- Jun 6, 2007
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The House Republicans have done a lot of great work in coming up with a list of cuts on the Federal Budget which they announced this past Friday, however, if most Americans were made aware of the specific cuts they would not support many of them. Democrats and others need to stop their bellowing about the size of the cuts if Washington can't cut a hundred billion dollars from a budget that has a yearly deficit of a trillion and a half dollars than America has little hope from avoiding the financial cliff it is speeding toward. These naysayers who are advocating waiting a year or longer for drastic budget cuts to aid the nation's recession recovery aren't advocating wisdom, financial experts tell us America is within one, two or at the most three years in losing our triple A credit rating - a disaster for the nation, also within at most five years of having a Greek like crisis in borrowing money and common sense indicates that if the budget isn't drastically cut in 2011 it surely won't be in 2012 an election year where politicians will have to face the ire of Americans affected by the cuts. Democrats and Republicans in Washington need to roll up their sleeves and get to compromising using both the House Republican proposal and the upcoming White House Proposals on budgets cuts as starting points in the negotiations nobody wins unless both sides share the sacrifice on what gets cut.
The White House hasn't yet released a specific list of budget cuts it is proposing so only the House Republican plan will be critiqued. The Republican plan to reduce $88 million (from 2010's budget) from the food safety and inspection program is a bad idea the food industry does not have the good track record where it can be trusted to legitimize such cuts. Cutting the Farm Services Agency's budget $190 million dollar is a bad idea, the worlds facing alarming grain and cotton commodity supplies this Agency needs to be doing more than it has ever done to boost farm output now is not the time to cut its budget. Domestic Food Program cuts of $782 million and Foreign Agricultural Subsidies of $810 million is a bad idea what do you Republicans have your head buried in the sand food prices are skyrocketing you are acting completely non-caring to the needy with these cuts. Cuts of $56 million to the Commodities Futures Trading Commission is a terrible idea, the commodity markets are unstable, government regulators need to have the sky fall on top of speculators significantly driving up commodity prices Federal regulators need to increase market oversight to high levels never seen taking away resources from the CFTC is not an option. Cutting $557 million from the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund is a bad idea your putting people's health in jeopardy from contaminated water, and cutting $1.4 billion from the Clean Water State Revolving Fund is a bad idea in large parts of America flooding trends have changed where flooding is much worse in years past America needs these dollars to expand watershed projects and with water shortages frequently arising in many areas of the country that even makes creating reservoirs of water even more important. Cutting Health Centers budgets $1 billion dollars especially from Republicans is an idiotic idea; the 2010 Health Care Reform legislation is a financial disaster with its creation of a new health care entitlement program for americans whose incomes are under 400% of the poverty level and needs to be changed and part of the solution is strengthening America's Community Health Centers to provide affordable care to low-income Americans cutting these Centers budgets makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Eliminating $317 million from family planning for low income individuals budgets is a very foolish and insensitive move, for many of these affected individuals and families if they bring children into this world those children are going to have terrible lives their parent won't have a job, their parent has a drug or alcohol problem, their communities are impoverished, crime ridden and have lousy schools the children have little or no hope for a good life. Cutting $300 million from the Eliminate Global Aids Transfer Program is a bad idea 33 million people throughout the world have aids high numbers of people die from this disease cutting this program is bad and looks bad which makes it a bad idea. Cutting two to three billions from International Peace Keeping assistance and various Foreign assistance programs is incredibly stupid this is small amounts of money and if foreign problems grow into large scale humanitarian crisis which can happen everyone knows America will come through with billions of dollars of aid, the Republicans are being penny wise pound foolish here.
The Republicans need to be more open to Defense Department budget cuts, ordinary Americans will be hurt from these discretionary domestic cuts they are pursuing it is unfair to these affected people to have nonsensical defense spending when they are being subjected to this budget pain. Kill the Osprey V-22 helicopter program, this is a flying vehicle that can take off like a plane and land like a helicopter; it should only be a rarely used special forces transport vehicle which there are enough of them already built for this purpose, common sense indicates it is extremely vulnerable to failures that will cause fatalities many things must go right for it to land like a helicopter, U.S. military command recognizes this it is restricted in its use to avoid missions where it will face significant enemy fire and its tragic record of maintenance problems and operational readiness clearly indicate it is a problem program. During the last ten years the White House expanded the number of men and women in uniform to accommodate two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Iraq War for America will end this year so the troop level build-up should be rolled back this will save money in the budget. The media reports regularly that many Japanese people don't want U.S. bases in Japan and good judgment calls for the conclusion that Japanese politicians do not have the stomach to resist this call from their electorate much longer, it is unfortunate because it will weaken security for the Japanese people and the people in the region from dangers from North Korea and from China but the reality is no matter what is right or what America wants the American bases in Japan's time is quickly approaching its end why doesn't the U.S. government recognize the reality and shut down the bases immediately and save money in the federal budget. President Obama in his recent State of the Union Address prudently talked about cutting the budget by having the government work smarter, for example, stopping the over lapping work of government departments. Why doesn't the Federal government take this principle in a different direction, specifically take some work the government pays for in-house, the critical thing is that for this initiative to work the federal government has to set up an incentive pay program which incentivizes the workers in the program to be cost efficient. The one example I am thinking about is that the Federal government has announced that it isn't going to dredge the mouth of the Mississippi River as deep and as wide as it has in the past to save on spending in the budget which unfortunately will produce a consequence in having shipping costs increase for shipments through that channel. I don't know how the Army Corps of Engineers goes about having that specific channel dredged but I know in other parts of the country they "contract" out dredging jobs which obviously and reasonably means they are paying for the profit of the dredge business owner. Why doesn't the Army Corp of Engineers have their own dredging fleet they do so much dredging there certainly would be enough work on a continual basis for such a fleet, for it to work though the dredging fleet work force would have to perform at a high level and the only way to achieve that is to have a good incentive pay program.
