Nancy Pelosi thinks her cupboard is bare

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who by most accounts is stark, raving mad, is concerned that her budget is going to be cut. 

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi says that while deficit reduction is a laudable goal, there are precious few spending cuts left to negotiate in exchange for raising the debt ceiling.
"The cupboard is bare," the California Democrat said in an interview aired Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union." "There's no more cuts to make."
"We all want to reduce the deficit," she added. "Put everything on the table, review it, but you cannot have any more cuts just for the sake of cuts. Right now you’re taking trophies."

In the words of the prophet Isaiah: "Bullshit".

No cuts would be "cuts just for the sake of cuts".  They would be for the sake of keeping this Statist harridan from putting more of her luxuries on my daughter's bar tab. 

Here are the easy cuts.  These are the ones that a Martian would instantly suggest after looking at our expenses for a few minutes.  This is about enough to balance the budget.  We could save even more by going to a 100% voucher system for education, shutting down the money printing facilities and bulldozing the Federal Reserve.  For the sake of convenience I've ripped these numbers off from John Stossel's site.  The accompanying snarkiness is from my own research, reading, and fantasies. 

 

Defense cut by 2/3: $475 billion.  Seriously.  We almost spend as much on military waste as the rest of the world combined.  And we consider most of the world to be our allies.  (Federal Budget, pg. 58)

 

Medicare/Medicaid*: $441 billion - Healthcare is expensive because of government regulations and subsidies.  Where are the incentives to lower costs if Medicare/Medicaid will pay x-amount 100% of the time?  (Cato Institute)

 

Social Security Means Testing: $170 billion - Social Security started going broke when LBJ raided the fund to pay for Viet Nam.  It's gone.  Let's stop pretending.  Honor existing entitlements with funny money, and left everyone else opt-out.  (Heritage Foundation)

 

Eliminate Dept. of Education (includes Pell Grants): $106.9 billion - The Department Of Education has been an absolute, total disaster.  A stupendous waste of money.  Give it back to the states and be done with it.   (Cato Institute)

 

Social Security*: $85.7 billion - See above.  (Cato Institute)

 

Eliminate Dept. of Transportation: $84.8 billion - The Department of Transportation has made the Department of Education look downright efficient.  It's a venture capital firm for political cronies.  Kill that bastard !   (And when it's time to run a bulldozer through the DOT building, please, please, please let me drive it for just 30 minutes.  That's all I ask.)  (Cato Institute)

 

Tax Amnesty: $80 billion  - Forget Tax Amnesty.  What would be so bad about a Flat Tax?  Calculated on a postcard?  With no exemptions for green energy expenditures for saving medical devices for gay whales?  (Rep. Jared Polis D-Co.)

 

Eliminate Dept. of Labor*: $78.6 billion  - We don't have a department of hamburgers, but somehow, hamburgers are still brought to market.  Disputes between McDonald's and customers still get resolved somehow.  (Department of Labor and White House)

 

Eliminate HUD: $60.8 billion  - Christ almighty, this is an easy one.  Anyone remember the Pruitt Iago housing debacle?  (Cato Institute)

 

Eliminate Dept. of Agriculture*: $33 billion - But if we didn't give money to millionaire farmers, how would the farmers become millionaires?   (Cato Institute)

 

Cut civilian employee compensation: $30 billion - Cut the pay and retirement and bennies to be in line with the private sector.  (Cato Institute)

 

Stop maintaining vacant federal property: $25 billion  - ALLRIGHT, GENTLEMEN, ALL PROPERTY WILL BE SOLD AS-IS, WHERE-IS, WITH ALL FAULTS DULY NOTED!  Who'll give me $900 an acre for this federal wasteland?  YES!! YOU IN THE BACK !!  Do I hear a thousand?  Auction it off.  Put it to work.  (Heritage Foundation)

 

Eliminate Foreign Aid: $21.2 billion - Foreign aid is notorious for staying in the pockets of the foreign politicians whose policies made the foreign aid necessary.   (Cato Institute)

 

Eliminate Dept. of Energy*: $20.8 billion  - God, what a waste that has been. (Cato Institute)

 

Eliminate NASA: $19.6 billion Privatize it!!  If the U.S.'s westward expansion and exploration had been left to NASA, we might have made it to St. Louis by now.  (Cato Institute)

 

Federal Drug War: $15 billion - Let's not just end it, let's prosecute the assholes who are currently fighting it.   (White House)

 

Earmark moratorium: $16 billion  - We almost have that one going on.  Nancy, you win this one.  (Heritage Foundation)

 

Eliminate Fannie/Freddie Subsidies: $14 billion - But.....they've worked out so well !!  How will we re-inflate the next real estate bubble?  (Federal Housing Finance Agency (p. 10))

