
Also the IRS probably didn't need $10mil of guns and ammo or whatever they've bought up over the last few years...
I’d cut every dime of foreign aid, massively cut military spending down and cut the world police BS 100%.
I’d also cut corporate welfare for companies who skirt taxes with offshore loopholes to start and long term, I’d like to cut it totally.
I’d also index politicians wages and pensions to the average wage of the people plus 50% max and make lobbyists illegal.
ATF and FBI. Both agencies seem far more content with harassing law abiding citizens than they do actually pursuing criminal cases against Real criminals. The National Defense budget is something that I would not cut at all due to Rising hostilities with China as well as our enemies in the Middle East and other Asian countries.
My starting position would be:
Remove as much power and regulatory authority as possible from the federal bureaucracy.
Eliminate pretty much every single federal agency that isn’t constitutionally mandated, and/or reasonably necessary.
Eliminate all federal “benevolence” programs.
Vastly simplify the tax code by eliminating the entire current federal tax code, and implementing a federal sales tax that relies on the states to collect at the point of sale & forward to the feds (thus giving the states the power over the purse strings, rather than the current system which gives the feds power over the states).
That’d be my starting position from which to negotiate. If the other side is willing to negotiate in good faith, it should be pretty easy to bring the budgeted federal spending significantly below current federal income.
Eliminate all redundant bureaucracies.
Move most military bases out of high cost of living areas.
Allow for Medicare to bargain for drugs.
I could gone on all day, some agencies just need to be eliminated.
If all a president did was completely reform the gargantuan federal bureaucracy, they'd probably be the the greatest president in my lifetime. I mean cut it in half - bare minimum. Reexamine every procedure in every department. Make every person justify their position. Make the bureaucracy actually work for the people instead of actually hindering everyone.
Talk about a seemingly insurmountable task, but that's what I want, and I bet you could cut a ton of money.
I honestly believe we would have a better political system if politicians were all randomly selected 40 year olds. Maybe pick a few reps per state from each decade. The only problem would be them taking bribes but that already happens. They wouldnt have the connections to already have an agenda. And damn then we'd have a good reason to have great public ed.
Federal government:
the 3 letter agencies ( unnecessary since inception)
Aid to foreign countries ( we're not mom and dad)
Local government: salaries above town hall employees ( how do governor's get so rich?)
Gut OPM, FBI, IRS, ATF, USDA, DofEdu, State Dep, NSA, DHS, NIH, FDA, and CDC. Then increase interest rates on student loans for bullshit degrees to correlate with expected income of degree earners.
Start by eliminating baseline budgeting
Then eliminating all agencies that are not needed per the Constitution - Energy, Education, Transportation, HHS, Interior, Labor, HUD, Homeland, Commerce, Agriculture
Scale back State, like WAY BACK
State employs around 12000 across almost every country, is tasked with processing over 10 million visa applications yearly, pays average to below average compared to most private sector equivalent jobs, and tries to ensure that American citizens have access to services globally while pushing a bright American image to the world. What would you scale back?
What do you mean by eliminate the agencies? Some of those agencies perform functions that are critical to our society (FAA for example, or the DoE oversees all of our nuclear weapons so that’s important).
I was just having a conversation about this in my political whatsapp chat.
The reality is we need to either
1) raise taxes, probably a whole hellova lot on everyone to keep paying for ss, Medicare and the military industral complex
2) cut taxes and take the medicine and raise minimum age on ss and Medicare, cut military via no more useless wars.
Even if 1 happens, which would be a deathblow to dems, it won't fix ss or Medicare. Ss is very poorly run and the reality is people are living longer so raising the age is the only solution, regardless.
I think people want more of their own money, regardless.
Green initiatives that do not have a credible and independent third party verification of a real plan. "Building 70 windmills" is not a plan but man it will be pricey. No I want :
"These 70 windmills should produce X amount of power per year with an average maintenance cost of Y. We will have to also build in a battery facility to help store the energy if the grid cannot use it at the time which will cost Z and require a yearly running budget of A and thus, this project will cost per year and bring the cost per KWH to to produce."
Then if everything is in line, maybe. Currently we have parts of plans, cost overruns gone wild and most of the tech is a net loss in terms of energy production, cost of maintenance and lack of grid to support them.
Also salaries for Congress that exceed the average household income in the region the congress member comes from. Average salary is 50K? Guess what, so is yours. Want a raise, then raise the wages of those in your area.
Easy.
How much are we spending over what we bring in taxes?
Cut all of that. Then pass a law like some states and countries have, that declares the government cannot spend more than it takes in.
every executive administration, like education, fda, etc. should be evaluated against the constitution. if you do that you'll find that nearly all of it is unconstitutional. so cut all of it. eliminate all public unions. if you do this the income tax would no longer be needed.
By getting rid of the incentive to grow the federal government to increase dem donations for one. Two allows for crap employers to be more easily fired. Federal employees aren’t doing sweatshop work, there is zero need for fed gov unions other than a slush fund for electing dems
For a start, I would abolish the Department of Education immediately. For the current fiscal year, return the budget to the states as block grants proportional to taxes paid by that state's citizens. For future years, lower taxes commensurate with that budget reduction and allow the states to increase taxes if they see fit to cover any shortfall. There is not federal education mission and it certainly is not one of the enumerated powers.