The White House hasn't yet released a specific list of budget cuts it is proposing so only the House Republican plan will be critiqued. The Republican plan to reduce $88 million (from 2010's budget) from the food safety and inspection program is a bad idea the food industry does not have the good track record where it can be trusted to legitimize such cuts. Cutting the Farm Services Agency's budget $190 million dollar is a bad idea, the worlds facing alarming grain and cotton commodity supplies this Agency needs to be doing more than it has ever done to boost farm output now is not the time to cut its budget. Domestic Food Program cuts of $782 million and Foreign Agricultural Subsidies of $810 million is a bad idea what do you Republicans have your head buried in the sand food prices are skyrocketing you are acting completely non-caring to the needy with these cuts. Cuts of $56 million to the Commodities Futures Trading Commission is a terrible idea, the commodity markets are unstable, government regulators need to have the sky fall on top of speculators significantly driving up commodity prices Federal regulators need to increase market oversight to high levels never seen taking away resources from the CFTC is not an option. Cutting $557 million from the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund is a bad idea your putting people's health in jeopardy from contaminated water, and cutting $1.4 billion from the Clean Water State Revolving Fund is a bad idea in large parts of America flooding trends have changed where flooding is much worse in years past America needs these dollars to expand watershed projects and with water shortages frequently arising in many areas of the country that even makes creating reservoirs of water even more important. Cutting Health Centers budgets $1 billion dollars especially from Republicans is an idiotic idea; the 2010 Health Care Reform legislation is a financial disaster with its creation of a new health care entitlement program for americans whose incomes are under 400% of the poverty level and needs to be changed and part of the solution is strengthening America's Community Health Centers to provide affordable care to low-income Americans cutting these Centers budgets makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Eliminating $317 million from family planning for low income individuals budgets is a very foolish and insensitive move, for many of these affected individuals and families if they bring children into this world those children are going to have terrible lives their parent won't have a job, their parent has a drug or alcohol problem, their communities are impoverished, crime ridden and have lousy schools the children have little or no hope for a good life. Cutting $300 million from the Eliminate Global Aids Transfer Program is a bad idea 33 million people throughout the world have aids high numbers of people die from this disease cutting this program is bad and looks bad which makes it a bad idea. Cutting two to three billions from International Peace Keeping assistance and various Foreign assistance programs is incredibly stupid this is small amounts of money and if foreign problems grow into large scale humanitarian crisis which can happen everyone knows America will come through with billions of dollars of aid, the Republicans are being penny wise pound foolish here.
The Republicans need to be more open to Defense Department budget cuts, ordinary Americans will be hurt from these discretionary domestic cuts they are pursuing it is unfair to these affected people to have nonsensical defense spending when they are being subjected to this budget pain. Kill the Osprey V-22 helicopter program, this is a flying vehicle that can take off like a plane and land like a helicopter; it should only be a rarely used special forces transport vehicle which there are enough of them already built for this purpose, common sense indicates it is extremely vulnerable to failures that will cause fatalities many things must go right for it to land like a helicopter, U.S. military command recognizes this it is restricted in its use to avoid missions where it will face significant enemy fire and its tragic record of maintenance problems and operational readiness clearly indicate it is a problem program. During the last ten years the White House expanded the number of men and women in uniform to accommodate two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Iraq War for America will end this year so the troop level build-up should be rolled back this will save money in the budget. The media reports regularly that many Japanese people don't want U.S. bases in Japan and good judgment calls for the conclusion that Japanese politicians do not have the stomach to resist this call from their electorate much longer, it is unfortunate because it will weaken security for the Japanese people and the people in the region from dangers from North Korea and from China but the reality is no matter what is right or what America wants the American bases in Japan's time is quickly approaching its end why doesn't the U.S. government recognize the reality and shut down the bases immediately and save money in the federal budget. President Obama in his recent State of the Union Address prudently talked about cutting the budget by having the government work smarter, for example, stopping the over lapping work of government departments. Why doesn't the Federal government take this principle in a different direction, specifically take some work the government pays for in-house, the critical thing is that for this initiative to work the federal government has to set up an incentive pay program which incentivizes the workers in the program to be cost efficient. The one example I am thinking about is that the Federal government has announced that it isn't going to dredge the mouth of the Mississippi River as deep and as wide as it has in the past to save on spending in the budget which unfortunately will produce a consequence in having shipping costs increase for shipments through that channel. I don't know how the Army Corps of Engineers goes about having that specific channel dredged but I know in other parts of the country they "contract" out dredging jobs which obviously and reasonably means they are paying for the profit of the dredge business owner. Why doesn't the Army Corp of Engineers have their own dredging fleet they do so much dredging there certainly would be enough work on a continual basis for such a fleet, for it to work though the dredging fleet work force would have to perform at a high level and the only way to achieve that is to have a good incentive pay program.
