Limiting Social Security to Those Who Actually Need It. In addition to moving to a flat benefit over time, the plan makes Social Security a properly financed, true insurance program. It starts to do that immediately. This means that the program will concentrate on protecting the economic security of retirees rather than following the current approach of promising unaffordable benefits to all without regard to need.
This new approach means that retirees with substantial non–Social Security retirement income will start receiving a lower benefit on a sliding scale that gradually reduces Social Security checks to zero for those with the highest non–Social Security incomes. This transparent mechanism will apply to benefits received by affluent Americans under both the current system and the flat-rate system. This transparent, sliding-scale approach is a major improvement on today’s taxation of Social Security benefits.
Under the plan, income-adjusted benefits start in 2012 as individual retirees with non–Social Security incomes above $55,000 start to see a slight reduction in benefit payments. Those with higher non–Social Security income will see larger reductions in their checks. Individuals with more than $110,000 in non–Social Security income will receive no Social Security payments. Married couples who file taxes jointly would be subject to higher thresholds, with benefits beginning to phase out at a joint non–Social Security income of $110,000 and ending when income reaches $165,000. Married couples can decide whether they want to qualify for benefits as individuals or jointly as a couple. The income thresholds will be indexed for inflation.
Income-adjusting benefits is not new. It occurs in today’s Social Security system. But it is largely hidden today and hits lower-income seniors, not just the affluent. Seniors with as little as $15,000 in non–Social Security income, or even less in some cases, must pay tax on part of their benefits. Seniors with more income than that pay steadily higher rates of tax on more of their Social Security benefits. The Heritage approach, when fully phased in, would income-adjust benefits transparently and not tax the benefits a senior receives. It also would start income-adjusting at a much higher income. Today, about half of seniors have their checks eroded by taxation. Under the Heritage plan, only about 9 percent of seniors would see their checks reduced and only just over 3.5 percent of seniors would receive no check.
Real insurance also protects seniors from poverty if their financial situation changes. Retirees who suffer a sudden and permanent drop in non–Social Security income would find their benefits rapidly restored.
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.
On May 11, 2011, 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.
I just did. I went to the Senator’s website and sent this below:
You are friends with the gang of six members and Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma is one of the those members. I noticed a study that Senator Coburn did on how to cut money out of our bloated federal budget and I have included below some of his suggestions concerning the Dept of Health and Human Services below:
DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH
AND
HUMAN SERVICES
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is charged with protecting the health of all Americans. This includes supporting medical research, promoting wellness, preventing and controlling disease, ensuring the safety of drugs and medical devices, and providing health care and related services.
The budget of HHS ―represents almost a quarter of all federal outlays, and it administers more grant dollars than all other federal agencies combined. HHS Medicare program is the nations largest health insurer, handling more than 1 billion claims per year. Medicare and Medicaid together provide health care insurance for one in four Americans.‖1 HHS is also involved in other activities such as assisting with the management of wastewater treatment facilities 2 as well as doing house work and shopping for older Americans. 3
1 ―About HHS,‖HHS website, accessed June 30, 2011;
HHS is made up of many diverse agencies, including the Administration on Aging, Administration for Children and Families, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Food and Drug Administration, Health Resources and Services Administration, Indian Health Service, National Institutes of Health, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Office of Global Health Affairs, and the Office of the Surgeon General, which includes the 6,500-member Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service.
Improving Management of Funds and Resources
The entire annual HHS budget exceeds $889 billion. This mammoth budget has proven difficult to properly manage. From paying health care claims submitted for dead patients and prisoners to bonuses to nursing homes for substandard care to excess travel costs, mismanagement at HHS is costing taxpayers more than one billion dollars every week.
In 2010, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) designated five HHS programs as ―high-error‖based on the agencies annual performance and financial reports. In just two of these programs, Medicare Fee-for-Service and Medicaid, HHS made $56.8 billion of improper payments.