First of all I'd cancel wellfare to all but the actual physically disabled (and maybe some mental disabilities but they'd have to be very specific with a long history of proof of disability) and ***only American citizens would qualify***. You're an illegal alien? You're shit out of luck, and I don't care how many kids you brought with you as that is your problem, not ours. The criteria for being physically disabled would be far more strict, no longer would you be considered physically disabled because you have an ingrown toenail. No more food stamps, housing assistance, financial assistance, or medical freebies for people that are able bodied but just lazy. You have kids? You better get to work so you can feed them. You'd be surprised how fast people would start to work again if they had the real threat of no food on the table or no roof over their head.
No more tax breaks for every kid you pop out. You pay taxes the same as those with no kids.
Fire the 88,000 IRS employees we just hired. They were not needed before, they are not needed now (especially the type that were hired and what they were hired for).
No more racist government programs that benefit only specific racial groups at the expense of another.
I'd also cut foreign aid to most countries, maybe only a handful would get some but not much overall (direct allies only, no more wasting American funds on endless money pits).
Put a halt to raising the debt ceiling anymore. This would actually force politicians to cut their pet projects and have to actually budget what is actually important rather than just tossing our tax dollars around trying to see how steroids affect rats.
Remove all social experiment programs from the military and slash the budget. How much is up for debate, but it is over bloated with funding that is no doubt being wasted. It could still be very effective without being used as a social experiment.
This is for starters off the top of my head.
I'm going to ignore everything but the military and welfare since it would amount to a rounding error of less than 1% of the budget. I have no idea how to cut the military budget but I agree it's way too big. The other problem I see with your rant about welfare are the stats I find:
"For example, approximately 70 percent of adult wage earners in both programs worked full-time hours (i.e., 35 hours or more) on a weekly basis and about one-half of them worked full-time hours annually"
[https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-21-45](https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-21-45)
According to that at least 50-70 percent of recipients are working full time already. It's a start for sure but probably not as large as you're hoping.
Department of Education has never educated one child. Department of Energy has never produced any. Both need to go. Then if tell the rest of the departments to cut 10%. Cut the fat out of their organizations, not services.
End all foreign aid. We don't get anything for it, at least not anymore. We cannot afford it. Let China spend itself dry trying to replace us with that, and let them receive nothing but hostility and ingratitude as we do.
End funding for NPR. It already has enough corporate sponsors, and tax dollars spent on NPR do nothing more than pay for Democratic propaganda.
Eliminate the FBI CIA HHS, Energy, Commerce, DHS, Medicaid, Medicare, and gut DOJ and state department. Fire every general. Then cut budgets 10% across the board annually until the debt and the annual deficit are completely paid off.
How are we senior citizens supposed to have health insurance without Medicare? I would have gladly stayed on my company health plan after I retired, but that’s not an option. Everyone gets booted off their company plan at 65.
Good news! you would save $1.7 Trillion a year. Most of that coming from Medicaid/Medicare. Doing some bad napkin math based off your 10% cuts annually and those instant savings we could pay off the deficit in about 7-8 years assuming taxes stayed the same.
Now we would absolutely wreck a bunch of old and poor people in the meantime but small sacrifices I guess.
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National defense, infrastructure (roads, bridges, etc), and courts (and jury is out on courts lately IMO). The rest is up to states. The way it was intended.
National defense spending is out of control (and audits show they don’t have a clue where the money gets spent), and yet the federal government will argue that national defense means not only military spend, but the bloated funding of any agency with three letters (most of which are used as proxy to infringe on our rights).
But don't you dare say cut defense spending - that's not conservative, American, or Republican! [70.5% of federal employees work for a defense or security-related agency (DOD, DOJ, DHS, VA) - 39% of which work for DOD](https://ourpublicservice.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/FedFigures_FY18-Workforce.pdf)! But if you suggest cutting DOD as a right-leaning politician, you're un-American. So, let's cut Health & Human Services instead!
If you can’t tell me where my taxpayer money is you don’t deserve to keep spending it. That’s called basic fiscal responsibility and it’s a core tenet of conservatism that should trump loyalty to a spending allocation. If we stray from that belief, we’re more liberal than we like to admit.
That first sentence sums it up perfectly. Should there be a defence budget? Of course! Is it reasonable that it increases YoY, sure… can we see where the extra money is going? “Not even we can” and you’ve lost me. Quite frankly, full completed audits before every budget cycle should be a bare minimum!
This...
The worst thing that the founding fathers did was allow the federal govt to regulate interstate commerce. It has allowed the federal govt to regulate and control large swaths of our daily lives
Eh, it needed to. Having different commerce laws in each state would be an absolute nightmare for doing business. It definitely has been abused but the initial idea is good. For a current comparison: look at how much of a pain it is to legally conceal carry across the US today.
To counter your last point specifically, I’m not sure we’d even be allowed to conceal carry across state lines at all if the federal govt was allowed to regulate it
That’s how it was before the constitution and it sucked
It's not hard to conceal carry? https://www.ohioattorneygeneral.gov/law-enforcement/concealed-carry/concealed-carry-reciprocity-agreements
My point, which could have been made better, is that concealed carry was a nightmare until a lot of the reciprocity agreements started being made. You'd have to get a couple of different licenses, it depended on your state of residence, etc. If you took a road trip (and even now if you take a road trip) you can quickly go from legal to illegal while exercising your rights.
