My Federal Budget (Free of Ponies)

[The Village Idiot]

1. No Corporate subsidies or bail outs of any type. Government should not be taking sides in business, like favoring GM over Ford or Toyota. Neither should it try to influence the way business is done by offering incentives here and there. If you think businesses are too heavily taxed (passed on to consumers) and their customers refuse to buy, then give them an across the board tax cut.

2. Most agricultural subsidies and "price supports" need to be done away with. Things that limit competition or dictate prices should be scrapped. You should not need a federal license to grow a peanut or sugar cane.

3. Welfare benefits should not be given to illegal aliens. Free education and healthcare? Let us get their home countries to pay for them, before we give it. There is no reason for the people of this country to be taxed to give away benefits to foreigners who violate our laws.

4. Government should not be funding "community organizations" like ACORN, it should not be funding any non-government organizations. It should also end funding of NPR and PBS.

5. Government needs to get out of the banking, home loan and student loan businesses.

6. We can merge many of the welfare bureaucracies into a single agency, meaning many fewer federal and state employees. We can end things like Section 8, AFDC and Food Stamps and simply send the truly poor a monthly cash "gift". We could actually increase the amount they get and still save massive amounts of tax dollars with less bureaucracy.

7. End automatic foreign aid. Make massive cuts to the money we spend on "international" agencies like the United Nations.

8. Cut Congressional staffs, cut perks, limit their travel budgets and stop allowing Pelosi's kids and grandkids get free rides on military aircraft and thousand dollar-a-week liquor tabs. This is nothing but one of the many slush funds that rich members of Congress use at taxpayer expense. We should find them and shut them down.

These are just some of the ideas I have. I bet others can come up with a lot of things in the federal budget that could be eliminated or cut. The taxpayers of this country should not have to continue to fund the massive greedy apetite of the leviathan.

[diesel driver]

Privatize Social Security
Do it on a 30-50 year or so phase out.  Those under 30 have no choice, they MUST go private.  Those 30-50 or so can either go private, stay with the current system, or some combination of the two.  Those over 50 will still get all and full benefits from Social Security that they currently or will receive in the future....

[The Village Idiot]

Privatize Social Security
Do it on a 30-50 year or so phase out.  Those under 30 have no choice, they MUST go private.  Those 30-50 or so can either go private, stay with the current system, or some combination of the two.  Those over 50 will still get all and full benefits from Social Security that they currently or will receive in the future....

That sounds like a good idea.

[DefiantSix]

Eliminate Department of Education, Department of Energy, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Department of Labor, and the Department of Homeland Security from the auspices of the federal government wholecloth. 

Revert the Coast Guard back to the Department of the Treasury, Border Patrol/Customs back to Department of Justice and consolidate the 14 intelligence gathering agencies back into the Central Intelligence Agency. 

Re-organize and consolidate the Federal Bureau of Investigation as the criminal investigations department of the US Marshall's Office. 

Remove all rule-making authority from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Federal Communications Commission and a whole miriad of federal agencies that need to get back into the habit of taking the rules they enforce from Congress.

Then, I'd cut the head count at the Internal Revenue Service down to no more than 20 people per state or US Territory, and tell the Congress to write them a tax code that is possible for all of them to carry around in their back pocket.

Every Czar and their staffs would be out of a job tomorrow.

All of the cost savings from this activity would go to paying down the debt the Congress-shits have racked up over the past 65 years or better.  After that, Congress would have every future spending bill rejected if it didn't include a reduction in tax rates - individual and corporate - to single digit levels across the board.  (If God is only interested in 10% of my increase, Congress had better learn where they are on the pecking order in relation to God, and scale their demands accordingly.)

[The Village Idiot]

I'd support every bit of that

[Eupher]

Eliminate Department of Education, Department of Energy, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Department of Labor, and the Department of Homeland Security from the auspices of the federal government wholecloth. 

Revert the Coast Guard back to the Department of the Treasury, Border Patrol/Customs back to Department of Justice and consolidate the 14 intelligence gathering agencies back into the Central Intelligence Agency. 

Re-organize and consolidate the Federal Bureau of Investigation as the criminal investigations department of the US Marshall's Office. 

Remove all rule-making authority from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Federal Communications Commission and a whole miriad of federal agencies that need to get back into the habit of taking the rules they enforce from Congress.

Then, I'd cut the head count at the Internal Revenue Service down to no more than 20 people per state or US Territory, and tell the Congress to write them a tax code that is possible for all of them to carry around in their back pocket.

Every Czar and their staffs would be out of a job tomorrow.

All of the cost savings from this activity would go to paying down the debt the Congress-shits have racked up over the past 65 years or better.  After that, Congress would have every future spending bill rejected if it didn't include a reduction in tax rates - individual and corporate - to single digit levels across the board.  (If God is only interested in 10% of my increase, Congress had better learn where they are on the pecking order in relation to God, and scale their demands accordingly.)

Outstanding, D6. I love it.

We're in the habit of picking on Congress and its parasitic support systems, but I'd like to take a long, hard look at our legal system.

I'm no attorney and I don't know if something like what I'm proposing is already done, but assuming that it isn't, I'd love to see a system whereby attorneys submit briefs that are reviewed for merit, before any court date is scheduled. If the brief is shitcanned, the attorney ponies up $300 per brief for court costs. (Yeah, I know that would be passed on to the client, but at least it gets the client to at least engage brain before filing a frivolous lawsuit.)

There is a SHITLOAD of work to do at DoD. The whole system needs to be dismantled and they need to start over again, cleaning out the corruption, graft, waste, and fraud that DoD has entwined into it. Rumsfeld thought he could clean it out, but he was wrong -- that's a job waaaaaaaay bigger than any one man.

Roll back the Brownlow Committee's work to 1939 levels and have their recommendations reviewed by Congress once every five years with a requirement to increase the president's operational budget only to keep pace with inflation. That might eliminate some - but not all - of the bloat that the president's own office has managed to accumulate. For Michelle Obama to have a staff of people larger than most CEOs of Fortune 100 corporations is criminal.

[The Village Idiot]

The first thing to do at DoD is to stop being the private airline and slush fund of Congress and their whole extended families, Pelosi!, that could save them some money and a little bit of dignity.

[Freeper]

I disagree with point 6 slightly. Instead of the fed govt handing over cash to the needy each individual state should run their own welfare programs. I think if people are on the dole it needs to come from their own community.

[The Village Idiot]

I disagree with point 6 slightly. Instead of the fed govt handing over cash to the needy each individual state should run their own welfare programs. I think if people are on the dole it needs to come from their own community.

de-federalizing is a good idea too

[thundley4]

de-federalizing is a good idea too

That would work. The red states wouldn't have welfare, so all the dummies would move to the states that offered free ponies.

[The Village Idiot]

That would work. The red states wouldn't have welfare, so all the dummies would move to the states that offered free ponies.

Till they all go broke like Michigan and California and sell the state capitol like Arizona and then beg the feds to bail them out.

[thundley4]

Till they all go broke like Michigan and California and sell the state capitol like Arizona and then beg the feds to bail them out.

Or, just maybe, those liberals that hung around the blues states would tire of the freeloaders and say tough sh t , to them, and cut the free ponies.  Nah, you're right they'd beg the fed to take money from the red states.