4 These ―improper payments‖include millions of dollars of Medicare claims submitted under the names of dead doctors5 and ordered for medical services for dead patients.6
―Medicare fraudestimated now to total about $60 billion a yearhas become one of, if not the most profitable, crimes in America,‖CBS News recently reported, which raises ―troubling questions about our governments ability to manage a medical bureaucracy.‖7
Statement by Dr. David Acheson, Associate Commissioner on Foods at the Food and Drug Administration of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Improper Payments in Government Agencies and Departments before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies, May 11, 2011; http://www.hhs.gov/asl/testify/2011/03/t20110317e.html .
―INDIAN HEALTH SERVICE: IHS Mismanagement Led to Millions of Dollars in Lost or Stolen Property (GAO-08-72),‖Government Accountability Office, June 2008; http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08727.pdf .
Fraud is not the only cause of wasted federal health care dollars. For instance, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services awarded more than $312 million a year in bonuses to nursing homes with past violations of basic health-and-safety standards that provided below-average care.8
There are plenty of other areas where HHS spending is simply excessive. HHS spent $215 million on travel, including the cost of rental cars, hotels and airline tickets, in 2008.
9 The Department spent at least $349 million on conferences and meetings over the last decade.
10
Millions of dollars of HHS equipment disappears every year. Over 5,000 items worth $15.8 million, including laptop computers, all-terrain vehicles, tractors, pickup trucks, and medical devices, were lost or stolen by employees of HHS Indian Health Service between 2004 and 2007.
11 Investigators blamed management failures and weak leadership for the problems, yet the official in charge of IHS property group still received a $13,000 bonus award in December 2008.
The Department ends every year with billions of dollars in excess funds. HHS is expected to end 2011 with more than $210 billion in unspent funds. Over $40 billion of that amount is unobligated. The Department is expected to end 2012 with an even greater amount of unobligated money.13
One way the Department could clean up their act and save taxpayer dollars is simply through complying with existing federal law. The nonpartisan analysis of an audit conducted by Ernst & Young on the balance sheets of the Department of Health and Human Services for FY2010, was included in HHSs FY 2010 Agency Financial Report, dated November 15, 2010. The audit revealed concerning conclusions; among the many findings were the following:
14
HHS is not in compliance with federal financial management law. According to the HHS Inspector Generals review of Ernst & Youngs financial audit of HHS, ―HHS’s financial management systems are not compliant with the Federal Financial Management Improvement Act of 1996.‖
Nearly $2 billion taxpayer dollars are stuck in limbo. ―As of September 30, 2010, the audit identified approximately 102,500 transactions totaling an approximate $1.8 billion that were more than 2 years old without activity.‖
Nearly $800 million dollars ―could not be explained‖differing between HHS records and treasury department records. ―Based on our review and discussions with management, we noted differences of $794 million that could not be explained.‖
Some processes and procedural manuals have not been updated since the 1980s. ―HHSs formalized policies and procedures are out of date and may be inconsistent with actual processes taking place….For example, we noted that certain policies and procedures, including certain accrual processes, had not been updated since the mid-1980s.‖
Current HHS personnel need training to ―complete their day-to-day responsibilities.‖―Further, we noted additional training on the financial systems was needed to enable HHS personnel in their ability to access needed information from the system to complete their day-to-day responsibilities – including the preparation of reconciliations, research of differences noted, and the ability to identify and clear older ―stale‖transactions dating back several years.‖
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This week I watched on tv the replay of the last game in the series with Texas. It was the 1991 game in Little Rock against Texas. Right before that game Craig O’Neill pulled a prank on the Texas Athletic Dept. Listen to the clip above.
› I started in radio when I was 19 in 1969 at KBTN in Jonesboro. The most popular show was a 15-minute newscast at 9:30 p.m. that included five minutes of obituaries. You’ve heard of the top 20 hits? We did the top 20 obits.
›I did a black gospel show, I did play-by-play, I did news, I covered parades, I even played a clown. In those two and a half years, I learned more about life and people than I could ever have hoped to in college.
