The problem with your list is that there's not much money in it. From a libertarian perspective and from the perspective of reducing chronic irritants it's a good list. But it doesn't solve the fiscal problem.
Defense, the on-budget part, that is, social security, medicare/medicaid run 20 percent or so each followed by welfare at 13 and interest at 8. That's where the money is.
That last one, interest, is utterly untouchable. We can dump the Iraq costs, but that still leaves a great, honking defense budget, trimmable, certainly but still a great, honking defense budget. As for the rest, they're entitlements and entitlements are uncontrollable unless we cut the programs. Politically hard to cut them when we have people clamoring for new and better health care and other "human infrastructure" programs atop them.
I don't think there's a lot of opportunity in savings. We might be able to knock out five percent, maybe ten. And we might be able to stave off making it worse. But unless we change our orientation about the government role in our society, we can't solve the problem through savings. |
