(I orginially posted this as 25 Things I Would Do If I Ran The Country, but now I think it would be a good starting manifesto for Tea Party Protests)
In no particular order
1) Education is a state right. Local property taxes pay for local schools. The Federal government should butt out, therefore I would abolish the department of education.
2) If the president has term limits so should all members of Congress. Our government was built on a system of checks and balances. There is a check on the office of the presidency which needs to be balanced by a check on the legislature. 3 terms in the House, 2 terms in the Senate offers a person a 24 year career in politics. That’s long enough.
3) Congress can no longer vote itself raises. Individual Senators and Representatives should appeal to their constituents for pay raises and have it put to a vote or referendum accordingly.
4) Line by line veto to eliminate pork.
5) Ditto Ear marks.
6) Emergency spending bills are only allowed during natural disasters or within 3 – 6 months of an aggressive attack on American soil or overseas bases. Otherwise, the department in question (I’m looking at you DoD) has to get the monies from its existing budget.
7) ALL laws passed must clearly state its intended effect/goal and a review of its effectiveness evaluated by an independent government office, the GAO, for instance after five years. If a law is found lacking by the specified measure, the law is automatically returned to Congress for review – either to be struck down or re-written to address its failures.
8) All government regulations – starting with ones governing business/energy/agriculture – that are over 20 years old must be examined by independent reviewers to determine if said regulation is a help or a hindrance to the business practice and the government’s ability to enforce the regulation. If it fails the test, the regulation is automatically negated.
9) Tax loopholes for individuals and corporations are closed.
10) Tax code must be streamlined until it can be printed on no more than 25 pages in 12pt Times New Roman font. Figure it out.
11) Any Federal agency that is a duplicate of a state function (excepting interstate issues) is automatically eliminated.
12) English is the official language of the United States of America.
13) Our borders are ours to control. All unauthorized entries into the US will be treated as a criminal offense. American citizenship will no longer be extended to children born in the US to illegal immigrant parents under the age of three. They and their parents will be returned to their country of origin where they may re-apply to enter the US.
14) Any business hiring illegal immigrants will face stiff fines and criminal charges.
15) Any persons using false identification will face criminal charges, restitution to the victim, and if illegal, expulsion from the US.
16) Moments of silence are re-instated in schools and government institutions. If you have to put your hand on a bible to swear the truth in court, then God is part of the government.
17) You are the person you chose to be. Victim-statuses in government law will be reviewed as objectively as possible to determine if it helps or hinders various classes of individuals from the handicapped to ethnic minorities to genders to sexual orientation.
18) All treaties between the US and foreign countries will be reviewed. Those deemed unfair to US interests will be renegotiated.
19) Modern developed countries have the ability to defend themselves. We will remove US troops from those countries (I'm looking at you Germany) and relocate to countries with greater need or return the troops home. Many of these overseas bases are now rewards for soldiers rather than actual deployments.
20) Independent reviews will be conducted of every government department starting with the Department of Defense with the intent of eliminating waste and redundancy.
21) Soldiers and government civilians should be making equal pay and receive equal pensions. Saleries either drop or rise but soldiers and civilian workers across all departments of the federal government will be equalized.
22) If you bring a lawsuit to court and you lose, you must pay the defendant’s legal fees.
23) We’re building more nuclear power plants, drilling off shore, and drilling in Alaska. Get over it, we need the energy. The money from taxing the positive economic growth caused by abundant energy can go to research to develop realistic and affordable new energy sources.
24) All government subsidies to corporations and businesses will be reviewed and most likely stopped. The taxpayer should only pay for the goods and services they buy directly. Subsidies are forced gifts from the taxpayer to well-represented-by-lobbies corporations (sugar lobby) via the government. It is theft, wrong and largely unnecessary.
25) Any charity that makes more than $50 million in donations a year, loses its tax-exempt status and is shifted into a slightly progressive taxation rate. (Income from investments, etc. doesn’t count.) Donations to the charity are still tax-exempt, just the charity's total income is taxed. Any charity caught funneling its donations into other charities or shell companies to hide its income will be shut down.
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If I recall, the reason the War is being funded through supplemental appropriations is so that the increased funding doesn't become part of the DoD baseline. As such, it may be better to fund it this way, preventing the huge wartime budget from eventually becoming a huge peacetime budget.
ReplyDeleteExcellent point. However, in previous war situations, emergency appropriations were allowed and then the costs of war were folded into the DoD baseline until the war was over. At which point funding dropped. This method allowed transparency and better accounting than the appropriations method does.
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