› Johnny Carson was the blueprint. Johnny Carson started in radio, went to TV, had a little local TV show, picked up and went out to California, got on an afternoon game show and the rest is history. So, I thought, there’s my blueprint. The trouble is you get married, you have kids, you have great ratings, the station gives you a car, you’re fat and happy and you forget all about the blueprint.
› I was Randy Hankins until 1972, and then in 1972 my program director at KARN thought that Randy Hankins sounded too country. He had worked with a guy in Seattle named Craig O’Neill and thought that was a cool name, so he gave it to me.
I’ve never heard from him, but I have heard from people who say, “Didn’t you used to work Seattle?” I also get, “Didn’t you used to work at Cincinnati?” And, “Didn’t you used to work in Atlanta?” So I’m thinking the other Craig O’Neill, the real one, he got around a lot.
› We called Texas and said, “It was twilight, a young UA student was sleep deprived when he put the lettering in the end zone and he accidentally put an extra ‘s’ on Texas. We can’t take it off there. What do you want us to do about it?” And the guy goes, “Well we can’t have Tex-ass, now can we?”
› I wrote a skit for Lou Holtz to use on “The Tonight Show” in 1981. He called me and said, “Craig, my child’s in the hospital, and I don’t feel funny. But they still want me on. Can you write me some material?” So what I wrote him was, him saying, “I’ve always wanted to be the host of ‘The Tonight Show.’ Johnny, if you’d let me sit behind the desk just for a minute, I’ll let you draw up a Razorback play that we will actually use during the year.” So they would switch places. Lou Holtz would sit behind the desk. “Oh, this is nice.” Johnny would have fun drawing up the play. The punchline was, Lou looking at the play saying, “I’m not sure if we’re going to use this. If it’s a Johnny Carson play, you know it’s only going to work three days out of the week.”
When I ran it by the head writer, he loved it. But when you watch the tape, you’ll see Johnny Carson ask Lou Holtz three times, “what’re some of the things you’ve always wanted to do?” trying to set Lou up to do the bit. But Lou was so nervous and so anxious, he never did it.
› Around 1996 or 1997, when I was 45 years old, I started looking around and going, “What else can I try?” I thought, “Why not TV?” I had a friend who was general manager over here, and she said, “Why don’t you come over and do wacky sports?”
› There are times when I break all decorum and slip into Bozo.
› At 4 p.m., one of my favorite things is to stand back and watch these creative clusters in the KTHV newsroom working on stories they want to tell. I just eat that up.
› I love comedians and that process of saying something and getting a response. There’s so much truth in comedy. My mentor now is Jon Stewart. I think he’s the greatest interviewer in America. Because he’s looking for the comic opening. To do that, you have to listen.
› I grew up with my mother saying, “Tone it down.”
› The story I’ve heard is that a little girl leaned over to her mother at my church and goes, “Are we gonna go to Sunday school after God gets through?” When I read the Bible, I’m James Earl Jones.
› I’ve never had a drink in my life. My first communion at Trinity Episcopal, I was so anxious that when the wine came at me, I took a gulp, held it in my mouth, walked out the chancel outside and hurled. Now, booze has such a psychological aversion in me, that I can’t stomach it. I don’t mind you drinking; I just can’t do it.
› I’m the best dancing 60-year-old white man in America. I’m a walking dancing museum. I can do every dance from 1955 until now. With the exception of breakdancing, because I’m 60, and I would break a hip.
› My favorite fluffy news story? I can almost do it word for word: A woman in Conway last night came downstairs to find a man asleep in her recliner. She tried to wake the man, but he wouldn’t move. So she called the Conway police, who came and arrested the man for intoxication. When he came to, he said he thought he was in Cabot.
› After 39 years of having a fake name, it’s easier to remove your ego. It’s like a doctor putting on a white coat or a priest putting on a collar. When you get booed or when you bombed or when you stumble on air, it’s easier to let those things go.
