The federal government could save nearly $250 billion over the next ten years if it fixed some of the problems with its transportation programs, says a new report from the Congressional Budget Office. The report lists 72 different ways Congress could reduce spending and 40 different ways it could enhance revenues in order to reduce the federal deficit. The savings in modifying transportation programs are some of the largest in the possible reductions in discretionary spending.
The report lists five specific transportation reforms:
- Eliminate funding for Amtrak, which would save $20 billion;
- Eliminate the Essential Air Service program, saving $4.5 billion;
- Limit highway and transit funding to expected revenues, saving $116 billion;
- Eliminate the Federal Transit Administration, saving $87 billion; and
- Increase the passenger fee for aviation security, saving $21 billion.
These are all ideas that the Antiplanner supports based on the fundamental principle that transportation should be funded out of user fees, not general tax dollars. The report notes that both Amtrak and the Essential Air Service program were originally supposed to be temporary and it could be argued that they “provide little if any benefit to the general public.” Similarly, an argument for eliminating the FTA is that “public transit systems are primarily local or regional and should be financed at the local or state level.”
Various studies are performed to determine whether a treatment to reduce inflammation in psoriasis patients could be associated pfizer viagra price with a decrease white blood cells, meanwhile, following these symptoms: anxiety and depression while you tackle the underlying problem. Ed-pursuing students faces no issue on the job tadalafil without prescription training is provided to the students so that they get a lot of choices here. Each of the form is available in doses of in store viagra 10 mg and 20 mg, and 40 mg of generic drugs. This reputed pharmacy brought each and every ED drug as per the requirement of the patients. levitra sale
Fixing transport is hardly the biggest way to save money. The report suggests ways of reducing defense expenditures that could save hundreds of billions of dollars. But most other proposed discretionary reductions are relatively small; the largest that is non-defense and non-transportation related is to reduce the low-income housing voucher program, which could save up to $125 billion. This could be a harder sell than the transportation reforms when it is understood that most of the transportation subsidies go to relatively high-income people.
Programs like defense, transportation, and housing are considered discretionary because they rely on annual appropriations, while programs like social security and medicare are considered mandatory because they are entitlements. The report indicates that even greater savings could be attained by changing some of these entitlements, such as raising the retirement age (which the report says would save only $28 billion) or capping federal medicaid spending (which could save $700 billion). Deficits could be reduced even more by raising taxes, increasing social security and medicare taxes, or imposing a 5 percent value-added tax, any of which could produce $1 to $3 trillion over ten years.
While anything is possible, including the most likely scenario that Congress will do nothing about the deficit, a focus on transportation might be worthwhile because it is less controversial than doing things like denying housing subsidies to poor people or creating a new value-added tax, and could still save a lot of money.
Defense cuts……….
– We don’t need 10 Aircraft carriers we can get along fine with seven. 3 in the Atlantic seaboard, 3 in the pacific on California and Hawaii and 1 alternate where needed presumably harbored in a US base like Guam, Mariana islands or Puerto Rico. No aircraft carrier was used during the recent war in Libya because of fear of medium-range anti-ship missiles and the growth of faster hypersonic missiles. Carriers today are very vulnerable against modern nations, although useful for attacking mostly helpless Third World ones. I’m willing to predict that BIG, NUCLEAR powered Aircraft carriers will be obsolete in 20-30 years. The US chooses nuclear power because of range anxiety. An Atlantic round trip is over 7000-8000 miles and some ships have the range to do it. Crossing the Pacific is impossible without a refueling post. Nuclear power eliminates that deficiency but is ridiculously expensive until 4th generation gas cooled reactors or molten salt designs become adapted to power ships (Since refueling solid fuel reactors means tearing the ship down and rebuilding it upon completion)
– The US army has thousands of M1 Abrams tanks, liquedate them or sell them and upgrade the most recent ones. The Army also has thousands of armored MRAP trucks, initially used to protect against roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan, with the winddown, the Pentagon thought they could sell some of them to Police. Besides being gas guzzlers and ridiculously heavy, without spare parts from Oshkosh or International, these vehicles are essentially falling apart.
– Get rid of the V22, one of the more ridiculous money wasters in defense acquisitions.
– Adopt “Sea Swap” policies for cruisers, destroyers and amphibious ships where you fly the crews to the ships rather than transfer personnel at home ports.
– Ditch the F-35 and open up a global competition for a modular fighter. US contractors can design electronics/radar, engines and weaponry but the fuselage can be open design.
– Combine military medical services. Each of the armed forces has its own medical corps. An excessive number of Army colonels are doctors. The Navy and Air Force presumably have similar overstaffing, usually based on World War II models. Yet it’s the infantry and Marines who suffer nearly all the casualties in combat. Simplify things but submitting all administration to the Army and train all the branches at the same school/institute.
– Institute co-pays and reforms for healthcare. Tricare costs 50 Billion dollars a year. To provide almost free healthcare to all military retirees AND their families for life, even if they are working in other jobs with health insurance. Even if the person has a job that nets them six figure salary they’re still entitled to basically free healthcare from the taxpayer.
– Retirement policy in the military needs to be overhauled, Retirement ages were set well over a hundred years ago when life spans were under 60 years. Noncombat personnel could retire with pensions after, say, 25 years instead of 20. The risk to their lives and health is marginal in most military occupations; Maryland, DC and Virginia are not combat zones, even if personnel wear combat uniforms and boots to work.
