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.
Yesterday I emailed to this above address and I got this email back from Senator Pryor’s office:
Please note, this is not a monitored email account. Due to the sheer volume of correspondence I receive, I ask that constituents please contact me via my website with any responses or additional concerns. If you would like a specific reply to your message, please visit http://pryor.senate.gov/contact. This system ensures that I will continue to keep Arkansas First by allowing me to better organize the thousands of emails I get from Arkansans each week and ensuring that I have all the information I need to respond to your particular communication in timely manner. I appreciate you writing. I always welcome your input and suggestions. Please do not hesitate to contact me on any issue of concern to you in the future.
Therefore, I went to the website and sent this email below:
Here are a few more I just emailed to him myself at 8am CST on May 13, 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:
Here are some of his specific suggestions:
Transportation
Agency/Program Funding Level Savings % Decrease
Transportation $43.855 B $4.810 B 49%
The Department of Transportation’s main function is to extract tax dollars from the states and then return those
dollars back to the states to fund highway, transit, airports and other transportation related programs. The department
is notorious for providing Members of Congress an avenue to direct funding and earmarks to their states, which is
frequently highlighted by the press for being wasteful and inefficient. Many states complain of funding that is provided
for projects that are not needed and the associated increase in overall costs. For example, due to the many provisions included in transportation funding, such as the Buy-America clause, it is estimated federally funded projects cost nearly twice as much as the amount a state would pay for the same project.
The proposal includes funding the Federal Highway Administration and the Federal Transit Administration at the level of projected gas tax revenue of $37 billion. The proposal eliminates Amtrak subsidies, and reduces the remainder of
the department back to FY2008 levels, with an additional reduction of 20 percent.
Federal Highway Administration and Federal Transit Administration: Funded at Gas Tax Levels
Established in in 1956, the U.S. Highway Trust fund uses excise taxes off the sale of gasoline to fund three major
programs – mostly highways, a much smaller account for mass transit, and an even smaller fund to address leaking underground storage tanks. Currently, the American consumer pays 18.4 cents per gallon in taxes to fund this trust
fund. Because of changes to the laws governing the trust fund, the fund no longer just had to be used for highways,
but could be used for any form of transportation – bike lanes, subway systems, etc., that may not use the amounts of fuel needed to sustain the program.
Because of the constant depletion of the trust fund by departments that are unaffiliated with the highway system,
additional taxpayer funds are forced to be used to accommodate the $52 billion FY2010 budget of the Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration. The current push to reduce emissions and make vehicles more energy efficient will only leave the American taxpayer more on the hook for mismanagement of funds. Setting a cap on these two programs at the amount of excise tax collected will require the federal government to prioritize road projects more efficiently and places decision making and implementation of road maintenance where it can be done best – the states.
Amtrak Subsidies: Eliminate
Created by an act of Congress in 1970 to provide passenger rail service, Amtrak has yet to turn a yearly profit. During
its first 35 years, federal assistance amounted to approximately $30 billion. Yet from FY2007 to FY2010 that number has increased by $7 billion. Of the 44 routes and 21,000 miles of track the trains travel over, only 625 miles are
actually owned by Amtrak. Congress has forced freight rail companies to allow Amtrak to use the lines the freight rail
companies own and maintain.
We need to allow the states to have a greater say in trail service between their cities. To provide better service,
Amtrak must learn to make the difficult decisions on routes and coverage to develop a sound business model, which
will push them toward becoming profitable.
The Daily Hatch 
Comments
Your criticism of Buy America requirements as doubling the cost of federal projects is incorrect and misleading.
Buy America requirements specifically state that the provision may be waived if the use of domestically-produced goods increases the cost of the overall project by more than 25 percent or if goods are not produced in the United States in “sufficient or reasonably available quantities.”
Similar provisions are included in the “Buy American” Act, which was passed by Congress in 1933 and in other Buy America statutes, including those for funding of highway and transit projects.
Based on 2007 federal contracting data, Buy American Act waivers were granted in the case of insufficient domestic availability for only 0.29 percent of federal contracts, and waivers for cost concerns amounted to just 0.20 percent of spending. Overall, the goods purchased under these waivers represent 0.01 percent of all federal contracting dollars spent.
These statistics clearly demonstrate that U.S. goods are readily available, affordable and can be used to create U.S. jobs.
Douglas Irwin in his article “If We Buy American, No One Else Will,” January 31, 2009,New York Times,talks about this 25% provision that you mention Mr. Capozzola. He notes:
Steel industry lobbyists seem to have persuaded the House to insert a “Buy American” provision in the stimulus bill it passed last week. This provision requires that preference be given to domestic steel producers in building contracts and other spending. The House bill also requires that the uniforms and other textiles used by the Transportation Security Administration be produced in the United States, and the Senate may broaden such provisions to include many other products.
That might sound reasonable, but history has shown that Buy American provisions can raise the cost and diminish the effect of a spending package. In rebuilding the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge in the 1990s, the California transit authority complied with state rules mandating the use of domestic steel unless it was at least 25 percent more expensive than imported steel. A domestic bid came in at 23 percent above the foreign bid, and so the more expensive American steel had to be used. Because of the large amount of steel used in the project, California taxpayers had to pay a whopping $400 million more for the bridge. While this is a windfall for a lucky steel company, steel production is capital intensive, and the rule makes less money available for other construction projects that can employ many more workers.