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 6:47am CST on May 4, 2011.
Senator Rand Paul on Feb 7, 2011 wrote the article “A Modest $500 Billion Proposal: My spending cuts would keep 85% of government funding and not touch Social Security,” Wall Street Journal and he observed:
For those who take issue with any of the spending cuts I have proposed, I have two requests:
First, if you believe a particular program should be exempt from these cuts, I challenge you to find another place in the budget where the same amount can feasibly be cut and we can replace it.
Second, consider this: Is any particular program, whatever its merits, worth borrowing billions of dollars from foreign nations to finance programs that could be administered better at the state and local level, or even taken over by the private sector?
Here are some of his specific suggestions:
Education
Agency/Program Funding Level Savings % Decrease
Education $16.256 B $78.005 B 83%
The mere existence of the Department of Education is an overreach of power by the federal government. State and local governments, parents, and teachers are far better equipped to meet the needs of their students than this redtape laden department, which benefits teachers’ unions more than pupils. However, Pell Grants will be preserved in this proposal.
The Department of Education has increasingly meddled with the more traditional idea of education being tailored to the needs and requirement of communities and states. The growth in education spending at the federal level has gone from nearly $53 billion in 2001 to an estimated $95 billion in FY2011 – an 80 percent increase. When the federal government spends money, those are resources that are drained from the state, diluted by way of large Washington bureaucracy, and sent back to the school districts with red tape and strings attached.
During the first half of the past century, America ranked among the most educated population in the world. Since that time, the role of the federal government in education has expanded significantly, at one point (FY2009) accounting for 10 percent of all government spending. The expansion of the role of the federal government in education has been detrimental, as the U.S. now ranks far below other economically developed countries. In December 2010, the OECD reported that the U.S. ranked 14 th in reading skills, 17th in science, and 25th in mathematics (considered below average) out of 35 developed nations.
The Daily Hatch 