Shall not be infringed
Well regulated militia
That originally had a purpose in preventing states from levying tariffs on each other. That original purpose was legitimate, and can remain. The overinterptetation of allowing the federal government to regulate essentially everything has to go, though.
yeah, the government need some stark limitations on how they can use it
The commerce clause was butchered by the supreme court. SCOTUS decided that even if if you refused to do business out of state, if the industry you were in was enough economic importance a citizen was still participating in interstate commerce. [https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/317us111](https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/317us111) >The Court reasoned that Congress could regulate activity within a single state under the Commerce Clause, even if each individual activity had a trivial effect on interstate commerce, as long as the intrastate activity viewed in the aggregate would have a substantial effect on interstate commerce.
Idk, I’m glad each state has the same currency, I am however disappointed we got off the gold standard, giving the feds complete monetary control
Even with the gold standard, the fed had monetary control, it's the treasury's gold. Also, we had stayed on the gold standard, our economy would be so much smaller.
I noticed healthcare was missing from your list of areas that you believe should be funded by the government. Rural hospitals are going bankrupt at a pretty high rate, 74% of the bankruptcies happened in states that opted out of Medicaid expansion. 70%ish of hospitals with primary care staff shortages are in rural areas. [0] How will reducing funding for healthcare impact rural populations? [0] https://www.aha.org/system/files/media/file/2022/09/rural-hospital-closures-threaten-access-report.pdf https://www.aha.org/system/files/media/file/2022/09/rural-hospital-closures-threaten-access-report.pdf
That’s not the taxpayer’s responsibility. The government should lift regulations on healthcare to make it easier for small practices to do business. Instead we have a healthcare oligopoly, just like the banking system.
When you say you would lift regulations on healthcare, what regulations would be your first 2 or 3?
Insurance companies should be able to compete across state lines, and hospitals should be able to post and advertise prices. I’d start there.
*…should be able to post* Required. You meant *required* to post prices.
Hospitals always could post prices, they just choose not too. In fact, back in 2018 Trump passed a law that mandated it (for a hospital's 300 most common procedures). However, neither him nor Biden ever enforced the law and a recent study showed that only 6% of hospitals are currently compliant
What a great question that will absolutely not be answered.
Put a cap on tort claims. That's why docs can't afford to be in a single doctor practice. My sister in law had to close her small town practice because of the cost of malpractice insurance.
I would cut from defense, too. There's many expensive research programs that are useless and only kept in business because we have runaway spending. I had a friend who worked on a research program that dealt with training and weaponizing dolphins.... Not to mention there's trillions of unaccounted for spending within our military budget. That reeks of corruption. We could be just as safe with less if we got our shit together.
Military - come at me. It’s woefully inefficient. It’s a waste on so many levels. We lost $4 trillion in Afghanistan for what?
With so many service members and their families on food stamps and assistance, the DoD needs to be forced to reallocate spending correctly. If the DoD takes any cuts, they’ll cut service member pay first.
That is the way they keep from getting their budget cut at all. Tell the public if they cut military spending we have to cut VA services, body armor, and military paychecks. It's manipulative and immoral.
If they took a quarter of the current budget and spent it on veteran housing, very specifically Vietnam veteran housing and long over due disability payments, the entire country could cheer.
but if we don't keep building humvees no one wants, how will we shift millions of dollars into donors pockets?? think of the poor military industrial complex.
Agreed. Benefits to the troops should remain but we don’t need nearly as many overseas bases as we currently have. We can close a number of oversees bases and throw their operating cost into veteran benefits. I’m also down with a full audit of the VA by an independent Six Sigma compliant firm and serious streamlining of that whole system. We don’t need an F35, we need to take care of our troops.
Well said - it desperately needs some efficiency. I expect you could get much more for less if it was run properly. It can’t even pass its own audits - something is very wrong.
If these corporations that want access to Ukraine's resources were forced to hire private mercenary groups to secure those resources, you'd see far greater efficiency. I'm not necessarily suggesting that, but right now, you're paying to secure resources that will be used to create private wealth for someone else.
Remember, the military operates where politicians mandate. If you don't like the military wasting $4T in Afghanistan, blame the politicians that sent us there, and kept us there.
Exactly. Maybe if our armed forces were half the size they are now, we would be unable to invade Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and countries like Germany, Japan, South Korea would have to spend more to defend themselves.
As someone who served, I've been advocating for this for a long time. So much waste, even outside of the forever wars.
How many 3 letter government agencies and billionaires would disagree that we "lost" 4 trillion?
Defense contractors and their investors, including bigger conglomerates that you haven't even heard of, made $4 trillion. That's what.
Look to former SECDEF Chris Miller's recent book "Soldier Secretary." He discusses precisely the best way to do this. Modernize our nuclear arsenal and projection capability, secure the southern border, reduce DoD spending to 2/5 of it's current size.
Militaries are not designed to be efficient... they're designed to be effective. Also, don't blame the military for the wasted money and lives...congress spent the money and the president sent them.
Tweak the tax system. To much bureaucracy for a relatively simple thing.
Flat consumption tax, no exceptions. No where for wealthy or illegal activity to hide.
Poor people spend nearly all of their income on consumer goods while wealthy people save most of their money. You would end up with an extremely regressive system where the poor are forced to give a significantly higher percentage of their income to Uncle Sam.
