Senator Tom Coburn has released the PDF of his plan to cut $9 trillion-with-a-T in federal spending over the next ten years.
I haven’t had a chance to read the whole thing, but here’s the thinking behind it:
Every department and virtually every major government program was evaluated to determine if one or more of the following criteria was applicable:
• Not Needed — Serves no vital or essential federal role or has outlived its intended purpose.
• Does Not Meet Any Need — Little or no evidence to demonstrate results or effectiveness achieving stated goals.
• Wasteful — Significant amounts of silly or unjustifiable expenditures.
• Duplicative — Duplicates or overlaps existing government agencies or initiatives.
• Not a Priority at this Time — Mission cannot be justified within today’s budgetary constraints.
• Not Cost Efficient — Benefits do not exceed the costs.
• Parochial — Serves a local or special interest with no overriding federal role and exceeds the limited powers granted to Congress enumerated in Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution.
• Mismanaged — Significant amounts of erroneous, fraudulent and improper expenditures, excessive overhead and administrative costs, or otherwise poorly administered or implemented.The revenue savings proposed in Back in Black relied upon an evaluation of certain components within the tax code by the Office of Senator Tom Coburn as well as research and estimates conducted by the Joint Committee on Taxation, Taxpayer Policy Center, Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, GAO, CRS, CBO, and the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. The tax expenditures, loopholes, or tax subsidies were evaluated to determine whether one or more of the following criteria applied:
• Spending — Provision is spending provided through the tax code.
• Questionable Policy — Tax provision incentivizes behaviors with consequences that are
not national priorities.
• High Rate of Waste or Fraud — Significant amount of improper payments or fraud.
• Duplicative — Provision duplicates other benefits provided by the federal government.
• Special Interest Earmark — Provision benefits only a narrow group or industry.Proposals to eliminate, consolidate, reform, or end a provision within the tax code were reached based upon the results of this evaluation.
Cue the Democratic howls of outrage in five, four, three, two…
On the surface it seems eminently reasonable. Consequently, it has an Obama’s chance to win Texas of moving anywhere…so sad.
Gorgeous stuff indeed. Kudos to Coburn for actually thinking like an adult human in that cesspool of corruption known as US federal government.
Speaking of which, the only thing I can think of that would make this an even better bill — and probably hamper its success more than DC’s aversion to accountability and common sense already will — would be to add a clause that prosecutes any congressman, senator, or president for proposing, passing, and signing any law subsequently found to be unconstitutional.
That’d get their attention.
One hopes. Bankrupting the largest and most important country in the free world sure didn’t.
• Mismanaged — Significant amounts of erroneous, fraudulent and improper expenditures, excessive overhead and administrative costs, or otherwise poorly administered or implemented.
That provision will pretty much eliminate the federal government. Particulalry the “Otherwise poorly administered” part. Government by definition is poorly administered. We probably need to add an exemption for the military. The rest can go. Save us a bunch of money.
Sounds rational, reasonable, doable. Obviously destined to fall in the face of much screaming and name-calling.
Personally, I want to see a shorter, faster timeline to fiscal sanity.
Not to sound too dense, but can anyone explain to me why it takes 10 bleepin’ years to accomplish something that is absolutely crucial to our longterm success, strength and vitality?
If a group of politicians can find $9 trillion in savings in 10 years, that means that twice as much could be cut with equivalent “pain” to a healed hangnail.
There are at least 5 departments that should be completely eliminated. At least.
And that doesn’t count the Department of Racial Justice.
The Coburn plan? The Conrad plan? Ryan Roadmap? Obama outline? Bowles-Simpson? These plans reduce the deficit only $4 to $5 trillion, at best (and even that is BS). But they still add $6 trillion! It doesn’t matter which plan wins, America still loses. Both parties are simply competing to see who can BEST MANAGE America’s decline.
None of these plans do anything to increase economic growth, fix healthcare or rationalize taxes or permanently fix illegal immigration. The LMAD DOES!
LMAD has it all! Healthcare-for-All? It’s in there. Balanced budget? It’s in there. Carbon tax? It’s in there. Rational taxation? Amnesty? Border Security? Limited government? Social Security and Medicare solvency? It’s all in there; it’s all paid for and it’s all optimized.
The LMAD plan uses a $600 billion/ year carbon tax NOT to fight global warming BUT to BUY off Liberals. And that’s just the start… LMAD also adds fully-funded Healthcare for every American, a public option health insurance entity, and the implementation of tax schemes frequently advocated by Liberals such as a “sugar” tax and a value-added tax. The LMAD plan even grants overnight amnesty of 10 million illegal aliens.
THEN LMAD buys off Conservatives with much more than a balanced budget and limited government ; it permanently ends future illegal immigration with zero-tolerance, adds tort reform and completely replaces all taxes on production, labor, saving and investment with the new carbon tax, the value-added tax and the sugar tax. The LMAD plan even removes the burden of healthcare expenses from corporate balance sheets by ending our reliance on employer-provided health insurance.
It’s time for progressives concerned about rising temperatures and conservatives concerned about rising federal debt to realize the obvious: they need to BUY each other off in order to effectively address their pet ideological concerns-there is no other way. This means trading, among other things, a carbon tax for a balanced budget amendment and a more limited government. This plan is outlined at http://letsmakeadeal-thebook.com
Plan Blog: letsmakeadeal-thebook.com/
Facebook: facebook.com/pages/Lets-Make-A-Deal-The-Book/143298165732386
Twitter: twitter.com/#!/lmadster
Or just Google “LMADster” for more info.
The alternative? Greece.
I have applauded Dr. Coburn and those working with him on this for a time. However, what you’re not seeing released is consequences.
How many times does a dollar earned, generally speaking, circulate in the economy? How many private sector jobs are supported by government spending for goods and services? How many times does a dollar spent for goods and services circulate in the economy? A twig can understand the motives for smaller government and government costs but, at what ‘real’ price…especially, when cities, states, national and global economies are in the tank and unemployment is around 15+%….with potentially more job loss coming not accounting for the winding down of two war fronts and now even the re-suggestion of a double dip recession.
Everybody has all kinds of slick solutions but nobody is paying attention to the realities of consequences. Maybe we can do as McNamara and Westmoreland; hide and lie about the casualties.
Departmental and agency budgets are distorted by recent stimulus and wars. We really should roll back those programs before the Coburn ideas are applied. Just cutting back 15% from the budgets for Transportation and Defense still leaves those budgets at excessively high levels.
Government distorts everything it touches. Money would still circulate in the economy just wouldn’t be given to the wrong people.
http://www.houseforsaleweb.com/housenews.htm#inter