Cutting or controlling government spending means gutting social security, veterans and medicare. Which in turn would also smack state budgets across the head. HA at republicans ever doing that. Even uncle newt who is the defacto spokesperson for the party admitted he'd borrow the US into insolvency before raising taxes and well before cutting ss/vet/medicare spending.
It's a state by state problem.
My own state - our DSS - Department of Social Services combined with Department of Education - they're the bulk of the state's spending. Teacher salaries make up 90% of the DOE's budget.
Every year - they give them all great raises, then say "we don't have enough money" - and they cut band, gym, sports, textbooks, paper -
Is that right? Look at it from a liberal perspective - is it right to shortchange kids who haven't even gotten a chance yet ... while stuffing your own pockets? The AFT of CT all votes Democrat by the way.
How does this look to you? Is this right? Sure, I understand that teachers need money, yes - however - when they've got people making 6 digits across the whole system ... the whole board of education having cell phones paid by us, fleet cars so they don't put wear and tear on their own cars ... the amount of waste is astronomical. Social services - as horrible as they sound, as bad as they sound - nationwide, are a sliver of the problem.
In my state on the other hand, well, they take up just as much of our state budget as the entire state education system. That's a disgrace.
Then on top of it all - with the federal healthcare bill - we're going to have a STATE system (Charter oak), with another STATE system on top of it (sustinet) ... all voted in by Democrats.
A triple layer of redundancy.
Is that right?
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It's like this on the national level as well. We've got 50 departments of education across the 50 states. Then each municipality has their own.
Then we have a FEDERAL one that does what ... exactly? Then on top of it all, they're all massively bloated. Picture this, for example.
Imagine the central EPA (the bureaucratic portion) - restructured. 50 of the top environmental representatives from each of the states, to voluntary positions. You get a say on the national level for being the commissioner in your state.
Pour all the funds of the current EPA into the states, respective to their environmental importance. Use fair factors to determine the importance ( such as population, rate of urbanization, population, land use, etc. Like Nevada might get a bonus for the population growth, while North Dakota or Alaska might not. ) I believe the state agencies, who are on the state grounds 365 days a year ... would do a better job at managing their own state ... than the Federal agency way off in DC would.
Big cuts of tens of billions of dollars, with a bigger and better return.
There's plenty of bloat to trim - Our government, is like a 900lb lardass. You could trim off 300lbs - it'll be 30% lighter. It'll still be a lardass ... but a leaner one.
( Mind you, if our government were a 140lb guy - lol - we'd be an anarchy. So that's un-doable. Ideally - with my lardass picture, I'd say 500lb would be a nice weight for our country. )
