BRYAN CAPLAN
May 7, 2013
Keynesian Bets: What's Out There
May 6, 2013
Keynesian Bets Bleg
May 6, 2013
The Pyramid of Macroeconomic Insight and Virtue
May 2, 2013
A Natalist Provision
May 1, 2013
I Was a Teenage Misanthrope
DAVID HENDERSON
May 5, 2013
John Thacker on Vaccinations and the Sequester
May 3, 2013
Chef Rudy's Virtues Project
May 2, 2013
My take on Reinhart and Rogoff
May 1, 2013
Medicare Kills a Program


Just pointing out a problem:
Reducing the budget of all federal agencies by 10% is a poor way of saving money - a slash and burn process to everything will have many disastrous public effects.
The public aren't libertarians who seek non-government, they are individuals and collectives, selfish and altruistic, bootleggers and baptists, who all want the same thing: social welfare.
(1) DOT is already suffering and vastly underfunded when they took a hit in toll revenues following oil spikes. People want government to pay for roads, whether they COULD be privately funded or not.
DOT is going to be bankrupt long before (2) Social Security, which people who 'need' welfare and people who see it as morally imperative desire -- the Disability Determination process is one of our most important workloads, and most underfunded. Claimants can wait years before they begin to receive disability. Similarly, (3) Medicare and Medicade budget slashing would never pass, and cutting (4) medical research through HHS that REDUCES the costs of healthcare wouldn't fly either.
When you start sparing programs that are already underfunded, you basically end up with very little left -- possibly DoD -- to be cut.
Just the ones I enumerated are major players in the budget, depending on how you look at it (total cost vs. administrative expenses, esp. with Soc. Sec. and Medicare)
And I didn't even mention cutting funding to public schools...
Long story short, someone running on that platform would never get elected, and even if he did, would never get his legislation passed unless some rather dire circumstances occurred.