The 'What would you cut?' game

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

In lieu of some of our conversations regarding the coming primaries and elections, I would like to propose a pipe dream: What federal government programs should disappear. The rules of the game are simple: you have to describe what the program does, how much it cost to run the program annually and what percentage of the budget it takes.

Happy hunting.

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As an example I'll take the base US budget of 2,387 billions and compare it to one of those programs that in my mind don't make sense like farm subsidies.

Program to eliminate	Cost per year	% of the Budget
Farm subsidies	$8,022M	0.33%

[Scriblerus the Philosophe]

About 80% of the government. Slim that military down to proper size, get rid of excessive people, and so on. I'm sort of wavering as to whether or not we should keep welfare and social security.

[ivor]

OMG!  Farm subsidies?  David Letterman won't be able to grow food any more!  We'll starve!   

Seriously I totally agree.  If you can't make money growing food then you shouldn't be doing it.

Where do we get more detailed info on the budget?  I need numbers for the DEA.

DEA gone!  No more black market for drugs, no more foreign factions funding themselves with drug money like General Noriega and the Taliban.  Tax drug sales to fund treatment programs.   No more incarceration of minorities.  No more turning them into career criminals.  That'll save billions and billions.

Social Security?  I would allow people to opt out without ever being able to recover their investment.  I would opt out leaving everything I've "invested" to people that really need it.  The people that paid into it and want to keep their money, that's fine.

[Sibling Chatty]

I'm sort of wavering as to whether or not we should keep welfare and social security.

As you decide, remember that the (minimally) several hundreds of thousands of deaths that will happen without those programs will certainly decrease the surplus population. More money for corporate welfare!!

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Here, take any link on the page.

http://www.taxpayer.net/TCS/wastebasket/

More linkies, lists...

http://www.ctj.org/html/hemenu.htm

These folks have some common sense ideas about it.
http://www.fee.org/publications/the-freeman/article.asp?aid=4281

I figure if there are little hidden away programs that give McDonalds a couple billion over 7 years to advertise in other countries, they can stop THAT shit before anybody goes after something that'll hurt people here.

Here, read this.

http://www.dreamscape.com/morgana/lysithea.htm

A taste...

The federal government's corporate welfare programs number over 120. They are so varied and embedded that we actually grow up thinking that the government interferes with the free enterprise system, rather than subsidizing it.

It's hard to find a major industry today whose principal investments were not first made by the government -- in aerospace, telecommunications, biotechnology and agribusiness. Government research and development money funds the drug and pharmaceutical industry. Government research and development funds are given freely to corporations, but they don't announce it in ads the next day.

Corporate welfare has never been viewed as debilitating. Nobody talks about imposing worker requirements on corporate welfare recipients or putting them on a program of "two years and you're out." Nobody talks about aid to dependent corporations. It's all talked about in terms of "incentives."

At the local community level, in cities that can't even refurbish their crumbling schools -- where children are without enough desks or books -- local governments are anteing up three, four, five hundred million dollars to lure very profitable baseball, football and basketball sports moguls who don't want to share the profits. Corporate sports are being subsidized by cities.

Corporations have perfected socializing their losses while they capitalize on their profits. There was the savings-and-loan debacle -- and you'll be paying for that until the year 2020. In terms of principal and interest, it was a half-trillion-dollar bailout of 1,000 savings-and-loans banks. Their executives looted, speculated and defrauded people of their savings - and then turned to Washington for a bailout.

There's a new drug called Taxol to fight ovarian cancer. That drug was produced by a grant of $31 million of taxpayer money through the National Institutes of Health, right through the clinical testing process. The formula was then given away to the Bristol-Myers Squibb company. No royalties were paid to the taxpayer. There was no restraint on the price. Charges now run $10,000 to $15,000 per patient for a series of treatments. If the patients can't pay, they go on Medicaid, and the taxpayer pays at the other end of the cycle, too.

Stop that. Except you can't. Because the wealthy, who own the companies also own the government. Why? Cost of running for office. Without the corporate funding, you can't get elected.

Nobody would try to get the hogs out of the trough when they only had their front feet it. Now they're in and wallowing, adding their own filth to the mix. And the rest of us?? Tough Luck!! Dance for the scraps, puppets, and think you're doin' fine!!

Specifics, you say??

Here, start with STUDENT LOANS!!
http://www.highereducation.org/crosstalk/ct0105/voices0105-shireman.shtml

Technology??

http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4347

Between 1990 and 2004, ATP spent more than $2 billion, 35 percent of which was distributed to 39 Fortune 500 companies. For example, $127 million has gone to IBM, $91 million to General Electric, $79 million to General Motors, and $44 million apiece to Motorola and 3M. Overall, these 39 companies reported revenues of $1.4 trillion in 2003. This is how Congress spends tax dollars extracted from Americans.

Taxpayers aren't the only ones questioning Washington's priorities. Economists wonder why government should subsidize commercial research at all. Basic economics clearly states that, if these projects will be as profitable as promised, businesses have every incentive to invest their own funds in their development. Surely the investors and businesses spending $150 billion each year on commercial research and development should welcome these profitable investment opportunities. Yet Congress maintains that no company would invest its own money in, say, profitable HDTV or flat-panel televisions unless taxpayers were footing most of the bill.

