YouCut: A step in the right direction

[NoStateofMind]

House Republicans Wednesday plan to unveil an online effort to let the American public vote each week for the best of five money-saving proposals, which they will then attempt to bring to a full-body vote

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0510/37116.html#ixzz0nkeDC41l

To me this is like a false sense "involvement" in our budget cutting decisions. They will choose the five items that would be up for budget cutting that week and then we would decide from those five, which one to cut.

http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2010/05/house-republicans-have-unveile.html

Obviously, the 8 billion ton gorilla in the room is Defense spending but I highly doubt any change will come to it. Thoughts?

 

[blackangst1]

The problem is the two largest budgets are defense and social programs. The left doesnt want to cut the latter, the right doesnt want to cut the former.

My thoughts? Cuts need to happen everywhere.

 

[Acanthus]

To me this is like a false sense "involvement" in our budget cutting decisions. They will choose the five items that would be up for budget cutting that week and then we would decide from those five, which one to cut.

http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2010/05/house-republicans-have-unveile.html

Obviously, the 8 billion ton gorilla in the room is Defense spending but I highly doubt any change will come to it. Thoughts?

It will never be in the 5 choices.

 

[Acanthus]

The problem is the two largest budgets are defense and social programs. The left doesnt want to cut the latter, the right doesnt want to cut the former.

My thoughts? Cuts need to happen everywhere.

This.

It will take reasonable reforms on military spending, especially overseas, coupled with reasonable cuts in domestic programs.

 

[StageLeft]

I like the idea but youcut.com sure isn't about this.

 

[nonlnear]

It's pure marketing genius. Sure it's a bit of a sham, but the cuts aren't the point. The purpose is to get people to come back and read GOP talking points as part of their weekly media consumption routine. The choices are interesting too:

Presidential Election Fund
$52 million per year
Clearly not a significant part of the budget. Something that would get bipartisan support from those with big lobbyists behind them and opposition from those who oppose the lobbyist power game.

Taxpayer Subsidized Union Activities
$120 million per year
This will rile up the democraticunderground and moveon folks to come to the site. It will also mobilize the TP and the rest of the base. Still not a big dent in the budget though.

HUD Program for Doctoral Dissertations
$200,000 per year
What? Are you kidding me? Sure it might be something worth cutting but I we need to start a few orders of magnitude higher if we're serious. I'd say this was put in to create the impression that cutting the budget is "really hard work", that can only be done by scrutinizing it with a magnifying glass instead of with a shotgun. This is how big government types want the public to think about government budgets because it gets the public off their backs.

New Non-Reformed Welfare Program
$2.5 billion per year
This is a cute example of marketing double speak. If it's new, how could it possibly be reformed? Sure I probably agree with most of this cut, but I don't know if it's possible for them to use more disingenuous language to present it to the public.

Eliminate Wealthier Communities from CDBG
$520 million per year
Here's the honeypot for the Democrats who happen to get lured in. Yes, it's also a good idea which might even get quite a few GOP votes too. It's a political winner because when they bring it to the floor the Dems will have to vote for it or look like the big bad GOP.

Don't even get me started on the inconsistent representation of budget figures on the actual site. I translated them all to annual numbers, but this is not the case over there. For some items they state five year totals, and for some it's the annual number. You have to read the blurbs to figure out the actual budgeted amounts.

Overall a pretty transparent ploy, but still possibly a useful one. It is designed to build a critical mass of regular readers. There is a reasonable likelihood of a fairly large following of Democrats too, because there will (I'm guessing) usually be one item on there for them. The real purpose is to get everybody reading talking points on a regular basis. When they get to the floor, it's at no risk to the GOP. It's pure win-win whether the motion gets passed or defeated.

 

[Hacp]

A couple of million? One or two billion? That is not getting to the bones. We need to get rid of arbitrary tax breaks, then lower taxes for everyone. Then we need to grind down the welfare and other social services and reduce military spending in foreign countries. This Youcut business is pathetic.

 

[her209]

Obviously, the 8 billion ton gorilla in the room is Defense spending but I highly doubt any change will come to it. Thoughts?

Sec. Gates is trying.
http://liveshots.blogs.foxnews.com/...es-for-less-defense-spending/?test=latestnews
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0510/37152.html

 

[WHAMPOM]

To me this is like a false sense "involvement" in our budget cutting decisions. They will choose the five items that would be up for budget cutting that week and then we would decide from those five, which one to cut.

http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2010/05/house-republicans-have-unveile.html

Obviously, the 8 billion ton gorilla in the room is Defense spending but I highly doubt any change will come to it. Thoughts?

