The Big Budget Lie

With uniformly somber visages, members of our fortitude deficient ruling class stroke their respective chins, look straight into the television camera lenses and solemnly proclaim that it will take 10 -- or 15, or 20 -- years to balance the federal budget.

They lie . . . .  They lie because they lack the will to do the job that can be done quickly and simply right now.

All that is necessary is to stop spending on anything and everything that is not absolutely essential.  Just go cold turkey and do so right now.

Don't get bogged down in fruitless debates about whether public broadcasting, the various national endowments (such as for the arts, the humanities, etc), or other similarly parasitic organizations  are worthwhile. Whether they are is unimportant as they are, at best, nice to have luxuries and not essentials. And, while we're at it, we should scrap in their entirely all contributions and payments to the UN, all foreign aid, and the full range of the multiple corporate welfare payment programs that keep bloated outfits like General Electric afloat and looking prosperous.  So long as the government is in financial difficulties it should simply stop spending on discretionary items, just as the nation's families do in similar financial situations.

That this is both true and possible is demonstrated with absolute clarity by news reports that only essential government operations would continue in the case of a government shutdown necessitated by the Congress not passing a budget or other continued funding legislation.

Well, duhh ! ! ! !

Why do we have the government paying for any nonessential operations while it is broke? 

Let the shutdown come and welcome it ! ! ! !

And if and when a budget is passed, it ought not to provide for any ethanol or agricultural subsidies, or for such unessential -- and often counterproductive -- operations as the Department of Education, the Department of Energy, the Department of Agriculture, and on and on and on . . . .

We need to abandon baseline budgeting (which means adding to the prior year's appropriation), to begin anew with zero base budgeting (requiring justification for every single dollar appropriated, beginning with the first one), and fund only truly essential (and constitutionally mandated) government operations.  This will necessitate a halt to tinkering at the fringes with a few whittling knives and taking multiple chain saws to the entire overgrown governmental structure.

If we have the will to do this, we can just stop spending and thus balance the budget right now. So let's get started!