 

Eliminate Dept. of Commerce: $13.9 billion  - no more junkets to other nations to increase commerce, only to have the Department Of Labor slap tariffs and quotas on the commerce, negating the savings from the additional commerce.  (Department of Commerce)

 

Eliminate Dept. of Interior: $12 billion - Privatize, privatize, privatize.   (White House)

 

Legalize Pot, Online gambling, Immigrants: $12 billion  - Pot is nobody's business but pot-smokers.  Ditto for online gambling.  And illegal immigrants?  People with that kind of drive and ambition are exactly the kind of immigrants we want.  Anyone who will wait patiently in line for 17 years to live in Abbott Tx is probably going to be a drain on society.  (Rep. Jared Polis D-Co.)

 

Privatize Army Corps of Engineers: $10.6 billion - I don't see how their engineers are better tha anyone else's.  (Cato Institute)

 

Cut federal employee travel budget: $10 billion - No, let's END it.  Most of our policy problems have Condi, Hillary and Kerry as their cause.  Keep their butts at home.   (Heritage Foundation)

 

Eliminate National Science Foundation: $7.4 billion  - Oh yes....  Totally cut it from the University system.  Watch the cost of both areas drop like a stone.  And scientific breakthroughs just might increase.  Just a gut feeling.  (National Science Foundation)

\

End EPA’s State and Local grants: $6.5 billion  - Yeah.  It's 90% political. (Cato Institute)

 

Repeal Davis-Bacon: $6 billion - We would have to learn to deal with increased labor competition from black people, but it's the right thing to do.  It's a racist law (See: Davis Bacon Acts) that has consistently produced racist results.   (Republican Study Committee)

 

Privatize TSA: $5.7 billion - Yep.  The current system is an illegal violation of the 4th Amendment.   (Federal Budget)

 

Cut Dept. of Justice’s State and Local grants: $5 billion  - As much as the cops in Waco, Tx might want a tank and a SWAT team, I bet we could be just as safe without that expense.  (Heritage Foundation)

 

Privatize Post Office: $4 billion  - FedEx and UPS are already doing it, and doing it better.  (White House)

 

Eliminate Small Business Administration: $1.8 billion  - The SBA works like this:  Behave like we want you to, and we'll give you someone else's money.  Let's end this one.  (Small Business Administration)

 

Lease coastal plain of ANWR: $1.5 billion - Hell, there's nothing there but ice and snow.  Let's put it to work. (Heritage Foundation)

 

Eliminate Federal Flood Insurance: $1.3 billion  - If the private sector won't insure you're multi-million dollar McMansion on the beach in hurricane alley, you shouldn't build it there.  (CBO, pg. 3)
 

Abolish SEC: $1.3 billion  - Can anyone name a scandal that these guys caught before it became huge? (SEC)

 

Eliminate Corporation for National Community Service: $1 billion - McDonald's, Home Depot, Barnes and Noble, and Gold's Gym serve their communities without the CNCS.  We don't need it.   (Cato Institute)

 

Suspend acquisition of federal office space: $1 billion  - Let there be cubicles !! (Heritage Foundation)

 

End subsidies for public broadcasting: $500 million  - Yes!  If you love NPR that much, you can pay for it!  Yes ! Yes ! Yes !  (Cato Institute)

 

Eliminate the Neighborhood Reinvestment Corp: $480 million - This one's an easy layup.   (Heritage Foundation)

 

Eliminate the FCC: $439 million  -  We've got 900 channels showing infomercials and reality show crap.  Deregulate.  If you don't like what's on the channel, change the channel.  (FCC)

 

Eliminate the Endowments for Arts/Humanities: $332 million - Another easy one.  Ken Burns is now a millionaire.  If he wants to do more documentaries on the role of Black People in the development of Black People's study of Black People, he should try to raise private funding.  It's not that difficult to put a voiceover on Powerpoint.  (NEA/NEH)

 

Total Cut: $1,882,619,000,000

Current deficit: $1,645,000,000,000

Surplus Achieved: $237,619,000,000

 

A few footnotes:

 

Department of Energy is eliminated except for Nuclear arms maintenance

Department of Agriculture is eliminated, except for food programs for the needy

Department of Labor is eliminated, except for 26-week unemployment benefits

Defense budget would still be $243 billion, more than twice what the next highest country (China) spends

Medicare and Medicaid savings breakdown:

Block grant Medicaid and freeze spending (226)

Repeal 2010 healthcare law (87)

Increase Medicare premiums (39.8)

Cut non-Medicare premiums (37.7)

Cut Medicare payment error rate by 50% (28.6)

Increase Medicare deductibles (12.6)

Tort Reform (10)

Social Security savings breakdown:

Price index initial benefits** 41.1

Raise the normal retirement age** 31.4

Cut Social Security disability program by 10% 13.2

 

There ya go, Nancy.  I fixed it for you.  And you'll still have plenty of pork in your cupboard. 

