601 easy steps for GOP hopefuls to balance the budget
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., is certainly an underdog to win the Republican nomination in 2016. But the emphasis he will surely bring to the GOP primary is an important one about which all of the candidates in the field should be thinking.
The federal government continues to suck down a great share of the U.S. economy, taking on an ever-greater role in Americans' lives. Government agencies and functions that date as far back as the Great Depression have managed to survive despite being completely irrelevant today — the Tennessee Valley Authority, for example.
A candidate with sufficient courage to tackle this problem could learn an awful lot about government waste by looking into this year's Prime Cuts, a book of 601 budget recommendations produced by Citizens Against Government Waste. The document recommends hundreds of changes that can save taxpayers billions of dollars. Every Republican candidate should be asked to take a stand on the items in this book.
For example, is there any excuse for the federal government still being in the business of rural broadband in 2015? Satellite Internet service is now widely available, and state and local governments are there to deal with the toughest far-flung areas, if indeed any government intervention is necessary. There is no special need for the Rural Utilities Service, originally created to electrify rural areas, to continue playing this role at all.
The abolition of RUS, which falls under the Agriculture Department, would save nearly $10 billion in the first year and $48 billion over five years. That's real money.
In fact, the Prime Cuts summary alone — a handbook roughly 50 pages long – provides this and similar suggestions for $60 billion over five years in just its first eight pages. Throw in a few corporate welfare programs, a handful of specific wasteful Department of Defense line-items (such as the retrofitting of M1 tanks, opposed by the Pentagon itself), and a few other programs that even President Obama wanted to see eliminated (such as targeted water infrastructure grants) and suddenly you're cooking with gas.
Other suggestions in the Prime Cuts handbook include repeal of the Davis-Bacon Act, elimination of certain grant programs targeting cities, opening of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for limited and highly profitable drilling leases, and an indefinite suspension of land purchases by the federal government.
There really is a whole lot of waste in government, and there are many completely unnecessary roles that the federal government still tries to fill. Unfortunately, there are many defenders of this waste. For example, at the behest of the hospital lobby, Congress and the Obama administration have halted outside audits of Medicare payments that were finding billions in erroneous claims. A reinstatement of the outside audits would save taxpayers an estimated $24 billion over five years.
As cynical as everyone has become about Washington, it is important to remember that this town's powerful profiteers are not invincible. A concerted effort by strong leaders to highlight waste can always go a long way. Consider, for example, the long and lonely war against earmarks last decade. It seemed to be going nowhere, but eventually it produced the current ban on legislating pork projects.
True leadership has consequences. Republican hopefuls for 2016 should show courage and confront this issue rather than hiding from it.
