Our elected officials, again, seem bogged down in partisan stalemates and cannot agree on what items to slice from the budget. The following is a rather simplistic plan including five different suggestions to slice Federal spending and bring more revenue into the federal coffer. See what you think!
FIRST SUGGESTION: Create a Budget Reduction Package for every voting age citizen in the United States to pick what items they want to remove from the budget.
Budget line items are buried in public records behind walls of gobbledygook, therefore creating a simplified list of them should not take an act of Congress. The President could delegate a group of computer experts, probably on staff already, and knowledgeable people from the different branches of government to accomplish this task.
Included in the packet would be a form letter and the list. The letter should explain the reason for the package and provide instructions for completing the list. The list should break spending items into three categories: Military, Human Resources (Medicare, Medicaid and Other), and Miscellaneous.
Each item on the list should be numbered, contain a brief explanation of what it is, who proposed it and its cost. Using a punch card type paper would make choosing what items one wants to delete easy to select and easy to tally after it is returned.
Everything about this package should be simple enough for a fifth grader to understand and use. See examples of the letter and the list below:
The media and our elected representatives could mount the biggest bi-partisan campaign in history to unify and educate the public about the lists, the importance of filling them out and returning them, and, especially, the necessity of the cut backs. The lists should be uniform, processed using SS#'s, available at local post offices, accessible to fill out on-line or downloadable and easily scanned to obtain the results.
Questions could be fielded through federally elected representatives or their staff, IRS operator assisted hot lines and town hall meetings. Every night for a designated period of time, the news media could devote a segment of their news broadcast to this process and its importance.
The items most often indicated for deletion would be removed first from the budget. Deletions would continue based on the declining percentage ranking of the selected items and parameters decided by a Presidential comittee. New spending legislation should be frozen at this point.
This process could become an annual event like filing income tax. Eventually, only those programs deemed necessary by the citizens of this country will be in the budget.
SECOND SUGGESTION: Create a flat income tax rate for everyone.
Require individuals, businesses, churches...anyone or entity with an income to pay a flat income tax based on their gross income...Simple...Gets rid of the loopholes.
THIRD SUGGESTION: Reduce Congressional salaries from $174,000 to $124,000 a year and pass legislation to stop their automatic Cost of Living Allowance. This would cut in $26,750,000 from our Federal Budget each year.
Since 1989, our federally elected officials have granted themselves raises totaling approximately 52%. In January of this year, Representative Giffords (D-AZ) submitted legislation to reduce their salaries by 5%. Considering two-thirds of our Senators and over half of our Representatives are millionaires, that percentage should be more near 30%.
Compare their inflated salaries to the 3.3 million public school teachers who make an average of $46-47,000 dollars a year or the retired worker who lives on an average $14,124 a year of Social Security Benefits. Can we say INEQUITY?
"Cutting the salaries of members of Congress is supported by numerous taxpayer groups, like Americans for Tax Reform, Citizens Against Government Waste and the National Taxpayers Union" (http://tucsoncitizen.com/yadapolitics/2011/01/06/giffords-wants-congress-to-cut-members-salaries/)
Since 1989, our federally elected officials have granted themselves raises totaling approximately 52%. In January of this year, Representative Giffords (D-AZ) submitted legislation to reduce their salaries by 5%. Considering two-thirds of our Senators and over half of our Representatives are millionaires, that percentage should be more near 30%.
Compare their inflated salaries to the 3.3 million public school teachers who make an average of $46-47,000 dollars a year or the retired worker who lives on an average $14,124 a year of Social Security Benefits. Can we say INEQUITY?
"Cutting the salaries of members of Congress is supported by numerous taxpayer groups, like Americans for Tax Reform, Citizens Against Government Waste and the National Taxpayers Union" (http://tucsoncitizen.com/yadapolitics/2011/01/06/giffords-wants-congress-to-cut-members-salaries/)
FOURTH SUGGESTION: Pass legislation making the two year ban on earmarks in Congress permanent and ban lobbyist's from operating in or around the Congress or Congressional offices.
"Despite the lack of a consensus definition, the one used most widely was developed by the Congressional Research Service, the public policy research arm of the U.S. Congress:
"Provisions associated with legislation (appropriations or general legislation) that specify certain congressional spending priorities or in revenue bills that apply to a very limited number of individuals or entities. Earmarks may appear in either the legislative text or report language (committee reports accompanying reported bills and joint explanatory statement accompanying a conference report)."[4] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earmark_(politics))FIFTH SUGGESTION: Set up a government hot line to report abuse in welfare, Medicaid, Medicare and other social services programs.
Citizens see abuses of our social services on a daily basis costing billions in federal and state dollars. Although the bulk of the recipients in these areas actually need and benefit from this assistance, there is a large contingency of individuals fraudulently applying for and getting benefits. Setting up a verifiable system to report abuse and a team to investigate it put those dollars back in the budget.
If we, as a country, could work together to accomplish these five things, our deficit and our spending would decrease significantly. Allowing citizens to dictate every year what items to delete should eventually clean up the excess spending, curtail attempts to get frivolous spending items in the budget and keep the public educated about where our tax dollar really go.
The President could appoint a special commission to work out the details of Steps TWO through FIVE then present them to Congress for a vote.
If we could just get Suggestion One accomplished, wouldn't that be great!
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