Hi All,
I read now where the CA governor wants to eliminate welfare. Not that I am against that but the mere headline gags me. Let me explain.
In private industry there is a profit motive. When times are good and profitable, most companies grow, expand, hire new people etc. On the reverse side, when times get bad, companies have to downsize. That can come in several ways, most notably folks take pay cuts, or people get laid off, or a combination of both.
Just once in my life I would love to see some government agency get it. I honestly do not recall seeing any agency cut costs by reducing salaries or laying off people like they do in private industry. Arnold will take it out of the welfare budget......like government workers are the epitome of productivity??? Take the money away from the citizens but don't ever cut salaries of benefits from government workers....
The case for term limits, particularly in congres grows stronger by the day. In Florida they were doing our budget and we had a shortfall of several hundred million dollars....woe is me, what to do screamed the papers. Well when I saw the total budget for the state, the shortfall was less than 1% for crying out loud. Now most any competent manager in the private sector would just tell each department head to cut their costs by 1% to balance the budget. If they cannot do that, to let the manager know and he will replace them with someone who can figure it out. Instead there is this major hassle and do-gooder crying in the paper about potential cuts. Then the government decides to "punish" the taxpayers by taking sports programs out of the schools, things like that. Not once do the government workers have to sacrifice.
If Arnold was smart he would do the same thing in CA. If revenues were projected to be short by 5-10%, each department has to cut their cost by that amount without reducing the service to the public. First thing you would see is them cutting what they pay out to others, but not to themselves. Arnold would just have to put a freeze on hiring and tell each department to cut their staff by 5% by the next year.
BO actually gave all federal workers a raise, now just how dumb is that?? A budget cut to a government employee is something different that what most of us had to deal with in our careers. In the government there are automatic increases each year in the budget for inflation, so to them a cut is a reduction in the amount of the increase.....it never is an actual cut. A few years ago I think Gingrich did a study and if the federal budget just froze at the current levels, no automatic increases, within something like five years there would have been a surplus. Reagan was right, no matter how much money congress takes in, they will spend more. Pathetic!
There used to be a guy who was a corporate raider who was nicknamed "Chainsaw AL", who could go into companies and cut their costs and get rid of the waste and cut them down to size. Painful but he played the bad guy despite hundreds of death threats etc. What our government needs, be it local, state or federal is some folks like that to go in and do the same thing. I hesistate to think how many hundreds of billions of tax dollars are being wasted that could be saved if folks put their mind to it.
Bottom line is I am sick and tired of having my taxes going up, benefits being cut from the private sector, while the damn government continues to grow and bloat with no sacrifice on their part to speak of. I think the public is really getting fed up and the tax revolt is coming.
regards,
5412