President-elect Obama wants to make health care a priority. However, the money has to come from somewhere. He hasn't really said much about what specific programs that he would cut or eliminate to pay for it.
Obama's health care program will cost us about $50 billion per year. What programs can we cut without causing chaos throughout the land? I'm not a politician, so I can call the drug problem a health care problem and talk about eliminating some spending that would be political hot potatoes. Here are a few candidates for McCain's Hatchet and Obama's Scalpel.
Why do we spend a TOTAL of just $543 million dollars on food inspections, but the Agruculture department has a budget of $20.8 billion dollars, mostly subsidies for large farm corporations? The Agriculture dept. spends more on executive salaries than the government budgets to make sure that all of the food in the country is safe??? This turkey is the #1 target for some serious pruning.
The failed "No Child Left Behind" act, which left about half of our children behind, costs $21.2 billion dollars per year. I think we can safely leave it behind. However, we still need to spend money on other, better education projects, so we can't use all of the money that we save there.
On the other hand, any national health care initiative will include health care for Native Americans, so we should be able to cut the $3.325 billion dollar Indian Health initiative.
Of the $68 billion dollar total Health and Human Services budget, about 1/3 could be combined with the Medicare system easily, saving tremendous amounts of administrative expenses. H&H can probably save $5 billion pretty easily.
HUD spends $16 billion dollars per year on rent subsidies to tenants, and another $7 billion per year in subsidies to construction companies and landlords. The former could be better used for building low-income housing for the elderly. The latter is a total waste of money that could be better spent elsewhere.
Does the Department of the Interior really need $10.6 billion dollars to fight wild fires and operate the national parks? Last time I went to a park, there were so many "Nominal" fees that 2 days in the wilderness cost more than a season pass to Six Flags. They should be able to cut some costs or cut their prices and make themselves pretty much self-sufficient, like the Postal Service should be.
The Unemployment Insurance Administration should raise its fees if it needs more money, instead of billing the Fed $2.6 billion dollars per year.
I don't have any interest in paying $128 million for the Endowment for the Arts or $144 million for the Endowment for the Humanities.
$764 million for Refugee Immigration assistance just doesn't seem like that great of an idea to me.
I really don't know what the Millennium Challenge is, but it costs $2.22 billion; I need a little description of anything that expensive.
I know Israel is an ally, but it has plenty of money. Why do we give the Israelis $2.55 billion dollars per year? While I'm at it, why does Egypt need $1.3 billion per year? What have they done for us lately?
The Postal Service should be self-sufficient most of the time. It required a $3.8 billion dollar government infusion this year??
One big-ticket item to cut will be drug enforcement. This should be a local health issue, not a federal crime, to begin with. Drug enforcement is working about as well as Prohibition did at the beginning of the last century. By turning a large percentage of the population into criminals, creating massive corruption among law enforcement, and spending massive amounts of money to keep 3 million people in jail, and arresting an average of 14 million people per year, the government is managing to spend far more trying to enforce drug laws than it would cost to treat the addicts as part of a comprehensive health care policy. Here's just a part of what the new strategy would save:
1. Department of Justice: about half of their total spending of $22.3 billion dollars per year is involved in drug law enforcement. We could save about $10 billion per year there.
2. DEA: $2 billion. The states should regulate and enforce laws against recreational drugs, not the Federal government.
3. Health and Human Services department of Substance Abuse: $3.025 billion.
4. Department of Homeland Security: Coast Guard drug interdiction efforts: $722 million
5. International Narcotics agency: $1.2 billion
6. Department of Education: Department of Drug Free Schools: $282 million
7. The Customs department spends a large portion of its $9.4 billion dollar budget on drug enforcement. Estimated savings: $3 billion per year
8. Over half of federal prisoners are non-violent drug offenders. It should be easy to cut $2 billion or so from the $5.5 billion federal prison budget.
9. Army, navy, Air Force and Marine drug enforcement efforts combine for several billion dollars per year; due to the intricacy of their budgets, and the fact that at least $45 billion of their spending is classified, it would be impossible to determine the exact savings.
10. A large chunk of Homeland Security's $5.4 billion dollars per year Customs Enforcement department is used for drug enforcement. We could save about $2 billion there.
11. Andean counter-drug Initiative: $407 million
All totaled, we could save about $20 billion per year in federal spending by treating the drug problem as a health care issue instead of a criminal issue.
That's a start. I didn't touch anything that cost less than $100 million dollars per year, and I didn't mention any of the MASSIVE amounts of military spending that are wasted on bases that should be closed, redundant services, no-bid contracts, weapons systems that nobody wants, outdated systems that should have been canceled years ago, or the $1.1 trillion dollars that the military has simply lost over the past decade, and refuses to account for. I also didn't mention the war in Iraq, or any of the other military expenses that could be reduced if we withdraw from that war.
Now for a couple of items that need MORE money: The Consumer Product Safety Commission. It needs at least a few more million to be able to stop China from killing us with poisoned toys and defective tires. Ditto for food safety inspections.
I'm not running for any office, so I can suggest cutting some stuff that nobody who can be voted out of office would dare touch. If anybody else knows of something that the government should cut, or if you want to defend a program that I would slice and dice, please post it.