I'm Joeverkill, and these are some quick Notes from the Right-Wing.
Barack Obama is making no promises about reducing the country's budget deficit. Meanwhile John McCain is claiming he can balance the thing by 2013, though experts seem skeptical. From the AP:
Barack Obama says John McCain's plan to balance the budget doesn't add up. Easy for him to say: It's not a goal he's even trying to reach.
Not only does Obama say he won't eliminate the deficit in his first term, as McCain aims to do, he frankly says he's not sure he'd bring it down at all in four years, considering his own spending plans.
"I do not make a promise that we can reduce it by 2013 because I think it is important for us to make some critical investments right now in America's families," Obama told reporters this week when asked if he'd match McCain's pledge
...Obama's criticism of McCain's pledge as "overly ambitious" is backed up by fiscal experts.
"Hypothetically it's possible to get to a balanced budget by 2013, but not under the policies that McCain has proposed," Bixby said. "The policies he would propose would actually add to the deficit when you take them all together."
What about earmarks? McCain's always ranting about earmarks.
[E]armarks accounted for just $17 billion of the $2.9 trillion budget this year.
As per usual, both sides are pissing Joeverkill off. Obama's planning on increasing federal spending, which irritates me, but at least he's being up-front about it. John McCain is simply refusing to do the math on his own budget plan, and that's inexcusable. But on the other hand, at least he's talking about reducing spending.
The thing that's really disappointing about all this is that we conservatives don't have a reasoned voice in this. We have John McCain, who is claiming stuff like the ability reduce spending while increasing our already bloated standing army by about 30%. It's infuriating.
So for this country's rational conservatives -- on the off chance that they might stumble upon this blog -- Joeverkill proposes a few bullet points for decreasing the budget.
- Get out of Iraq. That saves about $200 Billion a year on top of military overhead.
- Cut all non-elite units of the Army by 80%. This can be accomplished immediately by not recruiting for non-elite for for one year and nine months. Close bases and stop equipment orders in proportion to troop cuts. Saves about $88 billion.
- Cut the budgets for new F-22's, V-22's, F-35's, missile defense, and C-130 by 80%. Eliminate the budget for F-18's. Saves about $15 Billion.
- Raise the retirement age to 70. I'm not able to pull together had enough data to say for certain, but conservatively I'd estimate that this would save about $100 Billion.
- Cut the Department of Education's budget by half. What exactly do they do, anyhow? Saves $26 Billion.
- No farm subsidies. Saves $70 Billion.
- No more faith-based initiatives. Saves $20 Billion.
Sum total: $519 Billion per annum.
These are just a few roughly hashed-out points. I could cut deeper into this country's bloated, wasteful, stupid spending policies, but I think I've proved my point. If we followed the bullet points above and maintained our present level of taxation, we're at a surplus of about $119 Billion per year. Granted, it would still take about 75 years to eliminate the national debt, but it's better than widening it by $400 Billion a year, right?
... right?
... anybody?
I'm Joeverkill, and this has been Notes from the Right-Wing.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Notes from the Right-Wing: Budget F**cked, McCain Still Bad at Math
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6 responses:
While it makes me happy to see someone suggesting cutting on military expenditure, I am not so sure I agree with cutting down on education spending. If anything I'd support diverting some of that military expenditure towards propping up the crumbling public school infrastructure in the inner cities. That is a sure fire way to help decrease poverty and reduce crime.
While what you propose is fiscally more responsible I do believe that the government has a social responsibility towards elevating poor families and increased education is a balanced way to do that as opposed to welfare spending. It is a measure that people on both sides of the political coin can agree on. As you pointed out - the education dept is not doing much. However that is because of a serious shortage of funding for infrastructure and for hiring teaching staff.
Minotauro,
The vast majority of educational spending is done at the state level. The federal Department of Education does almost nothing other than enforce standardized testing practices, which in my opinion are counterproductive to education anyhow.
In my opinion, education should be right at the top of our priorities in terms of spending. However at the current time nearly all of that money is state money (which I think is fine, by the way).
I'll post more on education in the future -- I have some strong stances on the subject. But for the purposes of this argument, I'm simply going to leave it open to anyone on this blog to tell me what the federal Department of Education spends $52 Billion per year on, and why that level of expenditure is jusitified.
Good to know that. I am pretty unfamiliar about the fed/ state division of administration.
Certainly an overhaul of the education system at all levels has been a long time coming and is more necessary now than ever before, but if you're gonna call McCain out on complaining about the 17 billion spent on earmarks, I think another 26 billion out of your 500 billion dollar plan isn't that big of a dent.
In the interest of full disclosure, I think education is the most important issue for the country myself, superseding health care, military/national security, welfare, etc, and it's certainly the one that probably costs the least to get back into fighting shape.
Thanks for commenting, Arvin. I'd agree with those points.
My point about McCain is that it's either duplicitous or simply stupid to make a big deal about $17 Billion worth of earmarks while asking for a 30% standing army troop increase. The earmarks are bad and they need to go, but if you're serious about slashing the budget, you really need to focus on military spending and social welfare programs.
Personally, I don't see why the federal department of education should cost us more than about a Billion per year. They don't particularly do anything. Educational spending is a state level thing.
Something we can all agree on.
I believe that Joe is exactly right when he calls for the downsizing of our military as the quickest way to open up money for other expenditures and/or saving for paying down our debt.
Joe is completely right when he says the department of education is way overfunded. It also took on a new insidious power with the no child left behind act, as it now basically tells states where they can spend their tax dollars.
I believe it is important that we all find the issues where we can agree, rather than focus on the tiny portions of issues where we disagree. The next few decades are so important, infighting cannot be afforded anymore.
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