Suggestions for how to reduce spending, balance the budget, and pay off the deficit

[30ashopper]

BTW, the argument that UPS and FedEx somehow do it more efficiently through private enterprise is BS.

You are so very very wrong about that. Small town post offices might be better, but visit a post office in a large city and you will see just how f'd up the post office is compared to the local UPS office.

 

[futurebeachbum]

I don't think we should abolish the TSA, just put someone with common sense in charge.

I got a full 10 minutes from Papa Scooterbug about the dumbarse new restrictions on printer cartridges. :roll:

Scan everyone and everything for explosives. Done.

P.S. Papa Scooterbug loves the new scanners - much easier for him as he's full of metal. But common sense should prevail there too - he's got a giant surgical scar and a special ID card but still has major hassles all the time.

I have no proof, but I strongly believe that we could save significantly more lives with that $7B if we invested it in the safety of our food supply or in more trauma hospitals or in stem-cell research, etc...

I can't find any evidence anywhere that the TSA has saved a significant number of lives at any time in their history.

In fact, what they seem good at is shutting the barn door after the fact.

• After someone hijacked planes with box cutters, they banned them.
• After someone brought on board liquid explosives they banned liquids.
• After someone had a shoe bomb, they started checking for them (and restricted matches.)
• After someone had explosive underwear they started the scanning. etc..

There is no example of proactive work by the TSA. Everything they do is an after-the-fact reaction (which means it is too late.) Why do we pay $7B for that?

 

[scooterbug44]

I think x-raying baggage, using air puffer or swab machines to detect explosive particulates, and getting more basic info on travelers were good steps that actually address the issues.

Body scans and groping passengers are just wastes of time and energy.

P.S. Papa Scooterbug says they should get creative and just ban exploding and hijacking planes!

 

[Andy A]

I think x-raying baggage, using air puffer or swab machines to detect explosive particulates, and getting more basic info on travelers were good steps that actually address the issues.

Body scans and groping passengers are just wastes of time and energy.

P.S. Papa Scooterbug says they should get creative and just ban exploding and hijacking planes!

While it may have been said partly or wholly in jest, listen to Papa Scooterbug. He speaks common sense and not ideology. We would be better off if we did as the Israli's do but it isn't politically correct. They do protect their citizens, though.

 

[Lynnie]

Andy, since Israel implemented dressed and armed Marshalls on every flight, they haven't been hijacked. Tax $ at work, in my opinion. I'd rather that, than our soldiers in Afghanistan.

 

[Bob]

a robust economy solves 80 percent of our problems. business must be incentivised to invest in the united states.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/business/economy/17leonhardt.html?hp Economic Scene
One Way to Trim Deficit: Cultivate Growth
By DAVID LEONHARDT
Published: November 16, 2010 We look back on the late 1990s as a rare time when the federal government ran budget surpluses. We tend to forget that those surpluses came as a surprise to almost everybody.


As late as 1998, the Congressional Budget Office was predicting a deficit for 1999. In fact, Washington ran its biggest surplus in five decades.

What happened? Above all, economic growth. And that may be a big part of the answer to our current problems.

 

[30ashopper]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/business/economy/17leonhardt.html?hp Economic Scene
One Way to Trim Deficit: Cultivate Growth
By DAVID LEONHARDT
Published: November 16, 2010 We look back on the late 1990s as a rare time when the federal government ran budget surpluses. We tend to forget that those surpluses came as a surprise to almost everybody.


As late as 1998, the Congressional Budget Office was predicting a deficit for 1999. In fact, Washington ran its biggest surplus in five decades.

What happened? Above all, economic growth. And that may be a big part of the answer to our current problems.

Growth built on froth and easy credit, which wasn't sustainable.

 

[Lynnie]

Wasn't that economic growth partly due to overvalued stocks, angel investors, etc.? We went into a recession then, which was greatly exacerbated with 9.11.01.

 

[LuciferSam]

Getting back to the original topic, to balance the budget, legalize gambling, prostitution, and marijuana and tax it.

 

[Porkchop]

My suggestions:

Transform Social Security back into the animal it was originally intended to be: a temporary safety net. It has become a government pension and retirement package, albeit a crappy one, which was never the intent.

Pull out of Afghanistan. It's the graveyard of empires. Let the Taliban have it, and deal with any of their future nonsense via surgical strikes and targeted assassinations, as we are doing in Pakistan, Yemen, and the Sudan.

Balanced Budget Amendment.

Line Item Veto.

Reinstate Bush Tax Cuts.

Remove "Too Big to Fail" from our vocabulary. Let them fail.

Dissolve the Federal Reserve.

Demand China place their currency on the international playing field, else suffer a trade embargo from their biggest customer. Establish trade parity with other nations.

Repeal NAFTA.

Interstate trade of health insurance.

A ten year spending increase freeze on non-essential Federal programs such as NASA, EPA, etc...

End the war on drugs. It's America's longest war, and we lost it long ago.

Seal our borders, legalize the illegals, get them on the tax rolls, and drive wages higher.