ARNOLD KLING
August 14, 2011
The Top Political Contributors
August 11, 2011
Gender and the New Commanding Heights
August 11, 2011
Jamie Galbraith Makes an Assumption
August 11, 2011
Macroeconometrics: The Science of Hubris
August 10, 2011
Real and Nominal Bond Yields
BRYAN CAPLAN
August 14, 2011
The Effect of Thumb Sucking on Income
August 12, 2011
The Voice of Cold, Hard Truth to All Would-Be Educators
August 12, 2011
Ability, Morality, and Prosperity: A Paper and a Report
August 11, 2011
The Theory of Time and Frittering
August 10, 2011
Male Variance and the Remnants of the Gender Gap
DAVID HENDERSON
August 9, 2011
Hayek in "Unbroken", Part Two
August 8, 2011
Hayek in "Unbroken"
August 5, 2011
James Bovard on the Peace Corps
August 4, 2011
Summers Way Off on FDR and 1941
August 3, 2011
The "Amazon" Tax


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.