At least 120 programs, maybe more...

A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you're talkin' some real money!!

[Swatopluk]

No permanent subsidies and none at all for enterprises beyond a certain size. Replacing of emergency subsidies with interest-free loans (interest to be added in cases of gross violations).
Cutting and tight control of "defense subsidies" to the armaments industry (that incudes SDI).
Shifting from hight-tech military gadgets to better basic equipment for the armed forces (and better payment of the same)
Scrapping of 90% of the nuclear arsenal
Change of the election funding system, adoption of the European system of free screen time for election candidates that meet certain minimum requirements and refunding of basic campaign costs (within limits).
Introduction of universal health care based on a combination of the best elements found elsewhere.
No selling out of the commons, instead introduction of a system of merciless control and feeing of abuse.
No military subsidies for foreign regimes except in extraordinary circumstances.
Closing of tax loopholes
Ban of all subsidies to US companies that move their money out of range of US taxation (and no contracts either)
A general overhaul of the federal/state distribution of responsibility. Ban of all federal subsidies and pork to states that could reasonably tax themselves but don't. Setting of national standards (including funding) in certain areas* that are policed by the states with the option of the federal governement stepping in in case of gross violations.
Tighter rules on deficits and actions that influence them
No mercy for purely profiteering practices (not limited to war). Tax them still they scream, then hang them from the beam.
All tax exemptions should be revisited and tougher standards and controls applied.
A total ban on pardons for certain violations and mandatory prosecution

*e.g. education, public infrastructure

[Sibling Chatty]

Works for me. Wanna be Preside---dang. NOW we need the Kissinger/Schwarzenegger Amendment.    

[beagle]

Don't know much about the U.S. budget.
For the UK:

Any money spent on ID cards.

Tax relief for donations to political parties.

Gold-plated public sector pensions (both wages and pensions are higher in the public sector here relative to the private sector, pensions hugely so).

Also the EU wouldn't get another penny until
A:  A referendum in every country as to what it's for, and whether people want it.
B:  They produce a set of accounts the auditors are actually prepared to sign.

[Swatopluk]

Adoption of the Vitruvian contract model: If a contractor exceeds the estimated cost by more than a given (and not too high) percentage without very good reasons, he has to pay for it himself. Gross excesses are additionally punished. If on the other hand the contractor stays below the estimate (without compromising on quality), he can keep the change (this of course only for contracts that are the result of actual competitive bidding). The contractor has to bear all costs that result from shoddy work.
Don't say that is impossible. In Norway it seems to be the normal case to stay below the estimate. Obviously they do not follow the mainland European custom of always officially underestate the costs in order to get the contract, knowing that the government will pay the excesses.

[Griffin NoName]

Cut the Government, parliament, civil service, and all councils. Have referendums on everything instead. Start work at dawn, dishing out the jobs on a first turn basis, first off the mark get highest wages.  (Queues would be orderly, this is Britain). Clock off at dusk. Ban advertising, marketing and shopping.

[beagle]

Start work at dawn ...Clock off at dusk.

Yes please. I need a rest.

[Aphos]

The first thing I would chop out of the US budget would be the corporate welfare...which would include most of the farm subsidies.

[ivor]

Here's a great article:

If government spending were capable of stimulating the economy, we would not have recession right now.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/broken-window.html

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Some interesting points there although I don't fully subscribe to the mantra of less regulation. The trigger of the current recession is the obvious lack of regulation on the banking sector (the whole sub-prime mess). I do agree with the main premise of the article: destroying something doesn't create more economy (just watch New Orleans).
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Guys & Gals! The idea was to make specific suggestions as to what to cut and how much would be saved by it. It implies a bit of homework, for instance, MBs suggestion to remove the DEA required a quick visit to the wikipedia page to get their budget: 2,415 millions (less than farm subsidies!); then you get:

Program to eliminate	Cost per year	% of the Budget
Farm subsidies	$8,022M	0.33%
DEA	$2,415	0.1%

I know it is an emotional subject, but the idea was to get a concrete list of things to cut.

[Sibling Chatty]

Most of it is NOT an accessible\y listed program.

Most of it is invisi-pork, ridered into bills, tacked on, allowing all manner of crap to become legal, and we as citizens never know.

I can't find a specific listing of the USDA program that does it, but McDonalds and a number of other food-service and food companies are given MILLIONS of dollars every year to advertise their products/businesses. Not HERE, but in other countries.

It's buried somewhere in a mousd of other stuff. That's how they get most of the pork, give-aways and waste through. It's hidden.

[Scriblerus the Philosophe]

Chatty, I do indeed know the number of people affected.
I have shifted away from my purely conservative no-welfare-for-anyone to sort of a grey region. I don't like the idea, but I see the need.
I'd like to see taxpayers get something back from those big companies. If we're funding the research that's making them a bajillion dollars, we deserve something back from them.