The Keynesian Trifecta - Theft, Borrowing and Counterfeiting

To hear Washington tell it, if we cut back on the increase, not the total, but the increase of government spending, we're going to go bankrupt, resort to cannibalism, and start listening to disco again.  30 seconds of video here.  Please watch it.  Who does it remind you of? 



Let's break down the Keynesian Logic (sic) here....

Economies rely on spending. 

I spend a lot, and you spend a lot. 

Government takes money from both of us, and spends it.  This makes it look like government spends even more, and is even more vital.  But it's the same amount of money. 

But even if we weren't spending our money instantly, we would have it in a bank.  The bank attracts our savings by paying interest.  The only way they can generate this interest it by loaning it to other people who want to..... spend it. 

Government takes our money by force.  If the only rationale for this theft is to create jobs and help the economy, we could be doing that without their freakin' help.  I want to create jobs in industries that I like, not necessarily in industries that have given The Teleprompter Jesus a shitload of contributions.  Plus, even though I'm a moral leper, I still don't like giving money to an asshole who blows up children with drones.   

Some of the other money pumped into our economy is borrowed from other nations, other individuals, or from ourselves.  Keynesian economists don't worry about this, mostly because they're not the ones who will have to pay it back. 

The other money pumped into our economy is printed at a facility on Blue Mound Road in Fort Worth TX, or at another facility in Washington D.C.  Nothing is backing it.  Not gold, not silver.  It's just paper. 

Taking money by force is bad.  Printing money out of thin air is bad.  Borrowing isn't necessarily bad in some cases, but if you're putting the loan on the credit cards of 5-year-olds, it's bad.   

If the only things keeping our economy afloat are 1) theft 2) borrowing, and 3) counterfeiting, then we need to re-examine everything we think we know about government, economics, and politics. 

The piper is coming, and he's gonna get paid. 

The Real Cost Of Shrinking Government

The New York Holy Times is having a conniption fit over the slight chance that government spending will be cut.
Most of this "sequester" spending cut is bullshit.  It's a cut from the rate of increase, not a "cut" in the sense that you use the word.
Here we go....

In less than two weeks, a cleaver known as the sequester will fall on some of the most important functions of the United States government. About $85 billion will be cut from discretionary spending over the next seven months, reducing defense programs by about 8 percent and domestic programs by about 5 percent. Only a few things will be spared, including some basic safety-net benefits like Social Security, as well as pay for enlisted military personnel.

Considering that we need to cut by about 50%, and then go further, this is a good thing.

The sequester will not stop to contemplate whether these are the right programs to cut; it is entirely indiscriminate, slashing programs whether they are bloated or essential. The military budget, for example, should be reduced substantially, but thoughtfully, considering the nation’s needs. Instead, every weapons system, good or bad, will be hurt, as will troop training and maintenance.

I've been through these types of cutbacks before with various companies.  It's fairly easy.  It hurts, but it's easy.  However, John Boehner has been confronted with a 3 billion dollar cut to an aircraft engine program in his district.  Defense Secretary Gates said we didn't need the engines.  Boehner said that the military did indeed need them.
That's why you'll never see "thoughtful" cuts.  We need slash and burn.  Your share of the debt (if you're a taxpayer) is more than 50K.

These cuts, which will cost the economy more than one million jobs over the next two years, are the direct result of the Republican demand in 2011 to shrink the government at any cost, under threat of a default on the nation’s debt. Many Republicans say they would still prefer the sequester to replacing half the cuts with tax revenue increases. But the government spending they disdain is not an abstract concept. In a few days, the cuts will begin affecting American life and security in significant ways.

Horseshit, horseshit, horseshit.  If Washington is putting their Corvette and caviar purchases on maxed-out credit cards over and over again, no sane economist would claim that their stopping would cost the economy more than one million jobs.
If taxpayers don't have to pay for pork projects, they'll use the money for other things - things that they choose, not what Washington and The New York Holy Times choose.  I'd like to buy another Ford F-150 instead of another F-16.  

While some departments may have exaggerated the dire effects of their reductions, Congressional budget experts say they have little doubt that the size and pervasive nature of the sequester will inflict widespread pain. Here are some examples from the government departments most affected:

They go on to list, department by department, the horrific outcomes we should expect from any cutbacks at all.  Most of these departments should've been privatized years ago.
Don't believe what they're selling.  They're partying their butts off on your dollars.
How long are you going to tolerate it?