The Issue
A fundamental problem facing the United States of America is that our federal government is irresponsibly spending about ten trillion dollars per year with an income of only about seven trillion dollars per year. That difference amounts to about $10,000 dollars per year per citizen and is the cause of the inflation we are experiencing. Our Congress and former presidents, responsible for this fiasco, apparently lack either the ability to solve the problem or interest in doing so. My gut feeling is that concern about reelectability has trumped their senses of responsibility. So now our new second term POTUS is attempting to Trump that irresponsibility with executive orders.
The Barriers
When opportunities to cut federal spending are mentioned, a common response is that the proposed cut wouldn’t matter because the amount is a tiny percent of federal spending. I read that argument recently about Foreign Aid spending…not that much money… critical to our relationships around the world…etc. It’s the same for the Department of Education…only 2% of spending, vital to keep our kids from falling even further behind, etc. Well, if the Department of Education were effective, the kids wouldn’t have fallen behind!
The Data
A government website, https://www.usaspending.gov/agency, provides a summary of federal spending which is copied below. Public access to such data seems to be shrinking “due to budget cuts” so take a look at this site while it is still available. The original list at the link above includes lots of hot links to the organizations and more details so go there if curiosity demands it.
A Proposal
Given the title of this post, how do we conquer the “nothing matters” argument and get to working on everything that matters? If I were in President Trump’s shoes, I’d call a private meeting of House and Senate leaders. I’d begin with this declaration of truth: “You know we are in trouble, and you know it is because you, your predecessors, and former presidents, including me, have failed to take responsible actions. We need to be in this together so screw up your courage, quit worrying about getting reelected, get informed about the need, understand the plan, and let’s do the responsible thing together!”
And then I would propose this plan:
- A 5% surcharge on all tax bills for the next five years. That wouldn’t cause any serious pain. Those with small tax bills will have small increases and those with big tax bills can afford 5% more.
- Across the board 5% budget cuts for every federal government organization. Complete shutdown of agencies and departments and overhead reduction are the priorities for these cuts. Direct benefits such as Social Security and Medicare will not be reduced, but management of such payments is expensive and probably wasteful and is a target for reduction.
Those two adjustments would reduce the deficit by about a third. If the United States of America survived that simple action, I would propose a new plan with bigger spending cuts for the following year. I’d give congress all the credit and challenge them to get busy and hope and pray for success.
Dangerous Move?
I probably won’t get unanimous agreement on this, but I believe that the spending of all long established, large, bureaucratic organizations is about 10% waste, and that spending can normally be reduced significantly without handicapping the important objectives of the organization. It may require killing some unimportant objectives! Such cutting is always painful, people moaning and complaining, but it is vitally important to the success of organizations and must be done on a routine basis.
Backup Plan
If that approach didn’t get things moving in the right direction in the following few weeks, I would start issuing Executive Orders, President Trump’s starting place.
Last Resort
The last resort, in case of failure to take responsible action, is to solve the problem with inflation, making the dollar so worthless that paying of the debt is easy. And then we can quit printing 1, 5, 10, and 20 dollar bills since they will cost more to produce than they are worth. And our retirement funds will be destroyed.
I just read about a proposal to stop producing pennies since the cost of production is approaching four cents per penny! Should have been done 40 years ago or earlier. Probably “won’t matter” in the big picture but using some logic and common sense always matters.
The Data
I find these tables fascinating. The raw data are copied from the website linked above but I added the Cumulative % columns and split it into the 38 largest and 52 smallest agencies to improve readabilty. Here are some facts and questions of interest.
- The largest ten of the 58 agencies spend 90% of the money.
- The 53 smallest spend only 0.5% of the total, but I can’t help wondering how much chaos they create and how much city, state, and corporate spending is required because of them. Maybe jobs are being created!
- What is the Office of Government Ethics doing with its $16.6M?
- The draft was ended 52 years ago so what is the Selective Service Commission doing with its $19M?
- It is obvious that the proposed 5% budget cut would hit the top spenders hardest. Fortunately that is where the waste is most likely to be found.
- Twenty nine million dollars for the Merit Systems Protection Board? I thought the concept of merit had been abandoned.
Well, the questions and items of interest are unending, and the work is begging to be done.