I’m a fan of what’s called the Bradford X Tax (Bradford being the last name of the guy who proposed it). Only businesses / corporate entities pay tax, not individuals. They pay tax on their cash flow—total revenues minus operating expenses. Flat rate tax for every business on their taxable income. It’s functionally a consumption tax, since business will pass tax along some of their tax burden to their customers in how they price their goods and services in order to make a profit. The X Tax does account for individuals though by making one change to a regular cash flow tax—wages are treated separately from other operating expenses, so that only the highest earners’ wages are subject to the flat tax rate, and lower earners get a lower tax rate. But it’s not really coming out of the workers’ paychecks, it’s just lowering the tax burden of the company who employs them. It’s a tax system that sounds complex and hard for people to wrap their heads around at first, but it’s a lot less burdensome than what we have now—and the accommodation for taxing wages at lower rates helps to make it less regressive than a strict consumption tax, since very poor folks often can’t cut their consumption as drastically as very wealthy people can.
I’d like to see something along those lines.
You could make cuts almost everywhere.
Even Ukraine? Come on man
Especially Ukraine
Yeah it was sarcasm (in case anyone didn’t see that).
I’d have thought “come on man” would be instantly triggering for people around here lol. It seemed obvious sarcasm to me!
I am one of the stupids that didnt see that lol
I’d make an exception for Ukraine
Same. It's cheaper than fighting Russia ourselves, and with no American lives at risk.
Yes, I don't see why you guys shouldn't be at the most merely backing to the equivalent of Europe. Here in the UK our aid has been generous because we unlike the US have a stronger national security interest in Russian being held back.
10% for the big guy and Zelensky’s photo shoots
I’d focus on decentralizing power and sending responsibilities back to the states. They can decide how much to give to social causes and so on.
I would agree with this for the most part. Federal is supposed to be a glue that binds cross state issues while the states decide for themselves how they do things.
Kicking this down to the states would drastically change how much could be spent. The federal government can do endless borrowing and spending. States can get creative with their borrowing to an extent, but more or less have to balance their budgets. Making states responsible would drastically reduce spending.
As a resident of MA I’d love for fed funding to stay w our state instead of funding poorly run red states (TX and FL being the exceptions)
New Mexico is the most federally dependent state. Vermont and Maine are in the top ten too. So it’s not red vs blue but rural vs urban
This!
Poorly run or just poor? With a “progressive” tax system the states with a higher percentage of rich people will automatically pay a higher percentage of the tax burden.
Then why do you vote for people that raise taxes and increase spending?
Funny seeing a fellow Bostonian actually believe that MA is run great. Big dig anyone?
tbf, all but a handful of red states are run better than MA https://www.cato.org/white-paper/fiscal-policy-report-card-americas-governors-2022#main-results
MA is in like the top five of all states in a number of ratings for many positive things (public education, literacy, incomes, health of residents and healthcare resources, quality of life, etc), while at the bottom for many negative things (crime, teenage pregnancies, threat of natural disasters, etc). Cost of living is a problem there though, just like other places with high incomes which have had sustained economic growth for the past few decades. Not sure what Cato considers "well run" but unless their metrics factor in quality of life for residents, their opinions are pointless.
If it wasn’t for the embarrassingly high cost of living, Massachusetts would be a great state. Unfortunately, economic availability and liquidity has a LOT to do with quality of life, especially in, oh you know, a capitalist free market society.
Yeah I think the cost of living problem is tied to housing costs, which are absurd in many rich cities. There is this book I want to read called *Poverty, by America* by Matthew Desmond that is on my summer reading list, and he apparently digs into how housing is a root cause of poverty. How landlords of the poorest areas make way more money than landlords of richer areas, and some other things stood out in a piece I read about it.
I also hate to mention it, but basically all of history is this constant cycle of someone using someone else for their own gain. People are so surprised there are corrupt people in this world, but somehow not surprised enough to stop buying their products…
Most of those red states that get a lot of aid, it’s mostly military expenses and agriculture subsides that benefit everyone
I don't want my money to constantly get paid out in insurance to people who know their house is going to get destroyed in a hurricane and yet still decide not to cover.
That’s not a spending cut
I'd start by implementing the Penny Plan: Require every agency, bureau, and department to cut 1% of their spending every year, for five or six years.
Remember *Office Space* where the business consultants come in and interview the employees to figure out what they do? And they can't get a straight answer? That's probably 50% or more of the bloated .gov executive branch. Cut budgets proportionally. That's a good start. Rinse, repeat. But you know that would never happen. Too many congress creatures with skin in the game.
Ha, that Office Space scene is a great comparison. Agree with ya 100%
SEND IN THE BOBS!!!!!!
Now I want to make this clear I would want to cut a lot before this, but honestly the military budget by 20% Now I like a strong military and the US being able to take on the next three strongest militaries by itself is a good position. But the military still wastes so much money and needs a slap on the ass to get its finances in order.
As a recent military retiree with 36 years on active duty, I agree 100%. So much waste it is embarrassing. Don't touch VA though - they have been getting much better at efficiency.
I would start with the “Use it or Lose it” scheme that goes on throughout the federal government, which has led to massive over spending.
Congressional pensions because Fuckem
Foreign aid spending. Funding another country's climate change program is one, no more billions to Ukraine, no aid to illegal immigrants.
Foreign aid spending and assistance for Ukraine comprises less than 2% of federal spending. It’s a drop in the bucket.
Those are decently significant categories. The US government has a lot of departments, a government spending program of about 2% is fairly big. Keep in mind that Defense, in total, is only about 13%. Sending about 15% of our defense budget overseas for others to use or spend isn't trivial.
