Federal Spending Is VERY Popular: Episode 1
As I said back in June, in spite of all of the discussion about the need to cut federal spending, the gospel truth is that it's VERY popular and cutting anything -- including the always denigrated foreign aid and the constantly belittled waste, fraud and abuse -- will be much, much harder than anyone ever admits.
So here's the first installment in what I suspect will be a continuing series about just how difficult that's going to be.
Note in this Roll Call story by Jonathan Strong about Pentagon cuts that will affect Pennsylvania that no one is saying the spending shouldn't be reduced because it will hurt U.S. defense capabilities, hollow out of the military or do any of the other praise-the-Lord-and-pass-the-ammunition reasons that are typically used to argue against cuts. As Strong points out, the opposition to the military reductions is all about how it will hurt the local economy.
In other words, we don't care if it reduces the deficit, the spending reductions will hurt me so they have to be stopped.
happy to spend Stan's money
If I had free access to Stan's money -- and that of Stan's children & grandchildren & every generation forever -- I'd happily spend it on myself & all my pet ideas.
Obvious solutions
And military spending is the least productive source of spending and creates fewer jobs than other types of government spending http://www.peri.umass.edu/fileadmin/pdf/published_study/spending_priorit...
But it is also true that by shifting spending to more productive sectors and improving efficiency in our spending we could balance the budget without cutting services. I could do it in two easy steps.
1. Institute single-payer health care. We spent >$8,000 per capita for health care each year the OECD average is <$4,000. The difference for 310 million people is about $1.5 trillion per year.
2. Cut U.S. military spending to 50% of the military spending for the rest of the world. Based on the paper above each $100 billion shifted from military spending to clean energy spending would create 600,000 jobs while cutting fossil fuel use.
The solutions to our problems are not difficult, but implementing the obvious solutions within our current political environment is impossible.