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 7:34am CST.
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:
Here are some of his specific suggestions:
Justice
Agency/Program Funding Level Savings % Decrease
Justice $22.867 B $9.057 B 28%
In recent decades, the Department of Justice has expanded far beyond its traditional role, pushing aside many of the law enforcement activities that were originally designated to state and local governments. In addition, the department
has become an avenue to channel politically popular law enforcement funding and grants to states, many of which are consistently highlighted by government auditors such as GAO for their incessant amount of waste, fraud, and abuse. The proposal reduces the department back to FY2008 levels, and completely eliminates the Office of Justice Programs.
Office of Justice Programs: Eliminated
The Office of Justice Programs does not directly carry out law enforcement or justice activities, rather OJP performs studies on the pressing crime-related challenges that confront the justice system and provides grants to try and help cities and counties reduce their crime rates. In effect, OJP has evolved into a multi-billion dollar subsidy to the budgets of local governments.
Since 1996, GAO has had strong concerns over OJP’s ability to monitor the use of grants given to cities and counties and if they have been used properly. Some programs, like “neighborhood watch” have little to no impact on crime
rates. In addition, GAO has also determined their evaluation process on the effectiveness of the programs needs to be reformed. The value of these programs is hard to prove because of the difficulty in showing the programs were the direct cause of any decrease in crime.
Each state, county, and city communities and police departments are forced to address many different forms of crime. The federal government can set guidelines on how to address criminal issues, but only the states and local communities can determine what the best way to counter and deter violence and crime.
The Daily Hatch 