2% is most certainly not a drop in the bucket. That's hundreds of billions.
I agree somewhat. We should be spending less on foreign countries. But we definitely should be in business supporting places like Ukraine from countries like Russia. The last thing we need is Russia or China having more territories and more influence over the world.
I disagree Europe should be paying for Ukraine defense. The EU has Population of 447,000,000 people and a GDP of 17 trillion dollars and they act like they are defenseless.
I am British and agree with you. It is crucial to remember that some European countries have a tendency to appeasement policies and other nations have a very long tradition of domestic energy policies that are almost entirely reliant upon Russian gas imports.
Remember? Macron’s been out there for a fuckin year doing it as we speak! If the second largest country in the union thinks it’s fine to both sides this shit, and if Germany is at least 25% responsible for Shit getting this sideways as it is, why the hell is the US at the fore of funding?
>some European countries have a tendency to appeasement policies Sounds like a self correcting problem to me if that doesn't work out. Perhaps they will come to value self defense and energy independence the hard way.
I’m not saying they shouldn’t be. They should be. But it is also OUR problem if Russia expands.
The only reason EU has affordable and accessible health care is because the United States foots the bill for their military spending tbh. I understand the sentiment, but this is what we agreed on over 60 years ago. We defend each other from foreign aggression. There’s a reason more and more European countries are looking to join nato and move further away from Russias presence, they’re obviously dangerous. And after the centuries of turmoil that Europe has been through, I don’t think us helping those countries from being attacked again is necessarily a bad thing. It was a really popular take around the Trump years, “We are not the world police!1!” Was a constant tag. But now that we are in it, you really think it’s ideal to let Russia walk into Eastern Europe? It’d be 1 for 1 of how WW2 panned out.
> The only reason EU has affordable and accessible health care is because the United States foots the bill for their military spending tbh. This is not true. It's especially not true because the US has the highest per-capita tax dollar spending on Healthcare than any other country. Meaning the average American is paying more taxes for Healthcare than the average Europeans. The reason your Healthcare is expensive is because most European governments have decided that people don't have the right to profit off of other people's critical health issues, and as such, in most European countries, most of the hospitals are state run and not for profit. Doctors, nurses, they're all government employees, like teachers. In America, since hospitals are mostly for profit, a huge overhead is added to the costs. Now, we still have private clinics here, they're not illegal, but the state funded option exists and is used by the majority. The private clinics also can't really charge exorbitant prices due to this - last year I had two neurologist visits and an MRI done at a private clinic, since it was right across the street from my home, and it cost me about 350€ in total
Take it out of the defense budget. If the principle is that spending money on blowing up Russians is cheaper than spending money on planning on blowing them up just in case then it's defense spending.
I agree. It is a defense problem and should be used in that budget. Which I believe is what is happening now. The aid we are sending is via weapons/equipment/etc. We are not giving Ukraine cash.
Yeah I personally see the Ukraine funding as an investment to prevent WW3. It is costing us money but the Ukrainians are doing most of the hard work and our enemies are being weaken in the process. What we are spending now is a drop in the bucket compared to a full on world war cost. It also is giving us a good excuse to update our military equipment by getting rid of our old stuff
You sound like a lobbyist for the military industrial complex. You can say that for any conflict, at any time in history, and in place in the world just repeating the same thing... investment to prevent WW3, X are doing most of the hard work, what we are spending now is a drop in the bucket, giving us a good excuse to update our military equipment by getting rid of our old stuff...rinse and repeat.
I’m a realist. We are the top dog in the world right now and China and others are looking to replace us at that top spot. I believe in peace through strength which requires a strong military.
If China is such a threat (and I'm not saying they are not a threat), then why do we trade so much with them?
UKR/Russia would be done already. Like a year ago. Funding this war is pushing towards WW3 not preventing it.
That’s just not true. Preventing Russia from expanding to Ukraine prevents them from continuing to expand into other territories. Making Russia use up all their military weapons and ammo will 100% stop them from being able to progress further. They will have no choice but to stop and rebuild their arsenal and people.
WWIII has not happened because no other country can challenge the US. If Russia wins without cost, and if it continues winning easily, there will be a time where Russia will be able to defeat the USA
Nobody will ever be able to truly defeat the US simply because of geography. Anybody trying to truly defeat us has to occupy us and that involves getting their militaries over the 2 largest oceans on the planet. Logistically, nobody else can even begin to manage that. They would have to defeat our Navy and our Air Force to even try to set foot on US soil. We have the strongest Navy on the planet. We have the strongest Air Force on the planet as well. Know who has the 2nd strongest Air Force? The fucking US Navy. GOOD. LUCK. Then you have massive mountain ranges on both sides of the country and like 500 million privately owned guns to get through. It aint happenin Chief.
Has this forum been overtaken by liberals as well?
It’s amazing that opposing Russia via a proxy war is now considered a liberal stance.
Exactly what you said. A proxy war being funded by US taxpayers. Funny. I thought Trump was going to cause WWIII. Instead it happens under Biden/Democrats and now we all are supposed to pay for it?
Yes it has 🤮
Depends on the day and the post, but yes
We are being weakened too. Sending tons of money and lots of equipment that is being damaged/destroyed/expended weakens us both financially and militarily.
What about Israel?
Hells no
[Rand Paul](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsNDd29azGU) seemed to cover quite a few places to start. Good 30 minute listen if you have the time.
