From the Washington Post …
This chart is the single best explanation of why it’s so much easier to say you want to cut government spending than it is to actually cut it.
The blue line is the result of a budget poll asking people “If government spending is reduced in order to balance the budget, which of the following government programs should receive lower federal funding than they currently do?”
The red line is the percentage of the budget these programs actually account for.
In short, the only program that more than a third of the public wants to see cut is foreign aid. Yet foreign aid accounts for less than a single percent of the budget.
So how about ending the two wars we currently are waging on behalf of people who hate us. That way,we could cut the defense budget …
I mean, because the relationship between the budget deficit and defense spending seems pretty obvious …
But no-no, we couldn’t do that. Whoever cut the defense budget would be called weak on defense. At least, that’s what people like Robert Kagan would call any potential defense cutters. Can you believe Kagan says defense spending is an economic stimulus measure? Sure … for Halliburton’s economy. I guess we can find the money for cruise missiles at $3 million a pop (that’s all-in, including support systems), but we don’t have the money to keep our bridges from falling down. That makes sense in Kagan’s world.
Now for the irony: Kagan is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. I’m not making that up.
I shouldn’t pick just on Kagan. There are plenty of media chatterboxes who say we need to cut budgets on the one hand but get upset when even the smallest cuts are made to our arsenals. Fox News gives these people lots of airtime, and that scares the Democrats to death (but then, most Washington D.C. Democrats are scared of their own shadows). THIS is the proper response.
Long story short: Defense stocks probably have more upside, as does the U.S. budget deficit.
So feel free to tell me in comments: What part of the Federal budget would you cut? And why?
Related Posts
- Chart of the Day — Federal Spending and Household Income (02/24/10)
- Budget Crunch Dead Ahead for States (06/30/10)
- Uncle Sam’s Enron Accounting: Is the US $202 TRILLION in debt? (08/29/10)
- The Musical Chairs of Government Stimulus (12/14/09)
- A Disaster in the Making? Busted Budgets Make US Less Safe (02/20/10)
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
EVERY department of the government gets cut back to FY 2000 levels except the FBI, immigration and the Veterans Administration. The military budget, and those departments formed since 2000, get cut 50% across the board except for the Reserves and National Guard. Privatize the TSA.
Social security and medicare benefits are cut to FY 2000 levels for those whose incomes are above the poverty line. Unemployment benefits run out after 13 weeks. Cancel the prescription drug program. and the ‘new’ universal healthcare program.
Tough love, pain for virtually everyone, but it’s the only way out.
The Constitution clearly outlines specific areas of responsibility of the Federal Government. However, the Federal Government has been increasingly violating the Constitution and sovereign rights of the States by taking upon itself responsibilities reserved to the States in our Constitutional Republic (not democracy) and thereby not allowing those closest to problems work out solutions for their State and local citizens.
There are relatively few areas under the responsibility of the Federal Government. I would therefore take a close look at the Constitution and eliminate all Federal control other than general oversight and consultation, thereby drastically reducing Federal employment (probably by half), which has been and is increasingly growing obscenely higher. I would especially stop the Feds from pressuring the States to be become increasingly more dependent upon the Federal Government, increasing Federal power at the expense of States’ sovereignty.
One of the few responsibilities of the Federal Government is our National Defense. But even that should be thoroughly examined against and brought in line with the Constitution. One importatnt stipulation of our Founding Fathers was to NOT get entangled in foreign treaties. Therefore, we should consider severing all alliances with any nation other than our proven friends and allies. It has also become commonplace to fight “diplomatic wars” rather than fighting to actually win, a strategy that has been costly both economically and in human lives. A commitment to a war should always be a commitment to win. In my opinion, one of the few such endeavors was freeing Iraq from Sadam Husein and helping the citizens establish a Constitutional government. However, I question whether winning is the intent of our current military endeavors. If not, they’re a waste, of money and lives, leaving us vulterable when real crises arise.
The unConstitutional power of our Federal Government must be returned to our Constitutional Republic of sovereign States. For decades, the Feds have be taking ever more revenue from the States, filtering it through wasteful Federal bureaucracies, and returning (with strings) only a portion to those States that would accept the Federal conditions. The States should stop sending this booty to the Federal Government and keep it to deal with the problems they consider important in the ways they decide, thus having more bang for the buck.
