You're in Congress and you just voted down another debt limit increase because more borrowing is morally irresponsible. Congratulations, you now immediately have to decide how to balance the Federal Budget, or the US goes into default on some of it's debt? Welcome to Hell, and I hope that you are not planning on another term in office, even though you probably deserve credit if you can pull this off. But most in Congress will vote down a debt limit increase to make a statement and have no plan to bring the books into balance.
It is irresponsible to vote down a debt limit increase without a plan to immediately balance the budget. That is just like me, turning to my wife and saying, honey I'm putting the Visa in the Safe Deposit Box and burying the key in the back yard", but not have a family budget. If I do this, we are bound to not have money for food or will miss some other payments or something like that. It's a bad plan. It's a recipe for chaos.
If all temporary tax cuts are allow to expire in FY 2013, you still have to find 910 billion dollars in cuts. There will be pressure to completely cut some departments and to reform entitlements. But there is no time for those kinds of debates. You have to find 910 billion dollars in savings immediately or the government will default on it's debt. Any ideas? Here are some of my suggestions.
1. Every civilian federal employee to take a week of furlough without pay. There are about 4.5 million federal employees who make an average of 83,000 per year. (More than what I make). This will save the government 70 Billion over the year. The employees effected...the President, every member of Congress, down to every GS-1 in the civil service.
2. Every civilian employed by the US government gets 12 to 24 days of paid vacation per year depending on how many years that they have worked for the government. Cut that down to what the average private sector employee has, which is 5 to 14 vacation days per year. In doing so, you have just made 187,000 federal employees expendable...that is how many Full-Time Equivalents the government must hire in order to cover the extra vacation. You can now lay them off. You have just saved another 15 Billion. You have now saved the government 95 billion and now have 815 Billion left to cut.
BTW, in my current job, which pays better than what the average American earns, I get 0 paid time off. No vacation time and no holidays. If I do not work, I do not get paid. I have to pay for vacation out of my own pocket and I work a flexible schedule the rest of the week when there is a Holiday. There are many in the new economy that have given up paid time off to maintain health care benefits. For us, it was one or the other.
3. Bring the troops home from Afghanistan immediately. That is another 80.4 Billion. 175.4 Billion down. 734.6 Billion left. Source
4. Europe gets along rather nicely, now-a-days. We aren't really needed there. Let's bring the troops home from Europe. That would save us about 287 million, according to Rep. Jared Polis of Colorado. Let's round that up to 300 million. Now we have saved 175.7 Billion and have 734.3 billion left. Mmm...that's not the kind of savings that we need, but we will keep it in there. It makes a statement that we are serious.
5. Cut off long term welfare recipients. Let's have churches and other private groups help them find work. That could save us another 10 billion, according to the Cato institute. We have now saved 185.7 Billion and have 724.3 billion left to go. We have now trimmed 1/5 of the federal deficit.
6. We have 142 million unemployed. 5.4 million of them have been unemployed for over 6 months. It used to be that we cut off unemployment benefits after 6 months to get them back to work. At 330 per week, we could save the government 92 billion. Now we are at 277.7 billion cut from the budget with only 632 billion left to cut.
7. ObamaCare is expensive. Let's repeal it. That will save the government 340 billion that would have been added to the deficit. We are now at 617 billion saved. We are now only 293 billion away from a balanced budget.
8. One of the problems with the Federal Budget is the huge amount of money that is spent on interest. Could we do something about that? There are 268.6 million acres of land out west that is owned by the feds and not doing anything else. What if we sold it all at the cost of 1000 dollars per acre (30% below the going value for an acre of Utah desert) and apply it toward the national debt. We have reduced the national debt by 2.6 trillion dollars. That is about 23% of the debt, reducing interest by 23%. That saves another 58 billion. Putting us to a total of 675. That leaves us with 235 billion.
9. The total federal expenditures for FY 2013 was expected to be at 3803 Billion. We have just taken 675 billion off of that total. We now are down to 3128 and have 235 billion left to cut. We order every federal department at this juncture to cut their spending by an additional 10%. They will need to do so without affecting benefits paid to citizens. That means that an additional 313 billion will be saved. That leaves us with 78 billion to spare, which should not be spent, but should be used to help us go through the same exercise in FY2014, which is needed because one can only lay off 187,000 Federal employees once.
BTW, remember this is after all temporary tax cuts have expired. If you want to keeps those, you have to come up with another 300 billion. It was a lot of work to come up with just this.
A plan will need to be made to keep the US Government in the black permanently and retire some of the national debt. Of course, the consequences are laying off 187,000 federal government employees will be devastating. Hopefully, it is done proportionally across all 50 states. This means that 187,000 people have joined the 14 million people already out of work. This is why I say to any congress bold enough to pass it, they probably deserve to keep their jobs, but will likely lose them.
A sensible congress, even a conservative one, will likely save a plan like this for better times when the displaced federal employees can easily find private-sector jobs, like in the 1990s. That will soften the blow to the economy. But I suspect that Tea Party Republicans will forget all about this when the economy improves and let the government grow even larger, just like the former presidential candidate named after a cookie did.
I put this list together with resorting to...this program is unconstitutional, therefore let's get rid of it. I tried not to put an additional burden upon the already overburdened state governments. In better economic times, states may be able to shoulder more responsibilities. I was also able to leave Social Security Benefits, Medicare and Medicaid untouched. It is a common belief that for a long-term solution to the Government's debt problems, that Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid will need to be examined.
My challenge is for anyone who is running for Congress and says that they will not vote for another debt limit increase is to come up with a better plan. This plan stinks and will have serious consequences, but I am not running for Congress. I asked Dan Liljenquist's team, for example, if they had one. But they did not offer any specifics, just generalities. Certainly anyone serious about no more debt limit increases in Congress has given this some serious thought. If not, they do not deserve your vote.
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