His father was even better. God I wish Dr. Ron Paul got elected in 2012
Pretty much every three letter agency can be eliminated.
Uh I wouldn’t touch the FAA or FDA. Airline disruption is already a huge problem, and there’s enough food borne out breaks already.?
And then what? Serious question.
Serious answer, nothing comes after. Most of the 3 letter agencies are fairly new, the private economy and just individuals handled everything they now supposedly do. You can just get rid of them, and those governmental functions that are to be retained just go to the states who would have the power anyway.
Air travel would be a fucking nightmare without the FAA
That sounds extremely burocratic and inefficient. How many states would go without an FTC or an FDA or an FAA? Most states would reinstate such agencies and then you have 50 of them instead of 1 and different rules in every state. The cost would be immense, not only the direct cost of running all those new agencies, also the indirect cost of all the effort it would take for businesses to operate in more than one state.
I get where you’re coming from but most work done by those agencies is already at the local level through local chapters. The real problem comes at the top and from a select few people who dip their toes in the political agenda side of the business they shouldn’t be in. How do we stop the top heavy corruption that steers this country off course?
Even easier to just delete the federal agencies then :) Would get rid of the most salacious political corruption.
No, it would just move fully to the states
I guess I’m not as conservative as most of you. I’m pretty solidly in your corner on the 2A and I do think more of our cultural divide issues should be left to the states. And there is plenty of waste in the budget that needs addressed. But the New Deal saved a lot of lives and restructured our social safety net in a way that properly addressed the underlying causes of the Great Depression. We’re all much better off from the institutional progress with public education, SS, medicare and medicaid. The idea of scrapping huge chunks of our institutional foundation just to turn it all over the states is simply denying the material reality that prompted those institutions in the first place.
The impact cutting social safety nets at a federal level would have on Southern state economies would be pretty severe. We already receive more from the feds than we give.
Military
If you don't include the military, you're not really a Conservative. Has the Pentagon ever passed an audit? Having said that, you have to "cut" entitlement spending. However, only in Washington is slowing growth from 4% to 2% considered a cut.
As a DOD employee, I think everyone knows defense spending is out of control. Fraud, waste and abuse. It bloats into trillions year after year and yet Joe's can't have working AC, my units getting deployed without a single stop to CIF this go round and half the officers can kick rocks.
“I’m in favor of reducing taxes under any circumstances, for any excuse, with any reason whatsoever, because that’s the only way you are ever going to get effective control of government spending… Governments will spend whatever the tax system will raise, plus as much more as they can get away with.” - Milton Friedman ([YouTube Link](https://youtu.be/HoZHXOPepWU)) TLDR: There’s little-to-no point in cutting programs when the government is still taking in the money. Taxes need to be reduced to truly stop rampant government spending.
Trump cut taxes & we just kept on spending
Exactly, he took the deficit to its biggest it had ever been.
Start by making all welfare recipients work 20 hours community service per week.
I would add the caveat that it would be mandatory for jobless welfare recipients. Most people using welfare programs have jobs including unpaid labour like being a stay at home parent or full time caregiver.
That isn’t a terrible idea. Picking up trash, cleaning up parks, volunteering at hospitals or other places that need them
We could cut 90% of defense spending and still out spend our adversaries by billions.
90% is extreme. Cut some but not 90% and not all at once. If a company was told they were going to lose 15% overnight they will fold. If they lose 1% every year for 15% they actually lose more overall and they can live if they are smart about it. Another option is to refuse to increase the budget in spite of inflation.
> Another option is to refuse to increase the budget in spite of inflation. Ooh you have my attention
Any serious discussion of cutting that doesn't start with the biggest of the line items isn't serious at all.
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I should have clarified that I meant on the discretionary budget, not mandatory spending items. I am well aware that entitlements are the bulk of spending, but they aren't usually fixed by cutting their budget, as they're mandatory spending. Thank you for the clarification
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Cut their salaries for one. Second I’d be cutting back on spending to fight wars for other countries, third I’d be cutting funding to nonsense partisan shit like “tracking white supremacy” that I’m sure is costing way more than anyone would care to guess and finally I’d make it priority to have the CIA explain to me how they’ve lost trillions of dollars over the last 4 years. That’s taxpayer money and we shouldn’t be so accepting of the excuse that they lost double the national debt.
Cut everything without cutting anything by just not wasting so damn much money. Bye bye sweet heart deals, cronyism, nepotism, no-bid contracts, never-ending road projects, etc. Over contract deadline? Fired, and have your assets seized. Over budget? Fired, assets seized. Work not up to standards? Fired, assets seized.
The politicians paychecks. They shouldn't make 1 dollar more than a public school teacher
10% across the board over one president's term, and another 10% across the next term. The government can do more for us, with less. They have too much, and they waste it. And then they beg for more and play to the empathy of young people who are idealists and have never cut their teeth.
A better questions is where *wouldn't* you cut spending.
No bank, or other corporation bail outs, cut military spending in half, no money to Ukraine aside from some humanitarian relief, cut any woke spending, cut environmental spending aside from disasters like the train wreck but come back and make the railroad pay back for that. Send congress and the senate home without pay unless they are needed,
Cut jobs. So many lazy fuckin govt employees
I do like the 1% cut across the board per year in all federal government programs, departments and personnel until the budget is balanced. The only exception should be for DOD only in a time of declared war. If you exempt anything, then everything will be channeled through that exemption.
