I know, I know, it is an extreme notion, but it is possible. Despite the windbags on capital hill and in the oval office swearing we need to spend more, we really need to spend less. They will tell you in all of their Ivy League school speech that there is no way to spend less and that in reality we need to spend more; they’re wrong.
Pay attention Mr. Politician, I am going to help you save a fortune. Here are 3 easy steps to getting more fiscally sound:
1. Actually reform welfare. Whoa, what a thought! Instead of having people “breeding for benefits” and sucking down my tax dollars like an Irishman slamming pints on penny beer night, try actually capping the damn well. How you ask (and I know you are asking since you have failed to figure it out since it was conceived in the 1930’s)? Simple, Mr. Politician; follow these 3 easy steps to eradicate welfare as we know it today:
1. Limit welfare to 2 years and to a once in a lifetime benefit
2. Require welfare recipients to attend and graduate with a 2-year degree from a community college or other accredited institution (tuition covered by welfare as long as recipients maintain passing grades). Educating them is the first step in helping them up on their own and off of our tax dollars. Offer a 6 month extension for those that need to first get a GED, but they must get the GED in that first 6 month period.
3. Offer sliding scale daycare to all graduates and require them to maintain fulltime employment. Why should those of us that are responsible and work pay for those too lazy to get a job? Make them work fulltime and contribute to their own well being.
These actions will actually make people responsible for their own lives and survival. Welfare should be a one time help up and nothing more. Cost savings: $300 Billion a year. That should put a dent into that naughty deficit of ours.
2. Reduce the size of government, a lot. We are so bloated with people watching people, overseeing people, managing people, supervising the one person actually working that you could effectively cut the size of government by as much as 15% and not make any impact into its productivity. Hell, one arm of the government already doesn’t know what the other is doing with all this bloat anyway; the least they could do is reduce the size and charge us less for this chaos. Between salaries, benefits and pensions, depending on what cuts are made, the savings again are well into the billions.
3. Stop raping the American public pork barrel style. I am going to go out on a limb and say that less than 10% of Americans even know what pork barrel spending is you wily politician you, but the jig is up. With us drowning in debt we are now watching what you are doing and we are not happy with the results. Why are you putting us on the hook for $150,000 to renovate a Brooklyn theater or $1,200,000 for museum research in NY? Are you kidding me?
For those that don’t’ know a pork project is a line-item in an appropriations bill that designates tax dollars for a specific purpose in circumvention of established budgetary procedures. In other words, it is snuck into other bills like military spending, tax cuts or education without every being voted on or without you every knowing. Every recall hearing the government announce as part of their proud boasting moment of passing a bill that they slid in and included 9,129 pork projects totalling $16.5 billion? Yeah, me either.
This barely scratches the surface of what needs to be done to stabilize our nations money haemorrhage but it is a start. It has taken a lot of politicians a lot of time to screw our country’s finances up; it will take time to fix.
As always, thanks for reading. Remember… you may disagree, but you’d be wrong.
~Mr. Joseph