› When you become a bobblehead, I think you’ve arrived.
The other day when Amy Winehouse died she joined the “27 Club” which includes other famous rockers who died at age 27. Most of them died because of drugs. Unfortunately Jimi Hendrix joined the club for the same reason.
Something special for all music and Beat Club-Lovers on YouTube: The 2nd take of the “Purple Haze” Performance by The Jimi Hendrix Experience at the Marquee Club in London on the 11th of March 1967! Never broadcasted in the regular episodes of the Beat Club! Enjoy it!
although jimi did not make my top 10 guitar players (as scandalous as that sounds) he had to be added to this list as he was without a doubt one of the most flamboyant, cool, badass dudes in the history of our planet, let alone rock n’ roll. jimi was immensely talented, blending his virtuosic guitar playing with great melodic sensibilities and serious songwriting chops. it was a coin toss for first and second on this list as hendrix could have easily topped it.
a rockstar archetype who clearly defined the role of a new breed of star, hendrix brought a sexy swagger to rock n’ roll that didn’t really exist before he showed up. the fact that he really stands alone as a black artist in the rock genre is a bit odd i find. although black artists have dominated in many other genres such as soul, r&b, rap, hip hop, and blues and contributed to many of the jazz greats, there is a strange lack of black artists in rock. some will say what about bad brains, living colour…am i missing anybody? (also an insane stretch to compare those bands with hendrix).
not only was jimi a black artist, he was also apparently a man of legendary sexual prowess (not to mention phallus size), and it was the sixties. although it was a time of certain …liberties, let’s say, civil rights was still a new idea. it takes a pretty cool individual to negotiate those waters and i’m sure jimi had to endure the standard racism of the day, death threats, etc.
there is a great story of jimi when he first arrived in london. he was doing a house gig at a club downtown and word started to spread about this guitar demon that no one had heard the likes of before. one night the club was full of all the local luminaries that had come to pay homage or just check out what all the fuss was about. jimmy page, jeff beck, brian jones, keith richards, eric clapton, pete townshend — all were all there to check out jimi and his crack band the experience. i think it was jones who opined “the front of the stage was wet with the tears of all the other guitar players in the room”. it was a collective “what do we do now” from the awestruck crowd that jimi had just blown away.
he was also a fashionista of the highest order. as spencer said in a previous post (and i’m paraphrasing here), “he had the ability to make a hawaiian print blazer look cool”. big hair, big floppy hats, etc. jimi and his wild looks and incredible talent cut an indelible mark in rock history.
essential listening: are you experienced, electric ladyland (the jimi hendrix experience)
I grew up in the sixties, a period of guys with long hair, the Beatles, rebellion, so-called “free love,” hippies and drug experimentation. “Do your own thing” or “if it feels good, do it” were the catch cries of my generation. I had long hair, wore satin shirts and beads and loved “pop” music. Jesus was just a swear word and a fairy tale to me. In my view, anyone who believed in God was weak and unscientific. Unwanted suicidal thoughts
However, I began to have destructive thoughts. Out of the blue, the thought of “Cut your wrists!” would be planted in my mind. I was amazed and scared by these thoughts because I was satisfied and content with life. In fact, I thought I had everything I needed to be happy. My friend had gone crazy!
I visited my friend Dave. In the past, he had mocked the Bible as unscientific and argued strongly for the truth of evolution. Now he told me that he trusted in this person called Jesus and also that the scientific evidence didn’t back up the theory of evolution! “Right,” I thought, “Give me a Bible; I’ll prove him wrong!” The stumbling block of evolution and the miracle of life
I had come close to having a very bad motorcycle accident and this started me thinking about God. But the theory of evolution was a stumbling block for me in believing the Bible because the Bible says that God (not time, chance, mutation and natural selection) is responsible for the universe and for life. I witnessed the miracle of the birth of both of my children. I was stunned by the complexity of the human body and I was starting to see that the theory of evolution was the fairy tale! I began to search for the one who was the Creator of life.
