Listening to the media and to our political leaders one would think it is impossible to straighten out our nation’s fiscal mess, and that we, our children, and our grandchildren are doomed to mediocrity for decades to come.   Oh, they want to help us, they “feel our pain”, but the task is just too difficult.

Hogwash.

If our federal government really wanted to cut spending and reduce the debt and deficits, they would immediately:

• Sell all of the excess, obsolete and unused federal property, including land, buildings, military bases and equipment.  Where does our constitution authorize the federal government to buy up all this private land, anyway?
• Compensate federal employees similarly to comparable private sector employees – reasonable pay rates, raise the retirement age,  replace defined benefit pensions with 401(k) plans, require full forty-hour weeks, and implement the same social security and health care treatment as taxpayers have.  Government-sector unions must be eliminated because the pay-for-play election scam is irretrievably corrupt and imperils democracy.
• Pay senators and representatives each $1 million per year, and make them responsible for all of their own costs – staffing, transportation, office expenses, mailing, etc.  If they want to take a “fact-finding” junket to Tahiti, have a girlfriend in Brazil, or travel home every weekend, they can pay for it themselves.  Term limits might not hurt either.
• Outsource most of the costs of government to co-ops made up of top private companies.  Social security and welfare fraud would be zero if administered by IBM and Visa.  Defense contractors have proved they work better together than they do in competition.  With co-ops, the winning private companies will regulate each other.
• Establish a real, non-partisan budget and cost management department, led by private-sector experts and technicians instead of political lackeys and cronies.  Pay commissions to those who find corruption, and prosecute the offenders.
• Implement zero-based or priority-based budgeting.  Start every department and program at zero and require true cost justification for all expenditures every annual or bi-annual cycle.  Same process for entitlements – disability and unemployment must be verified.  Eliminate unnecessary, duplicative and obsolete departments.
• Replace unemployment compensation and most direct welfare payments with honest work projects.  No work, no money.
• Tie all foreign aid and investment to our own national interests.  Not one dollar to nations or despots whose actions are damaging to the US.  That includes the United Nations.
• Simplify the tax code and work with businesses instead of against them.
• Eliminate the EPA and make the United States the energy provider to the world – aggressively develop natural gas and liquefied natural gas as an alternative to oil.  Abandon the infaturation with ridiculously inefficient wind and solar energy and pour our efforts and investments into the efficient use of proven energy sources.

I could go on.  Maybe some of these ideas have holes, or need development.  Surely there are many more opportunities – bigger and better ones.  But if you and I can discuss many methods of improving our government’s performance, why can’t our leaders talk about it?

Do they really want to solve the problem?  Are they actually interested in reducing the drag of bloated government on our economy?  Obviously, no.  Otherwise they would be doing it.

So the only remaining solution is to replace all the self-serving charlatans with motivated leaders who ARE interested.  And the only way that will happen is if we can educate and win the majority of Americans who currently don’t get it or don’t care – our neighbors, our friends, and any stranger on the street whom we can engage.

Time is of the essence.

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side

Whatever happened
To all the good times we used to have
The times we cried and laughed
I wanna know, I wanna know

Don’t You Care? – the Buckinhams