by Jeff Wilfahrt

Oct 30, 2013, 5:16 PM

Fiscal Conservation – the low hanging fruit

Why is it that the low hanging fruit to conserve Federal expenses doesn’t get plucked?

Let’s consider some of the easy pickin’s:

• Military – well some big bucks like “Congress approved $567 million for 21 C-27J cargo planes that the Air Force does not want or need” would be available. Of course this is just the tip of a very very big iceberg of needless expense.
• Drug War – this is expected to save billions without including the incarceration costs.
• Social Security – raising the cap above ~$130k is estimated to extend the financial health by decades. Of course the notion of a lock box was rejected because that would mean the perpetual borrowing and the resulting interest payments would … well it would lower the Federal expense.
• Subsidies for crops like tobacco – as recently as May, 2013 this was rejected. In the words of Senator McCain, “it turns out Joe Camel’s nose has been under the tent all this time in the form of hidden crop insurance subsidies.”
• Offshore untaxed profits – The number of major corporations paying zero taxes is embarrassing and ought to anger anyone considering themselves as fiscally conservative.
• Outsourcing – one word => Halliburton, cheaper, not so much.

No point in running the list out any longer. The curious thing is who tends to protect this stuff. Can’t help but think it’s the same crowd wanting to cut the feeding of the poor and the pampering of the corporate humans living among us. It’s about time these same folks set a good example.

Yup, pretty soon you’re talking about real money.