tangent4ronpaul
08-17-2011, 09:45 AM
We've done a number of these things before, but it's always been top down verses bottom up. In other words, “what would you cut from government?”. The question here is: Start with the Constitution, and build a government from scratch. How would you do it? Granted, using the existing framework. Who gets to stay? And of those that get to stay, how would you change them?
Defense is a core function of government so is a keep. Likewise treasury, commerce, etc. If it's not specifically listed in the Constitution as a legitimate power of the federal government – it can't be on the list. Lets see how short a list we can come up with.
OK, lets talk about the 800 pound gorilla in the room. I'm going to use rounded numbers here, but this is what we have to deal with as a baseline. In 2010, the federal government spent 3.5T but only took in 2.5T so added 1T to the debt. The big 4 we are stuck with:
700B (20%) Defense
700B (20%) Social Security
800B (23%) Medicare and Medicaid
200B (6%) Interest on the debt
2.4T (69%) Total
The first thing I'd like to do is freeze spending at a hard 3.5T a year. Of this, 500B must be used to pay off the debt every year. That means the country could pay off the 14.5T and would be debt free in about 30 years. That leaves a 3T budget and assumes the government can actually bring in 3.5T a year.
Social security we can't do much about. People paid into it, Congress spent the money. We owe them. It can be phased out with tryirement savings accounts and the problem (after getting worse in the short term) is self correcting as baby boomers die out and fewer people are in the program.
Medicare and Medicaid we can do quite a bit about. They are systemic of the problems of the entire healthcare system and a bubble of their own that will burst in about 2020 if not addressed now. Solutions include growing doctors, nurses/NP's and PA's (there is a shortage), Getting the federal government out of the business of regulating health care/abolishing HHS and the FDA and preventing insurance companies from manipulating high rates for the uninsured through contracts. Changing patent law so that a company that develops a new drug gets gets a monopoly on it's manufacture (or royalties) for say 100 years instead of the current short duration in exchange for having to make it immediately generic would solve many of the problems in that industry. People used to pay for health care out of pocket because it was affordable. We can make it affordable again if we fix the system. I think we could get this down to about 100B to 200B a year within 2-3 years.
Defense could also be tapered down to 100B to 200B a year within 2-3 years. Specifics:
Bases: Overseas – close all but 6-12 lightly staffed ones to maintain pre positioned war supplies, quick response teams for embassy rescue, etc. as well as for training in cultural understanding and linguistics. Additionally, maintain contracts/agreements with perhaps 40 more for use in case of war, but do not staff these. Domestically – keep all training facilities open but close all housing active duty troops unless wanted by the state guard/reserve with a few exceptions.
Equipment: Mothball but maintain/upgrade (ie: new radar or EW) all of it. For what's left active, rotate 3-4 crews through it on a ongoing basis. The majority of active equipment should be deployed to a skeleton active duty force tasked with domestic defense, quick response and training with most sent to guard/reserve units and national training units. ALL the boomers should be kept and sailing the world, SAC (though I believe they recently changed their name) should be kept active silo's/B-52's, the stealths. Keep 2 carrier battle groups active – one right off the east and another off the west coast both for defense and training. Redeploy a lot of fighters to Air Guard units, etc.
Personnel: First FIRE all the contractors and place a moratorium on their being hired again. In every war (and now even in “peace time”) – they have raped the taxpayer and driven up costs. For your average enlisted personnel - First and foremost we need to move the vast majority of them into the reserves and ideally the guard. Dumping them all at once would be devastating to the unemployment situation. Let them serve out their service and trickle into the civi community slowly. OK – there are a couple of MOS's that could really help the country and offering others to transfer into those would be good!: Medical and Engineer. As I said before, we need to grow medical personnel so lets let service members serve out their terms getting trained in medical fields and taking over the patient load for medicaid patients that the private sector doesn't want to deal with because they loose money. As to engineers – let them serve out their enlistments fixing roads and bridges in THIS country!
Anyway, that's how I'd do it. Adopt Switzerland’s foreign policy, leave the military to the states (guard/reserve units), except for training and a small active duty defense force and keep all the equipment and have people trained on it so in case we are attacked or Congress declares war, we could spin up quickly and hit the ground running. Some units should be kept active – special forces, rangers, etc. but most should transfer to guard units. Leave the coast guard alone.
OK, that leaves 2 remaining parts:
412B (12%) Other mandatory spending – no idea what this is – anyone?
660B (19%) Discretionary
I'm guessing a lot of the other mandatory spending isn't that mandatory and Discretionary spending is going to be mostly unconstitutional so able to be gutted. So there is basically 1T of potential cuts here.
So back to the original question. Start with nothing and build from nothing a constitutional government. Off the top of my head:
Executive branch – but most of what's under this is unconstitutional.