I was invited to view a video on the effect of music and I was stunned as it laid out the nature of my beloved music . . . promotion of rebellion, drugs, depravity, violence, the occult, witchcraft, the devil, sexual perversion, suicide and mockery of Jesus. I wondered why musicians were spending so much time mocking this Jesus character if he was just a fairy tale as I once thought.
I wondered why so many rock musicians died young from suicide and drug overdose, etc. The Who, in their song “My Generation,” sing, “Hope I die before I get old.” But when faced with his friends dying before they got old, Pete Townsend, the guitarist of The Who lamented, “Look at my life. Look at my generation. How did that work? Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones, Janis Joplin, Keith Moon . . . the list is . . . endless. They’re dead people. My life is full of dead people. My friends are dead.”
How had my music affected me? One thing I knew, I would be a brave person to say that music had not affected me at all! Unexplainable blasphemy
Jesus said that I should pray so I thought Well, let’s pray! As I said the Lord’s Prayer, the words in the second line (Let your Holy Name be honoured) were replaced by foul and blasphemous words. This occurred on two successive nights and I wasn’t too keen on this evil articulate force that was controlling my thought patterns with suicide and blasphemy! Placing a challenge before God
One dark night, I was lying in bed thinking. “God, if you are so powerful that you made the universe by speaking, then show me evidence you exist.” I didn’t expect anything to happen because there was no way (or so I thought) that God could show me anything as I lay in bed. A visitor in the night—God is supernatural!
Suddenly, a man in white clothes appeared in the doorway of the room with his right hand outstretched like a policeman. Out of his hand came a beam of light that moved halfway across the room. I cried out in my mind, “Stop, stop, I believe . . . I believe . . . I’ve seen enough!” This did not stop what I was seeing as the beam of light continued across the room and through the glass into the black of the night where the light destroyed what I conceived as the evil in the world. God had shown me that His light could overcome the darkness. The grace of God
I surrendered my will to Jesus and trusting in Him has had a powerful effect on my life, totally setting me free from the power behind the thoughts of self-destruction. Immediately (without being conscious of it) I stopped swearing, making comments with sexual connotations and letting my mind wander as I looked at bikini-clad girls. Things I did not realize as an skeptic
These include: Jesus was a real person, the Bible is the world’s bestselling book, many of the early great scientists and composers had a Christian world view, humans are spiritual beings, many of the great modern scientists believe (as Einstein puts it) that science points us to a “spirit vastly superior to that of men, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble,” the scientific evidence against evolution and the Bible is very reliable when judged against the standard historical tests. God is not far from any of us My wife lost her engagement ring and we looked in three different places—searching the ground with no success. Lastly we went to the squash court car park. I thought, Now I’m a Christian, I suppose I should pray! I started to pray. “Lord help us find . . . ” In mid-sentence my wife interrupted me saying, “Here’s the ring!”
Jesus is the only way to God. He is the key for you and me. Give Jesus the control of your life. After 20 years as a Christian, I still marvel at the blessings and grace that Jesus continues to shower into my life. Now I wonder why I took so long to come to know Him!
Not much remains to be said about the primal genius of Jimi Hendrix. He could play any style. He reinvented the electric guitar as an instrument of musical expression. He wrote several of the most enduring and important songs of the rock ‘n’ roll era — including “Purple Haze,” “Foxey Lady,” “Are You Experienced?” and “Crosstown Traffic” (and so many others) — helping to define several generations of music and popular culture. He was impossibly cool. He was impossibly great. And he died a most gruesome death, choking on his own vomit after taking too many prescription sleeping pills and drinking too much wine on September 18, 1970.
Woody Allen’s new film “Midnight in Paris” starring Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams and Oscar winner Marion Cotillard opened Friday, June 10th at Rave Motion Pictures in Davenport, Iowa. “Midnight in Paris” stars Owen Wilson as a blocked novelist in Paris on a terrible vacation with his shrewish wife (McAdams) who finds solitude and discovery while walking the streets of Paris after midnight.
