Was having coffee this weekend with an ultra-conservative friend. The discussion was, naturally, about the recent election and the Republican promise/threat to lower taxes and cut spending. I was naive enough to point out that as much as I hoped they were successful, because it would be good for the country, I didn’t see how it was possible, seeing as through six months of campaigning neither, Boehner, McCollough, Cornyn, Sessions or any other of their phony cronies had been able to name even one program that they would cut to achieve their goal.
They know what they’re going to cut my friend smiled. They’re just smart enough not to brag about it before an election. I couldn’t argue with him. If what he said was true it was merely an extension of the Republican way of doing things. Don’t let the people know anything you’re doing, just tell them a lot of lies about what the other guys are doing and play to the voters fears and bigotries.
Okay, so let’s suppose my friend is right. Let’s suppose that Boehner and McCollough actually have an idea of what spending to cut to pay for any tax cuts they have in mind. Let’s look at the playing field.
Potential areas of possible spending cuts:
1-Social Security- There has been a lot of noise over the last few years about SS. Bush wanted to privatize it. That was a great idea. Can you imagine the shape it would be in now if it had been put in the same hands that destroyed our economy and dumped us into a recession? If that had happened it wouldn’t need revising, it would only need a decent burial. But what’s all the noise about now. Social Security is not in trouble. Anyone who says it is, lies. The problem with the current account is that previous administrations and congresses have borrowed from it and never paid it back. In 1983 the Greenspan Commission on Social Security upped the payroll taxes that went to SS creating a $2.5 trillion trust fund that was supposed to handle all benefits until at least 2037. Unfortunately none of the surplus revenue was saved or invested. Instead, it was spent by the government, on wars and other government programs, with no provision made to repay it. Since then 5 presidents and all the members of congress have participated in the great Social Security scam, stealing the contributions of working Americans that were supposed to take care of them in their last years. The money has been funneled into the general fund and used need-only for its intended purpose. Now we find that the IOU’s in the trust fund are worthless. The 2009 SS Trustee’s Report states that neither redemption of the bonds (read IOU’s), nor any interest on the bonds, provides any new income and the replenishing of funds must now be provided by new taxation or government borrowing. So in essence the government stole the SS money from the people who paid into it. This position is solidified by Section 13301 of the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990, which made it a violation of Federal Law to use Social Security money for non-SS purposes. So according to this law every congressman who voted to use SS money for other purposes should be doing time.
2-Health & Human Resources- This department represents the biggest use of federal funds, over $850B per year. It is also the compassion branch of our government and what really makes us seem like better human beings. If you believe that we are a better country because we believe in helping those less fortunate than ourselves than this is the place that proves it. However, in any organization this size, economies of control are always available. By economies of control I mean money saved by more efficient production. How much? I don’t know but if you can’t tighten up any operation this size by at least 10% you shouldn’t be running the agency. In times like these when every penny counts, 20% should be the goal. I’m not speaking about eliminating programs, I’m speaking about eliminating waste and inefficiency. In an operation this size, 20% should be a piece of cake.
3- Treasury- $414B. Most of this is debt service on the deficit. The only way to eliminate it is to reduce the deficit. The Republican’s and their buddies on Wall Street and in Banking want to cut taxes and spending in the old Supply Side economics mold that never worked. Their theory was that if you cut taxes on the rich they will use that saving to start business and create jobs. That is pure unadulterated bullshit. The only jobs created by cutting taxes for the rich are for couturiers, diamond salesmen, plastic surgeons and yacht builders.
Let’s face it. The best economic time this country ever had was during and immediately after WWII. The Great Depression had lasted twelve years and then we went to war. The government borrowed 10,5 trillion bucks to finance the war effort. The Supply Siders say you can’t spend your way out of a depression but that’s exactly what we did. Patriotic American’s bought war
Bonds and everyone went to work making the tools of war. We had zero unemployment. And as soon as the war was over even more people went to work making the goods of peace because all those people who had worked during the war now had money to buy all the good things they had never been able to afford. In six years we doubled our output. We can do it again, not by building weapons of war but by rebuilding our entire infrastructure, creating a working country built by working men and women. These people pay taxes and buy stuff. That’s one way an economy is built.
4- Tax Increases/cuts- Right now, no one can afford a tax increase except the very rich. Even eliminating the top 2% tax cut will only bring $870B over the next ten years but at least it will supply some of the revenue lost. It’s interesting that the right attacked the Stimulus but it was almost 40% of the Stimulus money that kept the Bush cuts from extending the deficit even further. It was another 33% of the stimulus money that extended unemployment benefits and kept people from starvng.
