Back to Basics

I never thought I would ever say this about a socialist, but I agree with President-elect Barack Obama when he says we need to trim the fat off the national budget. Most if not all politicians have made this claim upon election but how realistic is this claim. Can we really eliminate the programs that get politicians elected.

I will start with the well known federal government programs. Welfare benefits the chronically poor and the lazy. I included lazy because while there are citizens and families who struggle to get by and work two, even three jobs in addition to Welfare there are many more who know that they can work just enough to receive aid but if they worked anymore they would be ineligible.

The IRS is another wasteful entity. Why do we need dozens of volumes of tax code that God himself can only understand? Lets reset the scales to a flat tax rate where everyone pays the same tax be it sales or income.

Lets get back to basics and cut everything but the bare necessities. From there we will start from the ground up adding programs as needed. And for the agencies like NASA that have no obvious social affect but still has millions if not billions of dollars in assets, research, and property be auctioned off to the highest bidder. I am sure some bored entrepreneur with a couple billion laying around for his fancy will find his new rockets to be really cool toys.

If an agency has the potential to earn a profit, Let It. There is no reason Non-profit has to mean Money-Losing. We should let the credit markets get freeze-dried, let the Big Global 3 (Toyota, Mercedes-Benz and BMW) buy the Big US 3 (General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler). MB once bought Chrysler but after a series of dismal failures they practical had to pay someone to take it.

If we let the banks fail and insurance companies go under we will have a massive cut back that will force all companies that are unable to compete to shutdown or declare bankruptcy. Modern bureaucrats are unwilling to accept that its time to return to basics.