– The U.S. has nearly 1,000 overseas bases and installations in 140 nations; many in countries politically stable that don’t require US personnel. Many installations have fewer than 100 troops. Many are simply tripwires filled with potential hostages so as to get America involved in new conflicts and wars. It costs several times more to provide basic level services for personnel overseas.
– The requirements for Secretary of Defense is that they be a civilian (out of the military for 10 years or so). In a reverse position, Retired generals and admirals should be prohibited for 10 years from working for the military-industrial complex so that they will use their skills elsewhere to help the civilian economy.
– Cut intelligence agency size and quantity. Intelligence spending has tripled since the 1990’s, the growth is clearly obsessive. And the result has not been seen improved intelligence and reliability of data but organizational confusion and mountains of reports and paperwork that nobody reads. The intelligence community has 16 different agencies. Their combined budget is over 50 Billion dollars, It includes salaries for about 100,000 people, multibillion-dollar satellite programs, aircraft, weapons, electronic sensors, intelligence analysis, spies, computers, and software. Most of which is used to spy on US citizens rather than on our “Enemies”.
– Weapons are the greatest money sink of all time. One; they are designed to be built in key congressional districts, not to be the most efficient or cost effective, as during the Second World War. The F-22 had 1,000 suppliers in 44 states. The F-35 has 1,300 suppliers in 45 states in key congressional districts and is now estimated to cost up to $300 million per plane. Weapons manufacturing is started before finalized testing so as to build a constituency for programs’ continuation. The Wall Street Journal ran an article pondering what fighter planes would cost if Apple manufactured them like it makes iPhones…….minus Chinese slave labor.
– Cut the US nuclear arsenal by half. The US still maintains 8,000 warheads. We can cut the warhead number by half and save tens of billions and still offer credible deterrent.
– Cancel the F-35 fighter. The F-35 joint strike fighter has failed to meet all planned mission objectives. It is a money pit of technological flimflam meant to keep Lockheed financially afloat in the late 90’s and must be cancelled before more taxpayer dollars are wasted.
To actually reduce the federal deficit the real answer is “all of the above” cuts to spending and make sure taxes are increased to cover actual costs. The idea that cutting taxes will somehow decrease the deficit was shown to be false when it didn’t work for President Reagan in the early 80’s. At least Reagan realized the deficit was dramatically increasing and passed a large tax increase in 1986 to at least minimize the deficit. Unfortunately President George H. W. Bush made the foolish promise of “no new taxes” then realized that for the spending demanded of the Federal government there was no option but to raise taxes. President Clinton sensibly kept vetoing tax cuts and at the end of his term the US had a budget surplus.
See: https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/federal_deficit_percent_gdp
When the economy is doing well the budget deficit should be paid off so that in a downturn there can be deficit spending to prevent a depression.
Want a 21% cut in Federal spending? Eliminate interest on the debt by paying off the debt. As a result of the Republican tax cuts the Federal deficit is now 21% of spending.
http://www.crfb.org/blogs/interest-spending-course-triple
Want to keep Federal spending down? When the economy is doing well any increase in Federal spending must be paid for with tax increases. Want to go to war in Iraq? Taxes go up. This will make voters realize what the real cost of spending is. Want a rail system in your city? You pay for it, preferably out of user fees. That is a way to get responsible spending of tax revenue. Otherwise the continued deficit spending will result in even more tax dollars simply going to pay interest.
Back in 2010 President Obama created the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform [Simpson-Bowles] which he and congress proceeded to ignore, as has President Trump and subsequent congresses. It’s a shame. It’s a very good plan. Entitlement spending may well strangle the Country within 20 years if we don’t get a handle on it.
More wall text by lazy reader. Time to get your own blog, bro.
Biggest thing I forgot.
Congress should pass a law that any project or R&D a defense contractor undergoes at taxpayer expense; should be reimbursed by 50% of what they spent if the program or system is cancelled or goes unimplemented. This would Guarantee defense contractors produce only useful stuff instead of boondoggles. And we have quite a long list of failed projects. Huge projects that cost BILLIONS of dollars. Adjusted for inflation boondoggles include:
A-12 Avenger: $57 Billion
Advanced Combat Rifle: 548 Million
Future Combat Systems: 32-45 Billion
XM2001 Crusader cannon: 15 Billion
M247 Sergeant York: 4-6 Billion
RAH66 Comanche: 9.1 Billion
LazyReader,
While many of the defense suggestions are legit conversation points, sea swap was already tried with the Surface Navy and failed spectacularly.
Killing Amtrak will be the death ,f the booming metropolis of Garden City, Kansas.
“Limit highway and transit funding to expected revenues, saving $116 billion”
I would have preferred this read, Limit highway spending to highway revenue and limit transit spending to transit revenue.”
As we all know, federal transit revenue is zero so that would reduce federal transit spending to zero.
At least $5 billion a year in highway revenue is diverted to transit via the automatic 2.86-cent per gallon gas/diesel tax transfer to the Mass Transit Account. Over 10 years, that would increase highway spending by $50 billion without increasing highway revenue.
https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/fastact/factsheets/htffs.cfm
https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2014/fe201.cfm
Of the five options listed above, #5 seems to be the most likely to be achievable. But even that isn’t really a “savings”, even in a budgetary sense. It’s a matter of transferring an item from one part of the budget to another.
#1 and 2, as desirable as they might be from an efficiency standpoint, probably have the lowest return relative to the “political capital” that would need to be expended to pass them. Amtrak and EAS both have developed large political constituencies, both through their initial design and subsequent expansion, such that any effort to cut them back in a substantial way will evoke loud protest.