The U.S. Congress is Constitutionally responsible for our national money matters. They should therefore be required to investigate and report on the various uses and misuses of our financial systems, and our national resources. This would of course require a complete and open audit of the Federal Reserve and the status of our National treasures, including our Fort Knox gold supply. There should also be complete accounting of the TARP and stimulus money, both distributed and held in reserve for some reason. [Why was 60+B of U.S. taxpayer money, that was given to AIG, sent over to European individuals, and who else is getting our money?]
In short,
(1) reduce the Federal Government by half, returning responsibilities — and money — to the States,
(2) eliminate the unConstitutional departments and agencies, leaving only advisory or consultative oversight,
(3) evaluate the goals, procedures and effectiveness of Constitutional endeavors, and
(4) stop all unConstitutional endeavors.
P.S. Where in the graph is the representation of the costs of the Federal bureaucracy?
Stop the useless, endless, corrupt wars, save 20%
Increase FBI budget to catch Wall Street crooks, put them in jail, and collect taxes and illegal bonuses, save 5%
Legalize and tax all drugs, which means shutting down 3/4 of our prison space, save 5%
Create health care for all, save 10%
Stop backstopping financial institutions with buyouts, toxic asset buys, etc., save 10%
There, we just cut our budget in half –by taking care of the middle class, and ending most corporate welfare.
Thanks Sean for speaking out against the ‘endless’ wars. They are corrupt, brutal, and a poison to our culture.
Kill of the Education Dept totally. Carter made it a dept level thing and what do we have to show for it? Declining test scores, higher dropout rate…
End the Federal Reserve. Which will end the inflation problem.
Put the EPA on a diet.
Make Congress and the Admin live on the Social Security that the rest of us have, ditto for health care. Stop the life long retirement salary at full pay and other bennies we can’t afford.
All of our entitlement programs need to have a frozen budget. Not just a reduction in the rate of growth but no growth period.
Where is debt service? This graph only shows the so called entitlement programs. Since we paid into the Social Security and Medicare programs which makes them insurance policies, I don’t see them as entitlement. But why are the Feds’ involved in housing at all? Medicaid AND Aid to the poor? These are areas where fraud is rampant.
What would I cut? I’d start with federal salaries, pensions and benefits. These bums don’t work for us anyway.
We have to dilute corporate interest groups & other powerful groups from financially supporting
legislators. Our goverment must be influenced by the People for the People for a true Democracy,
until that happens ,where is our Hope???.
I just want to say thank you everybody for the great comments. You really put some thoughts into your plans.
We have been a very generous country for numerous decades providing financial foreign aid and sacrificing our young men on foreign soils in the name of War. It seems we have made more enemies than friends with our giving. NOW it is time during this financial crisis (with high unemployment and bondage to government debt) to have our military spending go ONLY to physically defending the United States — we need to first restore our own country financially and morally. Kicking the current manipulated financial can down the road to our great-grandchildren and their children’s children should be held as unacceptable to a moral, civil society which needs to and can become vocal in opposition to fiscal policies detrimental to this country and its future.
The elephant in the room is that there is no money for Social Security or Medicare. The government has spent all of the money from these two ponzi schemes and pretending they will still pay us back someday is naive. I think the health care plan was all about creating a new fund to loot to push the collapse back a few years. Overall I think Kevin has it right. The government is a big leech that is smothering the private industry it is sucking dry. Highways and national defense are about the only areas the federal government was established to oversee, but the federal camel got its nose in the tent, productive companies are wisely fleeing out the back flap, and I don’t expect we’ll get the camel out until the tent comes down. Add up all the social programs from the chart that the federal government should never have been involved in (Unemployment, Medicaid, Medicare, Aid to the Poor, Social Security, Housing, Education, New Health Plan) and you’ve got one very long red line of indebted spending. These areas constitutionally should have been left to the states.
Little out of date with our numbers are we? Try using current data.
Pretty simple actually. Rather than entertain WHICH areas to cut, cut them ALL, equally. Every single department, from the smallest to the largest gets cut by an equal percentage. Therefore all the cuts are proportionate to their current spending. THEN, we can cut areas that are still ridiculously over funded. We have way too much government and way too many “programs” that simply do not work. As a former corrections officer I can tell you first hand that our prison system, and entire judicial system for that matter, simply does not work. Way too many people in jail on petty charges and an equal number of people in jail for the umpteenth time because they were never penalized hard enough the first time. This country literally needs to re-evaluate itself and start rebuilding from the ground up.