Saving the national budget

It’s grimly amusing to watch the Republicans and Democrats fight over how to reduce the budget by goring each other’s oxen. Which program, they argue, shall we cut? Social Security or the military? Planned Parenthood or tax cuts for the rich?

And it’s all pointless!

The single biggest expense of government is waste. I’ve worked for government in two states and I’ve seen this for myself. It was Senator McCain who noted, in public, that the Bureau of Indian Affairs spends 90% of its budget on its own bureaucracy and only 10% on the Indians. I can tell you from observation that the Welfare departments of the states spend at least 50% of their income on their own bureaucracies and the remainder on the poor. If we could just eliminate government bureaucratic waste we could save at least 40% of the budget, right there. And that’s saying nothing about waste caused by deliberate corruption.

Bureaucratic waste begins with the very language in which bills are written. The impenetrable legalese by itself creates excessive regulations. The excessive regulations create excessive paperwork to keep track of them. The excessive paperwork creates excessive numbers of clerks to deal with the paperwork. The excessive numbers of clerks create excessive numbers of managers to keep track of the clerks. That’s how bureaucracies are created, and grow, and gobble up our tax money.

Corruptive waste is caused by legislators and bureaucratic managers who create unnecessary departments and projects for the express purpose of spending money on their cronies. Who was it that made the Bradley Fighting Vehicle into a 17-year and multimillion-dollar boondoggle? Who votes for construction of unnecessary bridges while our existing bridges degrade? Whose idea was it to bail out the very same CEOs of banks and mortgage companies who created the current Depression? Who was it that looted the Social Security system, which was paying for itself before then, so that Social Security is running bankrupt now? This is how politicians themselves waste our money.

Yes, there’s much that can be done to prevent this.

1) Let every government – municipal, state and federal – in the United States go out and hire a lean, mean, clean and completely private forensic accounting company, complete with canny lawyers who can translate Legalese and tell what enabling bills really say. Let them give those companies complete authority to go anywhere, question anyone and look at everything, with no complaints about “national security” to stop them. Order those companies to look specifically for both bureaucratic and corruptive waste, and bring reports and recommendations for reducing that waste back to the local, state or federal legislature – and then make the legislatures act on those recommendations.

2) Pass a simple law stating that no government agency, department, bureau, etc. shall print, use, maintain, etc. more than ten (10) separate and distinct bureaucratic forms. I’ve seen for myself that all the services performed by, say, the Welfare system could be performed for no more than ten forms, rather than the hundreds it currently employs. Less paperwork means fewer clerks, and therefore fewer managers. If we don’t want to fire those clerks and managers outright, let’s transfer them to more necessary and productive work – say, the Border Patrol, or our port-authority Customs departments – with reduced salaries.

3) Cut the salaries of all elected and appointed officials by 15%. It’s rather unfair to cut the numbers and incomes of the government’s foot-soldiers without asking the generals to share the sacrifice.

4) Pass a simple law which restricts government departments to no more than three levels of management. With the exception of the military, which has seven levels of officers, there is no organization which needs more than three levels of management to function efficiently. To eliminate waste we must stop having too many chiefs per Indian.

5) Do not allow legislators to pass regulations regarding any industry until those proposed regulations have been examined and approved by relevant civilian engineers. Most legislators know nothing about, for example, nuclear reactors; they should not write safety regulations for such reactors based on the glib claims of power-company managers rather than nuclear engineers.

6) Eliminate an old injustice by abolishing all laws restricting the possession of marijuana, or any other products of the hemp plant, and then tax all such products 5% at the point of sale. Also, “influence” all those “financial institutions” which are “friends” of government to “assist and encourage” start-up businesses processing and selling all the products of the hemp plant. Marijuana was made illegal in the first place precisely to stop hemp-industry development which otherwise would have created serious rivals to existing chemical, timber and pharmaceutical companies. We need those rivals now to restart our floundering economy.

7) Overhaul our tax system so that the poor are not taxed more than the rich. End the tax exemptions which allow the richest 1% of our population – including corporations – to pay no taxes at all, and raise the minimum-income level which obliges to poor to pay 15% of their income in taxes. Don’t raise taxes; just close the loopholes. For example, set our income tax schedule something like this:
Anyone whose annual income is the equivalent of $20,000 or less in 2010 shall pay 0% income tax.
Anyone “ “ “ $20-40,000 “ “ “ “ 1% “
“ “ “ “ $40-60,000 “ “ “ 2%
“ “ “ “ $60-80,000 “ “ “ 5%
“ “ “ “ $80-100,000 “ “ “ 10%
“ “ “ “ $100-250,000 “ “ 15%
“ “ “ “ $250-500,000 “ “ 20%
“ “ “ “ $500-1,000,000 “ “ 25%
—and nobody pays more than 25%. There shall be no deductions except for medical costs and the personal deduction for oneself and one’s dependents. No corporation may claim its employees or shareholders as dependents.

8) Close those 80+ overseas military bases that we no longer need, bring the troops home and put them to guarding our borders against illegal immigrants from anywhere.

9) Abolish the Federal Reserve and base our currency on federal government property – of which the government has plenty – as well as precious metals.

10) Put Social Security back in its own trust fund, with draconian rules forbidding Congress to touch that money.

11) End all subsidies, to everybody. Period.

12) Pass a law stating that no one but American citizens, including corporations, can own American land. Foreign citizens or corporations currently owning American land can either sell it or become American citizens/corporations.

13) While keeping the US’s membership in the World Health Organization, withdraw it from the United Nations – and terminate our lease on the building. Give the UN a year to find another residence, preferably some poor country which could benefit from its presence – someplace like Somalia, or Ecuador, or Cambodia.

14) Place a tariff on imported goods and services from countries which pay their employees less than the American minimum wage – a tariff sufficient to raise the price of said goods and services to the level of American ones.

Following these policies would cut at least 40% out of the governments’ budget, create new industries and new sources of income, and a far better balance of trade without destroying any necessary programs.

Now, will any of our squabbling legislators support them?