From Fox 41:
U.S. Sen. Rand Paul wants to slash numerous federal programs, including food stamps for the poor, to save $500 billion in a single year.
A legislative proposal Paul introduced on Tuesday would slash $42 billion from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s food stamp program — a 30 percent spending reduction. His proposal would eliminate numerous other programs, including the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Paul said the proposal would roll back federal spending to 2008 levels and eliminate what he considers the most wasteful programs…
Before you liberals get all “he wants to starve poor people” about the food stamp cuts, you should realize there is a huge about of waste and fraud in that program and, at any rate, it should be only for the most desperately poor who can get food absolutely no other way. Right now, just about anyone can walk up and make a claim for food stamps. The main thing is the roll back to 2008 levels – that is the crucial aspect here.
It has been reported that Social Security will start going broke this very year. It had been projected to stay in the black until 2016, but the drop in revenues these past few years plus Obama’s asinine payroll tax cut will put it in to the red in 2011, and it won’t go back in to the black, ever (meaning that even if the economy improves, it won’t improve to the point where revenues exceed expenditures in SS…only benefit cuts or tax increases will do the trick). We are up against the wall in fiscal matters and piddling $100 billion cuts or an idiotic freeze in spending won’t do it – if we are to save ourselves from economic catastrophe, we need to cut spending. And cut it quite a lot – and right away.
We can survive this, good people. Sure it will hurt to cut spending – but not as much as continuing spending until our national bonds are reduced to junk status. Yes, cutting spending will knock of a point or two from GDP. Yes, it will cause unemployment to spike as government employees are laid off. Yes, it will, as I said, hurt. But the hurt will be short lived – a year or two, at the most. After that, with a budget balanced and debt being repaid we’ll suddenly find that we have bags of money (real money, not stuff printed up by the Fed) to invest in new economic enterprises – if we combine this budget cutting with tax and regulatory reform to unleash making, mining and growing things, then we could be in an economic boom by 2013 or 2014.
All we have to do is show some guts. I know that Rand Paul is ready. I’m ready. Are you? Of course, the real kicker to this is that we have to some how, some way, get Obama ready…that might prove impossible and our hope will then become a replacement in 2013. If we wait that long, then it will be more painful than it would be this year – but that will be as it is. All we can do is the right thing – and that, in 2011, is cutting spending.
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