“Midnight in Paris” reminded me of many of my favorite Woody Allen classics and with that in mind, here are my five favorite Woody Allen classics.
Zelig
This remarkably put together pseudo-documentary stars Woody Allen as Leonard Zelig, a human chameleon who can become anyone. This fresh and witty movie takes Allen only slightly away from his usual neurotic meanderings on life, love and death as he visits upon the character of Zelig a series of comic mishaps whose underlying meaning reflects Allen’s worldview without existing within Allen’s usual conversational style.
Stardust Memories
The most self referential of Woody Allen’s films, “Stardust Memories” is about a director who agrees to appear at a film festival and finds himself assailed by fans repeatedly reminding him how much they prefer his ‘earlier, funnier movies.’ Charlotte Rampling plays his ex-girlfriend, a slightly crazed actress. Meta before the new definition of the word existed; “Stardust Memories” is Woody Allen commenting on the state of his own career from the agents and producers to the fans both sycophantic and demanding.
Purple Rose of Cairo
There is an astonishing innocence to “The Purple Rose of Cairo” that comes from the purest love of the movies. In “Purple Rose of Cairo” Mia Farrow plays a woman who dreams about movie heroes and Jeff Daniels plays a movie hero who comes down off the screen and into real life. Daniels also plays the role of the actor whose character comes off the screen. “Purple Rose of Cairo” is Woody Allen at his most romantic both in terms of characters in love and our love affair with movies.
Annie Hall
If you don’t love “Annie Hall” then you probably don’t love Woody Allen. “Annie Hall” is his masterpiece; a talky, oddly romantic, neurotic mess that finds laughs in the exasperations of the daily lives of two people attempting to be in love or in love with love or whatever it is that men and women do to keep themselves company.
Match Point
If for some reason you’ve questioned Woody Allen’s talent as a director, watch “Match Point” and you will be convinced. “Match Point” is a Hitchcockian thriller starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Scarlett Johannsen as sexy social climbers who begin an affair that endangers their status-seeking until finally murder is the only option left to one of them. The elegance of “Match Point” is what is so surprising and effective about it. There is little of Allen’s usual kvetching in the dialogue but the nature of the film, the malleable morality, is all his.
“Midnight in Paris” is a little young to make this list but I cannot wait to watch it again as I feel it will age well and likely displace one of the movies on this list. See “Midnight in Paris” at Rave Motion Pictures in Davenport, 3601 East 53rd street, for the next month or so.
The Heritage plan achieves fiscal balance by ensuring that tax receipts will
match government expenditures. If no action is taken, the deficit in the current
law baseline is 3.2 percent of GDP in 2021 and 5 percent in 2035. The Heritage
plan balances the federal budget by 2021, with spending and revenues each
reaching 18.5 percent of GDP. The budget stays balanced without exceeding those
levels through the entire time frame. This leads to a sharp reduction in debt as
a percentage of GDP. In the extended baseline scenario, debt climbs to 91.5
percent of GDP by 2035. The Heritage plan reduces the debt by two-thirds to 30
percent of GDP. A smaller national debt results in savings to taxpayers as
interest payments fall sharply from an annual share of 4.6 percent of GDP to 1.7
percent in the Heritage plan, a savings of more than $1 trillion each year.
Reduced interest payments on the national debt account for almost one-third of
the reduced government spending, which is a result of the strong budget reforms
contained in the Heritage plan.
Stuart M. Butleris Distinguished
Fellow and Director of the Center for Policy Innovation, Alison Acosta Fraser
is Director of the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies, and William W.