Like Henry Ford said about the model-T "any color you want as long as it is black." How about the biggest public suggested spending cut?

 

[nonlnear]

Sec. Gates is trying.
http://liveshots.blogs.foxnews.com/...es-for-less-defense-spending/?test=latestnews
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0510/37152.html

God bless that man. A quote from TFA#1 is quite laughable:

Edwin Meese, former Attorney General under President Ronald Reagan, told Fox Wednesday that Americans need to be reminded of Reagan's philosophy of 'peace through strength'. "Ronald Reagan used to say no nation ever got into a war because they were too strong."

The obvious answer is that Reagan was a fucking idiot. Pretty much every era of imperialist expansion in human history was a saga of wars for no reason other than that the dominant power just felt like it.

 

[Patranus]

Vote: Taxpayer Subsidized Union Activities

 

[cubeless]

i thought this was part of the new healthcare plan...

and don't ever think that dems aren't just as much into military pork as any rep...

 

[umbrella39]

I like the idea but youcut.com sure isn't about this.

Exactly.

 

[Vette73]

i thought this was part of the new healthcare plan...

and don't ever think that dems aren't just as much into military pork as any rep...

Its not always in the pocket but the state and they know how to game the system.
Boeing for example has a military plane that has been up to cut. So they have parts made for that plane in 44 states. So if someone tried to cut that plane you have 88 senators, let alone how ever many congressmen, to stand up for it as "Its built in the great state of..." and we can;t let that happen. We need that plane to support the troops. Yea since we blew our wad on that plane we can't even get soliders basic stuff, but at least they got a plane. :hmm:

 

[werepossum]

God bless that man. A quote from TFA#1 is quite laughable:The obvious answer is that Reagan was a fucking idiot. Pretty much every era of imperialist expansion in human history was a saga of wars for no reason other than that the dominant power just felt like it.

"Just felt like it" /= "was too strong". Idiocy not found.

The great problem with peace through weakness is that the rest of the world gets a vote in whether or not you have a war. Belgium was weak in both world wars and was occupied in both world wars. Had Belgium been sitting on the world's only nuclear bombs it would have been left alone in both cases, but the reverse - that Belgium would have "felt like" establishing an empire - is not necessarily true. With strength comes the opportunity to choose war or peace. For instance the USA has undeniably been by far the strongest military force in the world at least since Reagan's time and has managed to avoid invading Canada and Mexico. (Too bad the converse isn't true about Mexico.) With weakness comes only the opportunity to have war or peace chosen by others.

This is a good idea in theory and makes a good advertisement, but these little pork programs will spring up more quickly than they can be voted on and cut. Thus this makes the Pubbies look good but will have little or no noticeable affect even if the Dems play along.

 

[nonlnear]

"Just felt like it" /= "was too strong". Idiocy not found.

Had the surplus military power to invade countries on a whim = was too strong.

And I was only asserting that Reagan's claim as a general rule was idiotic. (I tend to grandstand a bit to provoke responses. If I had stated exactly what I meant I doubt anyone would have bothered replying. ) Within the context of the cold war, there certainly was a strong case for maintaining strength for deterrent purposes.

The great problem with peace through weakness is that the rest of the world gets a vote in whether or not you have a war.

Who said anything about peace through weakness? The USA could cut most of its military and still be able to crush anyone's conventional forces. On the other hand, no matter how large we inflate our conventional forces we still can't seem to create stability after invading anyone...

 

[Acanthus]

Had the surplus military power to invade countries on a whim = was too strong.

And I was only asserting that Reagan's claim as a general rule was idiotic. (I tend to grandstand a bit to provoke responses. If I had stated exactly what I meant I doubt anyone would have bothered replying. ) Within the context of the cold war, there certainly was a strong case for maintaining strength for deterrent purposes.

Who said anything about peace through weakness? The USA could cut most of its military and still be able to crush anyone's conventional forces. On the other hand, no matter how large we inflate our conventional forces we still can't seem to create stability after invading anyone...

Most people dont realize that we spend more on our military than the other 19 countries in the top 20 combined. I would wager (although i dont have the stats) that we spend nearly as much as the rest of the world combined.

