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Its not hard to cut government, you need "leaders" with a spine to do it.
How to Slash the State - Reason Magazine
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How to Slash the State
- Thread starter Cold Highway
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Its not hard to cut government, you need "leaders" with a spine to do it.
How to Slash the State - Reason Magazine
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Except most people disagree with most of those ideas.
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Which results in all of us working stiffs getting screwed as usual.
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Not as screwed as they'd be if the government actually slashed all the programs you're listing. Federal education spending alone would hurt any of "us working stiffs" who have teenage children.
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Some of those cuts I agree with.
Disagree with erasing federal funding of education. We are so poorly educated now we can't compete with students from India and other countries.
Privatizing Public Lands is bunk.
When you bring those troops home you can also close the some 800-900 overseas bases we support.
Civil1z@tion
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It takes more than "spine," it takes politicians with the actual beliefs and popular support to back them.
As to the list, Medicaid, pulling troops back (and presumably cutting the military budget a lot), and the stimulus would have the greatest effect on government spending as a portion of GDP (but it's worth noting that a lot of the stimulus has already been spent so the opportunity to "repeal" it has just about passed anyways). Ending farm subsidies would probably make the US heroes in a lot of the Third World (which detests the developed world's agricultural protectionism). Ending the War on Drugs would just be a boon on multiple levels (and significantly decrease the number of prisoners we're holding, which if having the most per capita prisoners in the world isn't a restriction on freedom and an example of government overreach I don't know what is). Slashing state budgets could work, but of course the beauty of federalism is supposed to be that different states will follow different policies. Getting rid of the FCC, or at least way cutting back its powers would be a great thing from a pro-freedom perspective. Privatizing public lands doesn't really seem necessary given the US already has one of the lowest national population densities on the planet so we still have plenty of room. Cutting education funds is probably a bad idea as the modern workforce is reliant on a high amount of education and the federal education budget isn't that big compared to the full budget anyways. Plus it would make passing any government-decreasing plan harder to pass.
I would like to note that I find it curious that welfare and social security, two of the biggest budget items, aren't mentioned while small budget items like the Department of Energy are. Really this would decrease government in a lot of ways, but it could use tweaking.
As to the list, Medicaid, pulling troops back (and presumably cutting the military budget a lot), and the stimulus would have the greatest effect on government spending as a portion of GDP (but it's worth noting that a lot of the stimulus has already been spent so the opportunity to "repeal" it has just about passed anyways). Ending farm subsidies would probably make the US heroes in a lot of the Third World (which detests the developed world's agricultural protectionism). Ending the War on Drugs would just be a boon on multiple levels (and significantly decrease the number of prisoners we're holding, which if having the most per capita prisoners in the world isn't a restriction on freedom and an example of government overreach I don't know what is). Slashing state budgets could work, but of course the beauty of federalism is supposed to be that different states will follow different policies. Getting rid of the FCC, or at least way cutting back its powers would be a great thing from a pro-freedom perspective. Privatizing public lands doesn't really seem necessary given the US already has one of the lowest national population densities on the planet so we still have plenty of room. Cutting education funds is probably a bad idea as the modern workforce is reliant on a high amount of education and the federal education budget isn't that big compared to the full budget anyways. Plus it would make passing any government-decreasing plan harder to pass.
I would like to note that I find it curious that welfare and social security, two of the biggest budget items, aren't mentioned while small budget items like the Department of Energy are. Really this would decrease government in a lot of ways, but it could use tweaking.