What a MessAPolitico

Boy, do we ever have a MessAPolitico going on in Washington this week.  Everybody is finger-pointing, saying the problem is somebody else's fault.  They can't agree on one of the several plans being floated about by the House and the Senate.  The president says he won't sign any plan without a "balanced approach" that includes taxes on the people making over $250,000/year.  In the primetime speech on July 25, President Obama said this:  "What we're talking about under a balanced approach is asking Americans whose incomes have gone up the most over the last decade – millionaires and billionaires – to share in the sacrifice everyone else has to make."  Wow, that sounds fair.  In tax year 2008, the returns in the top 1% of adjusted gross income, $380,354 and above, paid 38.02% of the personal income taxes.  That's really not fair, is it?  These folks pay 38.02 times their fair share, but it's not enough to satisfy the big spenders in Washington.

Now when we look at these plans to "cut" spending by the federal government, only the so-called Cap, Cut, & Balance bill did anything reliably effective.  But that one will never see the light of day, because the senate majority leader won't even bring it up for a vote.  After all, that solution came from the other party, and we wouldn't want to pass something that works and allow them to take the credit.

The other plans out there are ripe for accounting gimmicks and fake cuts that don't really materialize.  Or maybe they are listing budget cuts that were already planned.  Of course, the most annoying and infuriating thing is the budgeting method that only Washington politicians could devise.  They build in inflationary increases to the budget automatically every year.  That runs about a 7% increase per year.  If they come up with a budget that makes the increase only 6% larger next year, then that's considered a cut in Washington speak.  Imagine that, a budget that has a cut, but still gets larger.

Enough already!

Everyone is all worked up about expanding the debt ceiling because we're spending more than we take in, and our credit limit has been reached.  The president and the treasury secretary have called the credit card company and asked for an increase in the credit limit.  Finally congress (i.e. the credit card company) has said, whoa, wait a minute folks.  We're not going to raise the limit unless you slow down the spending.  BUT THEY'RE STILL NOT PRODUCING PLANS THAT BALANCE THE BUDGET!

Let's make this simple.  And it really is simple.  Each month the government collects a certain amount of tax dollars.  Then they pay out dollars for bills, bond interest, government worker salaries, etc.  For the first nine months of fiscal year 2011 (October - June), the following deficit has occurred:
    Receipts                   $1,734,033 million
    Outlays                   -$2,704,557 million
    Surplus/Deficit         -$970,524 million

That works out to a deficit of $107,836,000,000 per month.  Thats a lot of money, and the bleeding must stop as soon as possible.

Why doesn't congress divide this monthly deficit by 5 ($107,836,000,000 / 5 = $21,567,000,000)?  Then they could drop the expenditures by this much starting in September and continue subtracting an additional $21.567 billion each month for six months altogether.  By the sixth month, the government would run a surplus of over $21 billion.

In months 1 and 2, the cuts would be pretty easy.  There are definitely programs in our government that don't deliver value anywhere close to the cost.  There are programs that just flat aren't vitally important to our country.  These can be cut up front in a hurry.

When we get to months 4, 5, and 6, the cuts are getting serious.  The discretionary spending is only about 1/3rd of the total budget.  This is talking about cutting out almost 36% from the budget, and discretionary spending can't completely disappear.  That means congress must go back and re-write laws that set so many of the most expensive programs on "auto-pilot."  They can't wait until halfway through month 6 and start discussing (that's Washington speak for arguing) what gets cut.

I'm confident that 36% can be cut from the budget and nobody will even notice the difference, except those bureaucrats that lose their jobs.  All government programs have plenty of waste.  Knock it out, and keep the substance.  Can the government really cut out waste???  I don't believe they can, because government is definitely a MessAPolitico.  The smart politicians are going to privatize everything that can't be just flat eliminated.

Hey congress!  It's time to get started.  MR. CONGRESSMAN, TEAR DOWN THIS MessAPolitico!