TANSTAAFL!

I was looking at the latest available numbers for the federal budget (fiscal 2023).

And we only brought in about 4.4 trillion in revenue that year so we ran a deficit of about $1.7 trillion dollars. And that is equal to all of the “discretionary” spending which by the way includes all of defense spending. Now that is a grim picture.  But as the kids say, “It is what it is.”  What we should be shooting for is a budget that doesn’t exceed our revenues minus our debt payment.  So, our budget should be around $3.74 trillion dollars.  Or roughly speaking we have to trim the budget by 40%.

That’s a lot.  But you know, I’ll bet it’s about in line with the amount of waste we could delete from the budget if honest people were looking at it.  Even line items like Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare are riddled with inefficiency and featherbedding employment practices that a determined auditor could ferret out and eliminate.  If Elon Musk could fire 70% of the staff at Twitter without any noticeable diminution in the capability of the business surely the federal bureaucracy can be pared back by 40% without too much trouble.  Let’s face it automation probably already does most of the work that these people get credit for.

It may not be possible to reduce all that spending within a year or even four years but what is needed is a detailed plan to do just that. The plan needs to be a continuous improvement process that allows managers to apply metrics that tell them how many people to remove from the system on a monthly basis and how the remaining human resources are allocated and rated to determine who stays and who goes.  It will be as murderous and cutthroat as the private sector is.  Basically, it will be hell for bureaucrats and many of them will run away screaming just to avoid the stress.  But it is exactly what’s needed.  We can’t afford to make the federal government a jobs program for the dim-witted and lazy people who can’t make it in the private sector.  At the very least the first thing we should do is lower all salaries by 40%.  And I understand there may be some lower paid employees for which this is an unreasonable cut.  But that can be worked out on a case-by-case basis.  But it’s a good estimate for what we’re trying to do.  And as far as boondoggles, we know there are plenty of those.  Probably not two and half trillion dollars’ worth but still plenty to trim.

And let’s be honest.  We all probably benefit from many programs that will have to be cut.  So be it.  Everybody will have to suck it up to some extent.  Who knows, it may turn out that we can’t have free Chat GPT because it’s really paid for by our tax dollars.  Fine.  We’ll have to pay for that and probably a whole bunch of other things ourselves.  Well, in the words of RAH, “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.”