Beach is Director of the Center for Data Analysis, at The Heritage
Foundation. The editors are grateful to the team leaders who worked with policy
experts throughout The Heritage Foundation to develop this report: J. D. Foster, Ph.D., Norman B. Ture
Senior Fellow in the Economics of Fiscal Policy; Rea S. Hederman, Jr., Assistant
Director and Research Fellow in the Center for Data Analysis; David C. John, Senior Research Fellow in
Retirement Security and Financial Institutions; Robert E. Moffit, Ph.D., Senior
Fellow in the Center for Policy Innovation; Nina Owcharenko, Director of the
Center for Health Policy Studies; and Brian
M. Riedl, Grover M. Hermann Research Fellow in Federal Budgetary
Affairs.
_______
This plan was developed as part of the Solutions Initiative and funded by the
Peter G. Peterson Foundation.
The Peterson Foundation convened organizations with a variety of perspectives
to develop plans addressing our nation’s fiscal challenges. The American
Enterprise Institute, Bipartisan Policy Center, Center for American Progress,
Economic Policy Institute, The Heritage Foundation, and Roosevelt Institute
Campus Network each received grants. All organizations had discretion and
independence to develop their own goals and propose comprehensive solutions. The
Peterson Foundation’s involvement with this project does not represent
endorsement of any plan. The final plans developed by all six organizations will
be presented as part of the Peterson Foundation’s second annual Fiscal Summit in
May 2011.
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.
On May 11, 2011, 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.
I just did. I went to the Senator’s website and sent this below:
Reforming the Federal Budget Process. When Congress established its current budget process in 1974, the United States was in debt by about a half-trillion dollars; it is now in debt over $14 trillion. Regrettably, for any proposal to deal with the nation’s fiscal problems, the budget process does little to help and in many ways impedes good and bold policy. For one thing, its focus on just 10 years diverts lawmakers from dealing with the mounting long-term challenges, such as retirement programs. For another, the lack of firm budget controls and enforcement procedures makes fiscal discipline very difficult. Reforming the budget process is therefore an implicit part of reforming the budget itself.
In the Heritage plan, we change the budget process to impose enforceable caps to reduce total federal spending to 18.5 percent of GDP by 2021 (including entitlement programs) and then keep spending at that level. Within those overall caps we also cap non-defense discretionary spending at 2.0 percent of GDP. Anti-poverty spending is also capped, as described above. These statutory restrictions on future spending are to be no higher than the modern historical level of federal revenues.
We also propose amending existing federal laws that provide permanent or indefinite appropriations for federal agencies or programs (including and especially entitlement programs), or that allow agencies or programs to spend funds they receive from fees or other sources, rather than depositing them in the U.S. Treasury, so as to retrieve congressional control of spending for those agencies and programs. Within our specific reforms for Medicare and Medicaid we also include a fixed budget amount for each program.
To make the budget process more visible, understandable, and accountable to the American people, we require Congress to estimate and publish the projected cost over 75 years of any proposed policy or funding level for each significant federal program. Any major policy change should also be scored over this long-term horizon.
Finally, in addition to calculating the costs of proposed congressional actions without regard to the response of the economy to those actions (known as “static” scoring), we require a parallel calculation that takes account of that response (known as “dynamic” scoring) so as to make more practical and useful cost information available to Congress when it decides whether to pursue the actions.
The Bottom Line
Runaway federal spending threatens to drown the nation in taxes and debt for generations to come. Promoting economic prosperity requires streamlining government, cutting spending, and empowering families and entrepreneurs.
The Heritage plan achieves those objectives by focusing Washington on performing a limited number of appropriate duties well rather than a wider range of questionable duties poorly. It transfers more power to state and local governments, which are closer and more responsive to the people; transfers functions to the private sector that the market can perform better; targets federal spending more precisely to those in need; and eliminates wasteful, unnecessary, and duplicative spending.
These steps will unleash the power of the private sector to meet market demands, create jobs, and raise living standards. Taking these steps, combined with entitlement and tax reform, means that Americans can look forward to opportunity and prosperity rather than a future of debt and economic decline.
Over and over the people representing us in Washington say they want to get serious about reducing our national debt and they want to balance the budget. One big step in the right direction would be to eliminate the Dept of Education which spends over 100 billion every year.
