Dear friend,
Did you hear? Obama’s cutting the budget!
Unfortunately, it’s only $100 million, which comes out to 0.0027 percent of the $3.6 trillion in spending he is imposing on current and future taxpayers. Much of it is simply things like buying office supplies in bulk, or one-time cuts that do nothing to cure long-term spending problems.
And according to senior White House official, speaking to the Associated Press on the condition of anonymity, "said Obama will point to cuts already being proposed."
Obama’s budget calls for around $11,755.00 in spending for every man, woman and child in America. But his “cuts” — which aren’t even new reductions — come out to only around 32.7 cents per person.
Yes, Obama believes that by cutting 32.7 cents off the price of an $11,755.00 financed purchase, he’s offering you a great deal.
Well, Libertarians know better. Obama is doing this out of desperation, and there’s a reason he’s scrambling to take credit for tiny spending reductions other people came up with.
Outraged Americans gathered in parks and town squares across the country last week to vent their outrage at his and the Republican Party’s out-of-control spending. Twenty House Democrats voted against his budget because even they couldn’t stomach his economy-crushing deficits.
Less than 100 days into office and much of Obama’s out-of-touch agenda is already on the ropes. His big-spending, big-governing Republican counterparts aren’t faring much better. Despite plummeting approval ratings for Obama, the GOP is still hugely unpopular.
Americans are looking for a party with a plan to reduce spending, eliminate deficits and restore prosperity.
It’s certainly not the Republican Party. Their “alternative budget” released a few weeks ago continued the Bush policy of expanding the size of government and running up deficits. The only difference between theirs and Obama’s budgets was that theirs was only a close second in the race to expand government the fastest.
That’s why the Libertarian Party is proposing real, specific spending reductions — reductions that will go much, much further to reduce taxes on our children than Obama’s raindrop-in-the-ocean repackaging of already-proposed cuts.
So what are they? How are Libertarians going to reduce the size and cost of the federal government and stave off trillions of dollars in higher taxes on our children?
Here are just a few of the reductions we back. You can find more in the Cato Institute’s “Handbook for Policymakers, Seventh Edition.”
• Avert the oncoming fiscal crisis in Social Security by indexing initial benefits to changes in prices, instead of wages. Saves $47 billion annually by 2018. Without reforms like this, the program will go bankrupt or force trillions of dollars in destructive new taxes or borrowing.
• Turn Medicare into a block grant and freeze federal spending, forcing states to pursue cost-cutting reforms. Saves $227 billion annually by 2018.
• Eliminate the Commerce Department’s Economic Development Administration, a $352 million corporate welfare program.
• Eliminate the Commerce Department’s International Trade Administration, another $369 million in corporate welfare.
• Eliminate the Energy Department’s nuclear energy research programs, $695 million in welfare that should be undertaken by nuclear energy investors.
• Turn Head Start over to private charities, saving $687 million annually. Since its inception Head Start has shown no substantive increase in inner-city literacy rates.
• Eliminate the Bureau of Indian Affairs, saving nearly $2.5 billion a year.
• Eliminate funding for the United Nations and other international programs, saving nearly $1.6 billion annually.
• Eliminate the Legal Services Corporation, saving $350 million annually.
• Eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, $278 million a year in welfare for wealthy arts patrons.
• Eliminate the Small Business Administration, $530 million in welfare for businesses.
• Eliminate the $935 million a year in Postal Service subsidies and force them to further privatize operations.
Those are just a few cuts, a “twelve step program” if you will, which alone save taxpayers $282.3 billion. That comes out to $921.78 in savings for every man, woman and child in America, and there would be a lot more savings than that to come with future reductions.
Compare that to Obama’s piddling 32.7 cents.
The Republicans had 14 years to do it, and instead exploded spending every year. Obama is happy to spend even faster. Libertarians are the only candidates with the willpower, and the concern for their children and grandchildren, to do it.
That leaves the Libertarian Party as the only party with a rational, sensible program to stop the destructive explosion in federal spending. Government growth, spending, taxation and borrowing are out of control, and it threatens not only our prosperity and freedom, but that of our children.
Obama’s 32.7 cent dog-and-pony show, if it even happens, does nothing to avert the oncoming bankruptcy of Social Security and Medicare, or head off the trillions of dollars in new taxes he and the Republicans are heaping on future generation.
The only way to get real fiscal reform, starting with $282.3 billion in common-sense reductions, is to elect Libertarians.
With optimism,
Donny Ferguson
Director of Communications
Libertarian National Committee
Donny.Ferguson@lp.org
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