Friday, December 3, 2010

Another plan to cut the deficit

As I mentioned on Nov. 30, I've been on the lookout for deficit reduction plans. Most aren't worth mentioning. But I think this one is a better start than most. It comes from the Heritage Foundation, and would cut more than $300 billion from government spending. Still not enough, but you gotta start somewhere.


Table 1: Spending Cuts for FY 2012
(in millions of dollars)

Agriculture

$15,000

Replace farm subsidies with Farmer Savings Accounts and improved crop insurance.

$2,033

Eliminate the Foreign Agriculture Service.

$1,500

Merge all four agriculture outreach and research agencies and cut their budget
in half.

$1,000

Fund the Food Safety and Inspection Service with user fees.

Commerce

$500

Eliminate business subsidies from the National Institute of Standards and
Technology.

Community Development

$6,000

Eliminate the Community Development Block Grant program.

$598

Eliminate the Rural Utilities Service.

$523

Eliminate the Economic Development Administration.

$480

Eliminate NeighborWorks America (formerly the Neighborhood Reinvestment
Corporation).

$200

Consolidate the Rural Housing and Development Programs and convert them into
block grants.

$73

Eliminate the Appalachian Regional Commission.

$48

Eliminate the Denali Commission.

$31

Eliminate the Minority Development Business Agency.

$8

Eliminate the Delta Regional Authority.

Education

$8,000

Return Pell Grants to their 2009 funding level of $24 billion, which is still
double the 2007 level.

$2,000

Trim Head Start by $2 billion and convert it into vouchers.

$2,000

Scale back the Education Department bureaucracy.

$1,500

Eliminate dozens of small and duplicative education grants.

$298

Eliminate state grants for Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities.

Energy and the Environment

$6,500

Reduce energy subsidies for commercialization and some research activities.

$600

Block grant and devolve Environmental Protection Agency grant programs.

$200

Restructure the Power Marketing Administrations to charge market-based rates.

$63

Eliminate the Science to Achieve Results Program.

Government Reform

$44,000

Halve federal program payment errors by 2012, especially by reducing Medicare
errors and earned income tax credit errors.

Tighten oversight by spending $5 billion on new resources, such as updated
computer systems, and then recover $49 billion in payment errors.

$20,000

Rescind unobligated balances after 36 months.

$12,500

Halve the $25 billion spent to maintain vacant federal properties.

$10,000

Cut the federal employee travel budget to $4 billion (half of FY 2000 spending).

$3,000

Freeze federal pay until it can be reformed.

$1,000

Suspend acquisition of federal office space.

$600

Trim the federal vehicle fleet by 20 percent (a reduction of 100,000 vehicles).

$300

Cut the House and Senate budgets back to the 2008 level of $2.2 billion.

$215

Eliminate the Presidential Election Campaign Fund.

$100

Tighten controls on federal employee credit cards and cut down on delinquencies.

$70

Require federal employees to fly coach on domestic flights.

Health Care

$6,200

Reform Medigap.

$5,000

Repeal Obamacare (larger savings in later years).

$3,700

Require Medicare home health co-payments.

$673

Eliminate the Maternal and Child Health Block Grant.

$414

Eliminate Health Professions grants.

$327

Eliminate Title X Family Planning.

$150

Eliminate the National Health Service Corps.

$98

Repeal Rural Health Outreach and Flexibility grants.

Homeland Security

$2,700

Eliminate most homeland security grants to states and allow states to finance
their own programs.

Income Security

$500

Better enforce eligibility requirements for food stamps.

Interior






$1,500

Open the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to leasing.

(The savings are leasing revenues, which are classified as negative spending in
the federal budget.)

$200

Suspend federal land purchases.

International

$2,636

Eliminate the Development Assistance Program.

$625

Eliminate the State Department’s education and cultural exchange programs.

$321

Eliminate the International Trade Administration’s trade promotion activities or
charge the beneficiaries.

$183

Eliminate the Democracy Fund.

$68

Eliminate the International Trade Commission and transfer oversight of
intellectual property rights to the Treasury Department.

$56

Eliminate the Trade and Development Agency.

$29

Eliminate the Overseas Private Investment Corporation.

$19

Eliminate the East–West Center.

$17

Eliminate the United States Institute of Peace.

$2

Eliminate the Japan–United States Friendship Commission.

Justice

$7,334

Eliminate all Justice Department grants except those from the Bureau of Justice
Statistics and the National Institute of Justice,

thereby empowering states to finance their own justice programs.

$398

Eliminate the Legal Services Corporation.

$32

Eliminate the Justice Department’s Community Relations Service.

$30

Eliminate the duplicative Office of National Drug Control Policy.

$26

Reduce funding for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division by 20 percent

because of its policy against race-neutral enforcement of the law.

$4

Eliminate the State Justice Institute.

Labor






$4,300

Eliminate failed federal job training programs.

$2,000

Eliminate the ineffective Job Corps.

$576

Eliminate the Senior Community Service Employment Program.

National Science Foundation

$1,700

Reduce National Science Foundation funding to 2008 levels.

$86

Eliminate National Science Foundation spending on elementary and secondary
education.

Transportation

$45,000

Devolve the federal highway program and most transit spending to the states.

$1,900

Privatize Amtrak.

$1,009

Eliminate grants to large and medium-sized hub airports.

$554

Eliminate the Maritime Administration.

$125

Eliminate the Essential Air Service Program.

Treasury

$26,646

Eliminate the additional child refundable credit.

$103

Eliminate the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund.

Veterans

$2,500

Cap increases in Department of Veterans Affairs health care spending.

$1,930

Reduce Veterans’ Disability Compensation to account for Social Security
Disability Insurance payments.

Cross-Agency and Other

$60,000

Repeal unspent stimulus spending.

$8,000

Switch to using the “Superlative CPI” in funding calculations.

$6,000

Repeal the Davis–Bacon Act.

$2,250

Eliminate Federal Communications Commission funding for school Internet service.

$2,000

Ban project labor agreements on all federally funded construction projects.

$1,000

Eliminate the Small Business Administration, which unnecessarily intervenes in
free markets.

$736

Eliminate the National Community Service programs, such as AmeriCorps.

$253

Eliminate the Institute of Museum Services and Library Services.

$140

Eliminate the National Endowment for the Humanities.

$133

Eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts.

$61

Eliminate Army Corps of Engineers funding for beach replenishment projects.

$10

Eliminate the Commission of Fine Arts.

$8

Eliminate the National Capital Planning Commission.

$5

Eliminate the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation.

Total


$343,207 million

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