Will Rogers has a great quote that I love. He noted, “Lord, the money we do spend on Government and it’s not one bit better than the government we got for one-third the money twenty years ago”(Paula McSpadden Love, The Will Rogers Book, (1972) p. 20.)
Senator Mark Pryor wants our ideas on how to cut federal spending. Take a look at this video clip below:
Senator Pryor has asked us to send our ideas to him at cutspending@pryor.senate.gov and I have done so in the past and will continue to do so in the future. Here are a few more I just emailed to him myself at 6:59 am CST on April 18th, 2011.
In my past posts I could have been accused of giving just general ideas of where to cut. Now I am starting in with specifics that are taken from the article “How to cut $343 Billion from the federal budget,” by Brian Riedl, Heritage Foundation, October 28, 2010(Spending cuts in millions of dollars:
$44,000
Halve federal program payment errors by 2012, especially by reducing Medicare errors and earned income tax credit errors.
Tighten oversight by spending $5 billion on new resources, such as updated computer systems, and then recover $49 billion in payment errors.
$20,000
Rescind unobligated balances after 36 months.
$12,500
Halve the $25 billion spent to maintain vacant federal properties.
$10,000
Cut the federal employee travel budget to $4 billion (half of FY 2000 spending).
$3,000
Freeze federal pay until it can be reformed.
$1,000
Suspend acquisition of federal office space.
$600
Trim the federal vehicle fleet by 20 percent (a reduction of 100,000 vehicles).
$300
Cut the House and Senate budgets back to the 2008 level of $2.2 billion.
$215
Eliminate the Presidential Election Campaign Fund.
$100
Tighten controls on federal employee credit cards and cut down on delinquencies.
$70
Require federal employees to fly coach on domestic flights.
Targeting programs more precisely. Corporate welfare programs benefit those who do not need assistance in the American free enterprise system. Other programs often fail to enforce their own eligibility requirements.
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Another famous Arkansan.
Mark Wright
Inducted in 1998
(b. 1957) – A Fayetteville native, he started his career by leaving a lucrative job singing jingles to take a $150-a-week songwriting gig. RCA made the 25-year-old Belmont graduate the then-youngest executive at a major label. That confidence saw Wright co-produce Clint Black’s “Killin’ Time,” the 1989 record that spawned five number ones. Wright now has to his credit more than 26 million units in sales and over 40 number one singles that he’s written, published or produced. As songwriter, he’s had 12 BMI Awards – seven of them Million-Airs – including Mark Chesnutt’s “Goin’ Through The Big D,” Oak Ridge Boys’ “Lucky Moon,” and “Today My World Slipped Away,” cut by both George Strait and Vern Gosdin. His latest accomplishment is an Album of the Year Grammy for Lee Ann Womack’s dazzling “I Hope You Dance,” which has already earned him the 2000 CMA Single of the Year honors. www.allmusic.com
