I’ve been screening the headlines since Friday. Obama set a deadline for raising the debt limit. The House passed a bill to raise the debt limit. It also contained a Constitutional amendment to require a balanced budget. That item is known as Cut, Cap and Balance.
The House and Senate dems screeched and declared it dead. BO said that 80% of Americans want taxes increases.
Well the first may be true. As long as the dems hold the majority of the Senate and toe the party line, the House bill will die. The second however is another Obama lie.
Editorial: No, Americans Don’t Want Higher Taxes
Budget: Four of five Americans are “sold” on higher taxes to solve the deficit impasse, according to President Obama. Either he’s deceiving himself or he completely misunderstands how the public really feels.The president on Thursday cited a recent Gallup poll that purportedly shows, in his words, “80% want higher taxes” as part of a deal to slash the deficit. “The American people are sold,” he said. “The problem is members of Congress are dug in ideologically.”In fact, a quick look at the polling data referenced by the president shows this isn’t true. Not even close.Gallup itself breaks it out: Those who say they want the deficit reduced “only/mostly with spending cuts” total 50% of those polled. Those who say they’d like it done “only/mostly with tax increases” total 11%. That’s not 80%.Americans aren’t fools. Democrats just think they are. Whether its a $4 trillion “grand bargain” or a smaller $2.4 trillion cut in the expected $10 trillion in deficits over the next decade, if tax hikes are part of the deal it will sink the economy. Tax hikes are a nonstarter.Americans see the explosion of $1 trillion-plus deficits stretching for decades to come, $107 trillion in unpaid bills for entitlements and a failed two-year Keynesian experiment that has pushed up federal spending by 25%. They know taxes didn’t do this — spending did.That’s why Republicans should ignore Obama’s demand for tax hikes. In our own IBD/TIPP Poll, 60% of Americans said they’d be “less likely” to vote for someone who supports increasing the debt ceiling without “major spending cuts.” Heck, 58% said they either “somewhat” or “strongly” oppose raising the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling at all.In our June poll, 74% of Americans opposed tax hikes as a way of getting out of our economic mess, while 80% also opposed more government spending.
I think BO is a pathological liar. He lies when there is no need. But, be that as it may, I’m not confident the ‘Pubs have the moral fortitude to stand firm.
There is no need to raise the debt limit. As has been documented here, there is sufficient continuing income to service our debt, SS, Medicare, Veterans and the Military.
Other government spending, however, would be affected. But, if the administration chooses wisely—more likely forced by Congress, there is a plethora of discretionary spending that can be blocked.
The Heritage Foundation has a proposal to cut $343 Billion from the budget. It’d be a good start.
Table 1: Spending Cuts for FY 2012
(in millions of dollars)
Agriculture | ||
$15,000
|
Replace farm subsidies with Farmer Savings Accounts and improved crop insurance. | |
$2,033
|
Eliminate the Foreign Agriculture Service. | |
$1,500
|
Merge all four agriculture outreach and research agencies and cut their budget in half. | |
$1,000
|
Fund the Food Safety and Inspection Service with user fees. | |
Commerce | ||
$500
|
Eliminate business subsidies from the National Institute of Standards and Technology. | |
Community Development | ||
$6,000
|
Eliminate the Community Development Block Grant program. | |
$598
|
Eliminate the Rural Utilities Service. | |
$523
|
Eliminate the Economic Development Administration. | |
$480
|
Eliminate NeighborWorks America (formerly the Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation). | |
$200
|
Consolidate the Rural Housing and Development Programs and convert them into block grants. | |
$73
|
Eliminate the Appalachian Regional Commission. | |
$48
|
Eliminate the Denali Commission. | |
$31
|
Eliminate the Minority Development Business Agency. | |
$8
|
Eliminate the Delta Regional Authority. | |
Education | ||
$8,000
|
Return Pell Grants to their 2009 funding level of $24 billion, which is still double the 2007 level. | |
$2,000
|
Trim Head Start by $2 billion and convert it into vouchers. | |
$2,000
|
Scale back the Education Department bureaucracy. | |
$1,500
|
Eliminate dozens of small and duplicative education grants. | |
$298
|
Eliminate state grants for Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities. | |
Energy and the Environment | ||
$6,500
|
Reduce energy subsidies for commercialization and some research activities. | |
$600
|
Block grant and devolve Environmental Protection Agency grant programs. | |
$200
|
Restructure the Power Marketing Administrations to charge market-based rates. | |
$63
|
Eliminate the Science to Achieve Results Program. | |
Government Reform | ||
$44,000
|
Halve federal program payment errors by 2012, especially by reducing Medicare errors and earned income tax credit errors. Tighten oversight by spending $5 billion on new resources, such as updated computer systems, and then recover $49 billion in payment errors. |
|
$20,000
|
Rescind unobligated balances after 36 months. | |
$12,500
|