Legislative branch – Congress
Judicial branch – the court system
State Department
Treasury
The patent office
US Postal service
Commerce Department is technically constitutional but should really be abolished
Defense
What am I missing? Surely something?
-t
Defense is a core function of government so is a keep. Likewise treasury, commerce, etc. If it's not specifically listed in the Constitution as a legitimate power of the federal government – it can't be on the list. Lets see how short a list we can come up with.
OK, lets talk about the 800 pound gorilla in the room. I'm going to use rounded numbers here, but this is what we have to deal with as a baseline. In 2010, the federal government spent 3.5T but only took in 2.5T so added 1T to the debt. The big 4 we are stuck with:
700B (20%) Defense
700B (20%) Social Security
800B (23%) Medicare and Medicaid
200B (6%) Interest on the debt
2.4T (69%) Total
The first thing I'd like to do is freeze spending at a hard 3.5T a year. Of this, 500B must be used to pay off the debt every year. That means the country could pay off the 14.5T and would be debt free in about 30 years. That leaves a 3T budget and assumes the government can actually bring in 3.5T a year.
Social security we can't do much about. People paid into it, Congress spent the money. We owe them. It can be phased out with tryirement savings accounts and the problem (after getting worse in the short term) is self correcting as baby boomers die out and fewer people are in the program.
Medicare and Medicaid we can do quite a bit about. They are systemic of the problems of the entire healthcare system and a bubble of their own that will burst in about 2020 if not addressed now. Solutions include growing doctors, nurses/NP's and PA's (there is a shortage), Getting the federal government out of the business of regulating health care/abolishing HHS and the FDA and preventing insurance companies from manipulating high rates for the uninsured through contracts. Changing patent law so that a company that develops a new drug gets gets a monopoly on it's manufacture (or royalties) for say 100 years instead of the current short duration in exchange for having to make it immediately generic would solve many of the problems in that industry. People used to pay for health care out of pocket because it was affordable. We can make it affordable again if we fix the system. I think we could get this down to about 100B to 200B a year within 2-3 years.
Defense could also be tapered down to 100B to 200B a year within 2-3 years. Specifics:
Bases: Overseas – close all but 6-12 lightly staffed ones to maintain pre positioned war supplies, quick response teams for embassy rescue, etc. as well as for training in cultural understanding and linguistics. Additionally, maintain contracts/agreements with perhaps 40 more for use in case of war, but do not staff these. Domestically – keep all training facilities open but close all housing active duty troops unless wanted by the state guard/reserve with a few exceptions.
Equipment: Mothball but maintain/upgrade (ie: new radar or EW) all of it. For what's left active, rotate 3-4 crews through it on a ongoing basis. The majority of active equipment should be deployed to a skeleton active duty force tasked with domestic defense, quick response and training with most sent to guard/reserve units and national training units. ALL the boomers should be kept and sailing the world, SAC (though I believe they recently changed their name) should be kept active silo's/B-52's, the stealths. Keep 2 carrier battle groups active – one right off the east and another off the west coast both for defense and training. Redeploy a lot of fighters to Air Guard units, etc.
Personnel: First FIRE all the contractors and place a moratorium on their being hired again. In every war (and now even in “peace time”) – they have raped the taxpayer and driven up costs. For your average enlisted personnel - First and foremost we need to move the vast majority of them into the reserves and ideally the guard. Dumping them all at once would be devastating to the unemployment situation. Let them serve out their service and trickle into the civi community slowly. OK – there are a couple of MOS's that could really help the country and offering others to transfer into those would be good!: Medical and Engineer. As I said before, we need to grow medical personnel so lets let service members serve out their terms getting trained in medical fields and taking over the patient load for medicaid patients that the private sector doesn't want to deal with because they loose money. As to engineers – let them serve out their enlistments fixing roads and bridges in THIS country!
Anyway, that's how I'd do it. Adopt Switzerland’s foreign policy, leave the military to the states (guard/reserve units), except for training and a small active duty defense force and keep all the equipment and have people trained on it so in case we are attacked or Congress declares war, we could spin up quickly and hit the ground running. Some units should be kept active – special forces, rangers, etc. but most should transfer to guard units. Leave the coast guard alone.
OK, that leaves 2 remaining parts:
412B (12%) Other mandatory spending – no idea what this is – anyone?
660B (19%) Discretionary
I'm guessing a lot of the other mandatory spending isn't that mandatory and Discretionary spending is going to be mostly unconstitutional so able to be gutted. So there is basically 1T of potential cuts here.
So back to the original question. Start with nothing and build from nothing a constitutional government. Off the top of my head:
Executive branch – but most of what's under this is unconstitutional.
Legislative branch – Congress
Judicial branch – the court system
State Department
Treasury
The patent office
US Postal service
Commerce Department is technically constitutional but should really be abolished
Defense
What am I missing? Surely something?
-t