5-Defence Spending – $750 billion. The second highest government outlay. Our defense budget is more than the next 25 nations budgets combined. What does that say about how much smarter they are than us? And most of them are no less secure. Everybody except the extreme right wing sees our defense budget and screams for cuts. It seems like an easy place to get money but it’s really very complicated. I have no idea how much of that $750B is spent on internal security but the FBI employs almost 30,000 and Homeland Security 216,000 people. Then there’s DEA, DSS, CIA and Immigration & Customs, none of whom are anxious to publish the numbers that work for them.
So here’s the problem. Within those huge numbers, probably at least 10% of the jobs could be cut without endangering the nation. But we’re also trying to fix an unemployment problem so if you fire the deadwood you’re only creating another problem.
The same is true of the armed forces. We have about 1.5 million men and women in the combined armed forces and about 1.3 million in various reserves like National Guard, Naval Reserves, etc. Let’s start with those in active service and where they are:
Iraq-50,000, Afghanistan 98,000, South Korea 27,000, Japan 33,000, Germany 57,000,UK 10,000, Kuwait 10,500.
Then there are from a few to a few hundred in about twenty other countries around the world and 1,084,548 on active duty here in the US. That’s a lot of people. Suppose we pulled our troops out of Germany & South Korea. After the way they reacted to our trade proposals last week they deserve it. That’s 84,000 people we could bring home but we can’t fire them for the same reason we can’t reduce the our national police forces. There are no other jobs.
The same thing is true of the one million plus that are stationed home or our troops fighting or standing guard in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait where another 158,500 are involved.
So the problem is obvious. The armed forces are too big but we can’t fire any of them because there are no jobs for them if we do. So how do we solve the problem?
Let’s look at the history of the US armed forces. From the end of the War of 1812 until the Civil War and from the end of the Civil War until WWI the US military did damn little fighting. Sure we had some battles with the Indians and a couple south of the border with Mexico and Cuba but for the most part very little fighting. So what did they do? They built things. Even when fighting was going on they built things. During WWII my Uncle, Colonel Joseph Raso was the lead engineer on the ALCAN Highway that crossed Alaska. Actually for many years, the Army, led by the Army Corp of Engineers built much of our nations infrastructure. They actually still do. West Point has always been one of our primary engineering schools.
There was a time, and yes, war was simpler than, that soldiers spent a good deal of their enlistment building public works. I realize that training today is much more intense and thorough but there’s no way you can convince me that with over a million men and women in this country and maybe 300,000 overseas that we can’t get a work force together to fix the infrastructure of this country.
Right now we are wasting money on around a half a million men and women who don’t actually do anything except train. These are people we can’t fire without making the unemployment mess even worse. But they are people who could be helping the country by solving the infrastructure problem and we can do it with no increase in labor costs. At the same time we will be training our soldiers in skills, other than killing people, that might be valuable in finding a job after they leave the service. You do it without putting anyone out of a job because these jobs don’t currently exist and you gain a whole new infrastructure that will help in creating new jobs all across the country. It’s win-win.
Of course the one area I haven’t touched on is probably the one where the most savings can be accomplished. Procurement. For those of you with a prurient nature this has nothing to do with whores, except for some of the men who manufacture and sell their goods to the armed services. Right now the US is buying stuff from arms manufacturers and the like that has been out of date since before it was designed. This has to stop. We have storage fields all over the far west stacked with fully serviceable planes for which we have no use. The same goes for tanks, trucks and all manner of vehicles. Most of it is junk and the rest is mostly stuff that we will never again need. War is changing. The guys who run the Pentagon are not, at least in their buying habits. This is where we are wasting enough money each year to almost balance the budget by itself.
Are there other ways to cut spending? Sure. There’s always pork barrel spending which doesn’t really come to much but every little bit helps and how about cutting some of the perks that congress enjoys, like their own superior health care program. A lot of Republicans wouldn’t be so hot to cripple the new health care program if they had to go back to the one they want the rest of us to live with.
Basically there are, as seen above, a number of places to cut government expenses but I would be astounded if the leaders of either party had the guts to implement these desperately needed changes. Just like they won’t have the courage to vote tax increases where they are needed. They’re more worried about their jobs then they are about your problems or the country’s.