Halve the $25 billion spent to maintain vacant federal properties. | |
$10,000
|
Cut the federal employee travel budget to $4 billion (half of FY 2000 spending). | |
$3,000
|
Freeze federal pay until it can be reformed. | |
$1,000
|
Suspend acquisition of federal office space. | |
$600
|
Trim the federal vehicle fleet by 20 percent (a reduction of 100,000 vehicles). | |
$300
|
Cut the House and Senate budgets back to the 2008 level of $2.2 billion. | |
$215
|
Eliminate the Presidential Election Campaign Fund. | |
$100
|
Tighten controls on federal employee credit cards and cut down on delinquencies. | |
$70
|
Require federal employees to fly coach on domestic flights. | |
Health Care | ||
$6,200
|
Reform Medigap. | |
$5,000
|
Repeal Obamacare (larger savings in later years). | |
$3,700
|
Require Medicare home health co-payments. | |
$673
|
Eliminate the Maternal and Child Health Block Grant. | |
$414
|
Eliminate Health Professions grants. | |
$327
|
Eliminate Title X Family Planning. | |
$150
|
Eliminate the National Health Service Corps. | |
$98
|
Repeal Rural Health Outreach and Flexibility grants. | |
Homeland Security | ||
$2,700
|
Eliminate most homeland security grants to states and allow states to finance their own programs. | |
Income Security | ||
$500
|
Better enforce eligibility requirements for food stamps. | |
Interior | ||
$1,500
|
Open the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to leasing. (The savings are leasing revenues, which are classified as negative spending in the federal budget.) |
|
$200
|
Suspend federal land purchases. | |
International | ||
$2,636
|
Eliminate the Development Assistance Program. | |
$625
|
Eliminate the State Department’s education and cultural exchange programs. | |
$321
|
Eliminate the International Trade Administration’s trade promotion activities or charge the beneficiaries. | |
$183
|
Eliminate the Democracy Fund. | |
$68
|
Eliminate the International Trade Commission and transfer oversight of intellectual property rights to the Treasury Department. | |
$56
|
Eliminate the Trade and Development Agency. | |
$29
|
Eliminate the Overseas Private Investment Corporation. | |
$19
|
Eliminate the East–West Center. | |
$17
|
Eliminate the United States Institute of Peace. | |
$2
|
Eliminate the Japan–United States Friendship Commission. | |
Justice | ||
$7,334
|
Eliminate all Justice Department grants except those from the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the National Institute of Justice, thereby empowering states to finance their own justice programs. |
|
$398
|
Eliminate the Legal Services Corporation. | |
$32
|
Eliminate the Justice Department’s Community Relations Service. | |
$30
|
Eliminate the duplicative Office of National Drug Control Policy. | |
$26
|
Reduce funding for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division by 20 percent because of its policy against race-neutral enforcement of the law. |
|
$4
|
Eliminate the State Justice Institute. | |
Labor | ||
$4,300
|
Eliminate failed federal job training programs. | |
$2,000
|
Eliminate the ineffective Job Corps. | |
$576
|
Eliminate the Senior Community Service Employment Program. | |
National Science Foundation | ||
$1,700
|
Reduce National Science Foundation funding to 2008 levels. | |
$86
|
Eliminate National Science Foundation spending on elementary and secondary education. | |
Transportation | ||
$45,000
|
Devolve the federal highway program and most transit spending to the states. | |
$1,900
|
Privatize Amtrak. | |
$1,009
|
Eliminate grants to large and medium-sized hub airports. | |
$554
|
Eliminate the Maritime Administration. | |
$125
|
Eliminate the Essential Air Service Program. | |
Treasury | ||
$26,646
|
Eliminate the additional child refundable credit. | |
$103
|
Eliminate the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund. | |
Veterans | ||
$2,500
|
Cap increases in Department of Veterans Affairs health care spending. | |
$1,930
|
Reduce Veterans’ Disability Compensation to account for Social Security Disability Insurance payments. | |
Cross-Agency and Other | ||
$60,000
|
Repeal unspent stimulus spending. | |
$8,000
|
Switch to using the “Superlative CPI” in funding calculations. | |
$6,000
|
Repeal the Davis–Bacon Act. | |
$2,250
|
Eliminate Federal Communications Commission funding for school Internet service. | |
$2,000
|
Ban project labor agreements on all federally funded construction projects. | |
$1,000
|
Eliminate the Small Business Administration, which unnecessarily intervenes in free markets. | |
$736
|
Eliminate the National Community Service programs, such as AmeriCorps. | |
$253
|
Eliminate the Institute of Museum Services and Library Services. | |
$140
|
Eliminate the National Endowment for the Humanities. | |
$133
|
Eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts. | |
$61
|
Eliminate Army Corps of Engineers funding for beach replenishment projects. | |
$10
|
Eliminate the Commission of Fine Arts. | |
$8
|
Eliminate the National Capital Planning Commission. | |
$5
|
Eliminate the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. | |
Total | ||
$343,207 million
|
Like I said, it’s a good start…but it’s just the start.
Good post, I'm linking to this one!
Thanks for the link.
Just LOOKING at this made me realize "Wait, we actually spend tax money on this."
I didn't see "Dump the Frickin' TSA," there, though. Did I miss it?