1. The Constitution provides no authority whatsoever for the federal government to be involved in education. Eliminating the department on those grounds would help to reestablish the original understanding of the enumerated powers of the federal government.
2. No matter how brilliantly designed a federal government program may be, it creates a uniformity among states that is harmful to creativity and improvement. Getting the federal government out of the picture would allow states and local governments to create better ways of addressing education issues and problems.
3. If education were left at the local level, parents would become more involved in reform efforts. Differences in school effectiveness among states and communities would be noted, and other regions would copy the more effective programs and policies.
4. The contest between Congress and state legislatures to demonstrate who cares more about education would be over, allowing members of Congress to focus on areas and problems for which they have legitimate responsibility.
5. Since most information about the problems and challenges of education is present at the local level, Congress simply does not have the ability to improve learning in school classrooms thousands of miles away. These problems are best understood and addressed by local authorities and parents.
6. The inevitable pattern of bureaucracy is to grow bigger and bigger. The Department of Education should be eliminated now, before it evolves into an even larger entity consuming more and more resources that could be better spent by parents themselves.
7. The $47.6 billion spent each year by the Department of Education could be much better spent if it were simply returned to the American people in the form of a tax cut. Parents themselves could then decide how best to spend that money. (Actually in 2011 it will be over 100 billion)
8. The Department of Education has a record of waste and abuse. For example, the department reported losing track of $450 million during three consecutive General Accounting Office audits.
9. The Department of Education is an expensive failure that has added paperwork and bureaucracy but little value to the nation’s classrooms.
BOEHNER: Screaming “Hell no you can’t!” Ah, the good old days.
Slate has a running update of the debt ceiling debate in Washington. So far it looks like Speaker of the House John Boehner will have the votes in the House to pass his plan. Sen. Harry Reidhas said the bill will be defeated when considered in the Senate.
“As soon as the House completes its vote tonight, the Senate will move to take up that bill,” Reid said on the Senate floor. “It will be defeated. No Democrat will vote for a short-term Band-Aid that would put our economy at risk and put the nation back in this untenable situation a few short months from now.”
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Harry Reid and the Democrats have not lifted a finger to cut federal spending and the markets know it. I am disappointed in Boehner’s recent attempt to get a bill together. It really does not cut spending much either. Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute takes us through the figures.
House Speaker John Boehner has revised his budget plan in response to an unfavorable analysis by the CBO. The CBO has examined Boehner’s new plan and finds that it would cut spending by $917 billion over 10 years. Of the total, only $761 billion would be cuts to programs. The rest of the savings would be from reduced interest costs.
Actually, the revised Boehner plan doesn’t cut spending at all. The chart shows the discretionary spending caps in the new Boehner plan. Spending increases every year—from $1.043 trillion in 2012 to $1,234 trillion in 2021. (These figures exclude the costs of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan).
The “cuts” in the Boehner plan are only cuts from the CBO baseline, which is an assumed path of constantly rising spending. If Congress wanted to, it could require CBO to increase its “baseline” spending by, say, $5 trillion over the next decade. Then Boehner could claim that he was “cutting” spending by $5.9 trillion, even though his plan hadn’t changed. You can see that discretionary “cuts” against baselines don’t mean anything.
The way to make real spending cuts is to abolish programs and agencies. But it’s been eight months since a landslide election that focused on the issue of spending cuts, and the Republican leadership hasn’t proposed any major terminations.
Senator Tom Coburn told us exactly where he wants to cut spending in this 620-page report. Senator Rand Paul has detailed $500 billion in specific cuts. Where are the spending cut plans of the other fiscal conservatives in Congress?
Members need to step up to the plate and tell us where they would cut the budget. (For help, they can look here). The reality of ongoing $1 trillion deficits is that Congress has to start abolishing programs, privatizing activities, and making other lasting reforms. Promising to reduce spending growth a bit from projected baseline increases won’t do the job.