 

[her209]

"Just felt like it" /= "was too strong". Idiocy not found.

The great problem with peace through weakness is that the rest of the world gets a vote in whether or not you have a war. Belgium was weak in both world wars and was occupied in both world wars. Had Belgium been sitting on the world's only nuclear bombs it would have been left alone in both cases, but the reverse - that Belgium would have "felt like" establishing an empire - is not necessarily true. With strength comes the opportunity to choose war or peace. For instance the USA has undeniably been by far the strongest military force in the world at least since Reagan's time and has managed to avoid invading Canada and Mexico. (Too bad the converse isn't true about Mexico.) With weakness comes only the opportunity to have war or peace chosen by others.

Vietnam showed us that it doesn't matter how advanced your military capability is if the public doesn't have the stomach for it.

 

[cubby1223]

All other attempts to cut spending have failed, why not give this a try? That's how I look at it. Gotta start *somewhere*.

Besides, yes defense & social programs are the big chunk of the budget, but it's all the little crap that ties up congressmen's time. Stop all the little crap, maybe the federal gov't will have the time to take up the big ticket reform issues we need.

 

[theeedude]

Yeah, they were big budget cutters when they were running Congress, LOL

 

[woolfe9999]

This is again typical of the GOP political playbook, a new iteration of something with a decades long history. Bring up small items, things that are easily perceived as "wasteful" spending, and talk them up until they're blue in the face. Use this to substantite the claim of being fiscally conservative. Of course, in actual governance, shy away from all large spending cuts, because each has a constituency (i.e. the vaunted senior vote viz Medicare and SS), and also stay away from cutting anything that affects a monied campaign contributor.

New packaging of the same old misleading crap.

- wolf

 

[daishi5]

This is again typical of the GOP political playbook, a new iteration of something with a decades long history. Bring up small items, things that are easily perceived as "wasteful" spending, and talk them up until they're blue in the face. Use this to substantite the claim of being fiscally conservative. Of course, in actual governance, shy away from all large spending cuts, because each has a constituency (i.e. the vaunted senior vote viz Medicare and SS), and also stay away from cutting anything that affects a monied campaign contributor.

New packaging of the same old misleading crap.

- wolf

This is true. If their list of choices to vote on included a much larger portion of the budget, such as the military, this would be a good thing. As it is, this is worthless.

I think this idea could work for them though, if they put up all their sacred pork on the voting list. All they need is a way for people to vote on all of the programs they would like to see cut, then the republicans could go forth and start doing some real spending cuts behind a shield of "doing what the voter wants."

 

[Balt]

i thought this was part of the new healthcare plan...

and don't ever think that dems aren't just as much into military pork as any rep...

This is true, and it's how the spending got the votes it needed to pass in the first place. Build a huge industry with little component parts spread throughout that country so that you can tempt many different members of Congress with the lure of jobs.

Anyway, balancing the budget at this point would require cutting into the massive parts of the budget that are considered 'automatic' at this point, including SS, Medicare/Medicaid, and Defense. Of course no one wants to hear that, but that's why we have the problem in the first place. Everyone wanted something like a prescription health care bill for seniors, but no one wanted to pay for it.

 

[cKGunslinger]

LOL - You can't make this shit up.

http://republicanwhip.house.gov/YouCut/Review.htm

That's right folks! Those deficit hawks the Republicans are going to show you how it's done!

On the chopping block today, National Science Foundation Grants!

All we have to do it cut about 400,000 of these bad boys and America will be solvent once again!

 

[PeshakJang]

1) Reform all social welfare programs and fund more fraud investigation. If we doubled the amount we spent on investigating medicare fraud, and increased the severity of the penalties, we could save a bundle.

2) Raise retirement age by at least 3 years. Absolutely no reason why this should not be done. What's been happening is akin to us lowering the age over time since the enactment of the program... since lifespans have increased.

3) Cut foreign aid drastically, especially to Africa. That continent is literally a black hole for spending, with almost zero benefit being realized for the investment, other than more starvation, disease, and murder.

4) Reform defense spending. No need to simply cut it, there is more than enough money, but a lot is wasted on inefficiencies, bullshit overpriced contracts, civilians, and general bureaucratic garbage. This is the one area, if any, that the constitution explicitly lays out as the responsibility of the Federal Government. Social welfare programs deserve to go before defense spending gets touched... especially these days.