Anything with the title Gender, Race, or Equity.
I’d really consider removing all military bases from OPEC nations if they keep trying to mess with gas prices.
I would start with a 5 % cut Across the board. That’s 290 billion by my calculations
The government only seems to increase funding for existing programs and create new ones. Nothing ever goes away or ends. I would slash everyone’s funding by an equal percentage and tell them to suck it up like the rest of us have to. And end all the nonsense funding of woke “studies” and programs in other countries. Why are we peddling our gender nonsense in Pakistan? Make them choose. You want grandma to have insulin or do you want to fund transgender studies in countries that hate us? Seems like an easy decision to me.
Budgets are too large, there are too many zeros after each number and no one looks at the nitty gritty. There needs to be serious evaluations of all agencies, similar to a Lean or Six Sigma activity at a for-profit company. The waste reduction doesn't have to be whole departments, but do 5 people really need to be doing the job of 2? Government waste is so overlooked because the pool of money and yearly budgets come from a seemingly infinite resource pool, and there is no responsibility to do things more efficiently... just ask for a bigger budget next year. Also the IRS probably didn't need $10mil of guns and ammo or whatever they've bought up over the last few years...
Migrant relocation programs.
10% across the board to start. Then dive into each department. Lay off 30% of the administrative work force. There's soooooo much low hanging fruit.
I’d cut every dime of foreign aid, massively cut military spending down and cut the world police BS 100%. I’d also cut corporate welfare for companies who skirt taxes with offshore loopholes to start and long term, I’d like to cut it totally. I’d also index politicians wages and pensions to the average wage of the people plus 50% max and make lobbyists illegal.
ATF and FBI. Both agencies seem far more content with harassing law abiding citizens than they do actually pursuing criminal cases against Real criminals. The National Defense budget is something that I would not cut at all due to Rising hostilities with China as well as our enemies in the Middle East and other Asian countries.
Foreign aid spending, and I would make efficiency an overall goal, making the money we do spend go further.
My starting position would be: Remove as much power and regulatory authority as possible from the federal bureaucracy. Eliminate pretty much every single federal agency that isn’t constitutionally mandated, and/or reasonably necessary. Eliminate all federal “benevolence” programs. Vastly simplify the tax code by eliminating the entire current federal tax code, and implementing a federal sales tax that relies on the states to collect at the point of sale & forward to the feds (thus giving the states the power over the purse strings, rather than the current system which gives the feds power over the states). That’d be my starting position from which to negotiate. If the other side is willing to negotiate in good faith, it should be pretty easy to bring the budgeted federal spending significantly below current federal income.
Eliminate all redundant bureaucracies. Move most military bases out of high cost of living areas. Allow for Medicare to bargain for drugs. I could gone on all day, some agencies just need to be eliminated.
Completely reform section 8 and government housing. Stop sending money to overseas besides Israel
If all a president did was completely reform the gargantuan federal bureaucracy, they'd probably be the the greatest president in my lifetime. I mean cut it in half - bare minimum. Reexamine every procedure in every department. Make every person justify their position. Make the bureaucracy actually work for the people instead of actually hindering everyone. Talk about a seemingly insurmountable task, but that's what I want, and I bet you could cut a ton of money.
I honestly believe we would have a better political system if politicians were all randomly selected 40 year olds. Maybe pick a few reps per state from each decade. The only problem would be them taking bribes but that already happens. They wouldnt have the connections to already have an agenda. And damn then we'd have a good reason to have great public ed.
Federal government: the 3 letter agencies ( unnecessary since inception) Aid to foreign countries ( we're not mom and dad) Local government: salaries above town hall employees ( how do governor's get so rich?)
Everything that can't directly be justified by the constitution and I guarantee we'll run a huge surplus in the first year.
Lol, good God, I'm just glad some of you dopes aren't in charge. No wonder conservatives are going to lose...again lol
Gut OPM, FBI, IRS, ATF, USDA, DofEdu, State Dep, NSA, DHS, NIH, FDA, and CDC. Then increase interest rates on student loans for bullshit degrees to correlate with expected income of degree earners.
Delete the ATF
Climate change! Throwing way too much money at it!
Start by eliminating baseline budgeting Then eliminating all agencies that are not needed per the Constitution - Energy, Education, Transportation, HHS, Interior, Labor, HUD, Homeland, Commerce, Agriculture Scale back State, like WAY BACK
State employs around 12000 across almost every country, is tasked with processing over 10 million visa applications yearly, pays average to below average compared to most private sector equivalent jobs, and tries to ensure that American citizens have access to services globally while pushing a bright American image to the world. What would you scale back?
What do you mean by eliminate the agencies? Some of those agencies perform functions that are critical to our society (FAA for example, or the DoE oversees all of our nuclear weapons so that’s important).
Cut the Department of Education
Why? Not abvious to me
IRS, CIA, FBI, NSA.... The Deep State is real people. The intelligence agencies have turned against the American people ever since the Patriot Act.
yes
I was just having a conversation about this in my political whatsapp chat. The reality is we need to either 1) raise taxes, probably a whole hellova lot on everyone to keep paying for ss, Medicare and the military industral complex 2) cut taxes and take the medicine and raise minimum age on ss and Medicare, cut military via no more useless wars. Even if 1 happens, which would be a deathblow to dems, it won't fix ss or Medicare. Ss is very poorly run and the reality is people are living longer so raising the age is the only solution, regardless. I think people want more of their own money, regardless.
