Over among the Big Brains at American Thinker, Rhys Read offers these ideas for cutting back government spending and getting our spending deficit under control:
First, eliminate the fraud in the system, which is estimated at between $200 billion and $500 billion per year.
Second, end the subsidies and government control regimes implemented to “combat climate change.” Total spending on these programs total about $300 billion per year.
Third, moving to individual health accounts would reduce much of the middle-man expenses and regulatory expenses imbedded in the Affordable Care Act. Eliminating these unnecessary bureaucratic expense and bloated health care costs would save about $300 billion per year.
Then we need to tackle the big expense: the cost of the bloated bureaucracy. A one-third reduction in staffing plus a one-third reduction in average total compensation would save about $600 billion per year.
As for getting additional moolah into the system:
I propose increasing the Medicare tax from 1.45 percent to 2 percent and the Social Security tax from 6.2 percent to 6.5 percent. In addition, I propose tripling the FICA maximum, currently at $184,750, with a new 7.5-percent crediting rate to preserve the defined benefit nature of the payouts. Implementing these increases would generate about $300 billion per year.
And so on. As the man once said (adjusted for inflation): a (hundred) billion here, a (hundred) billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about serious money.
How much of this has any chance of ever happening?
Yeah, right.