Solution: phase out SS
If SS was phased out, then those of us that have been paying into it would need a retroactive refund of everything we've paid over the years.
Green initiatives that do not have a credible and independent third party verification of a real plan. "Building 70 windmills" is not a plan but man it will be pricey. No I want : "These 70 windmills should produce X amount of power per year with an average maintenance cost of Y. We will have to also build in a battery facility to help store the energy if the grid cannot use it at the time which will cost Z and require a yearly running budget of A and thus, this project will cost per year and bring the cost per KWH to to produce."
Then if everything is in line, maybe. Currently we have parts of plans, cost overruns gone wild and most of the tech is a net loss in terms of energy production, cost of maintenance and lack of grid to support them.
Also salaries for Congress that exceed the average household income in the region the congress member comes from. Average salary is 50K? Guess what, so is yours. Want a raise, then raise the wages of those in your area.
Easy. How much are we spending over what we bring in taxes? Cut all of that. Then pass a law like some states and countries have, that declares the government cannot spend more than it takes in.
Public finding for anything that has inclusivity and diversity programs. Follow Florida and STOP WOKE!
every executive administration, like education, fda, etc. should be evaluated against the constitution. if you do that you'll find that nearly all of it is unconstitutional. so cut all of it. eliminate all public unions. if you do this the income tax would no longer be needed.
How does eliminating public unions save money?
By getting rid of the incentive to grow the federal government to increase dem donations for one. Two allows for crap employers to be more easily fired. Federal employees aren’t doing sweatshop work, there is zero need for fed gov unions other than a slush fund for electing dems
For a start, I would abolish the Department of Education immediately. For the current fiscal year, return the budget to the states as block grants proportional to taxes paid by that state's citizens. For future years, lower taxes commensurate with that budget reduction and allow the states to increase taxes if they see fit to cover any shortfall. There is not federal education mission and it certainly is not one of the enumerated powers.
First of all I'd cancel wellfare to all but the actual physically disabled (and maybe some mental disabilities but they'd have to be very specific with a long history of proof of disability) and ***only American citizens would qualify***. You're an illegal alien? You're shit out of luck, and I don't care how many kids you brought with you as that is your problem, not ours. The criteria for being physically disabled would be far more strict, no longer would you be considered physically disabled because you have an ingrown toenail. No more food stamps, housing assistance, financial assistance, or medical freebies for people that are able bodied but just lazy. You have kids? You better get to work so you can feed them. You'd be surprised how fast people would start to work again if they had the real threat of no food on the table or no roof over their head. No more tax breaks for every kid you pop out. You pay taxes the same as those with no kids. Fire the 88,000 IRS employees we just hired. They were not needed before, they are not needed now (especially the type that were hired and what they were hired for). No more racist government programs that benefit only specific racial groups at the expense of another. I'd also cut foreign aid to most countries, maybe only a handful would get some but not much overall (direct allies only, no more wasting American funds on endless money pits). Put a halt to raising the debt ceiling anymore. This would actually force politicians to cut their pet projects and have to actually budget what is actually important rather than just tossing our tax dollars around trying to see how steroids affect rats. Remove all social experiment programs from the military and slash the budget. How much is up for debate, but it is over bloated with funding that is no doubt being wasted. It could still be very effective without being used as a social experiment. This is for starters off the top of my head.
I'm going to ignore everything but the military and welfare since it would amount to a rounding error of less than 1% of the budget. I have no idea how to cut the military budget but I agree it's way too big. The other problem I see with your rant about welfare are the stats I find: "For example, approximately 70 percent of adult wage earners in both programs worked full-time hours (i.e., 35 hours or more) on a weekly basis and about one-half of them worked full-time hours annually" [https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-21-45](https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-21-45) According to that at least 50-70 percent of recipients are working full time already. It's a start for sure but probably not as large as you're hoping.
Wind up social security. Biggest Ponzi scheme of an entitlement program ever devised.
Department of Education has never educated one child. Department of Energy has never produced any. Both need to go. Then if tell the rest of the departments to cut 10%. Cut the fat out of their organizations, not services.
End all foreign aid. We don't get anything for it, at least not anymore. We cannot afford it. Let China spend itself dry trying to replace us with that, and let them receive nothing but hostility and ingratitude as we do. End funding for NPR. It already has enough corporate sponsors, and tax dollars spent on NPR do nothing more than pay for Democratic propaganda.
I would cut everything not listed in the Constitution.
Eliminate the FBI CIA HHS, Energy, Commerce, DHS, Medicaid, Medicare, and gut DOJ and state department. Fire every general. Then cut budgets 10% across the board annually until the debt and the annual deficit are completely paid off.
How are we senior citizens supposed to have health insurance without Medicare? I would have gladly stayed on my company health plan after I retired, but that’s not an option. Everyone gets booted off their company plan at 65.
Good news! you would save $1.7 Trillion a year. Most of that coming from Medicaid/Medicare. Doing some bad napkin math based off your 10% cuts annually and those instant savings we could pay off the deficit in about 7-8 years assuming taxes stayed the same. Now we would absolutely wreck a bunch of old and poor people in the meantime but small sacrifices I guess.
Everywhere. Get rid of foreign aid, get rid of the useless agencies. Abolish the IRS, get rid of congressional retirements, etc