11-01-2016, 07:57 PM
(11-01-2016, 07:23 PM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: Anyone who tells you that there isn't much room to cut isn't looking very hard. Same with the defense budget. You can get rid of a lot of crap in there without making our armed forced any less potent.
-Heck, they're spending over $1t+ on a stealth fighter jet program with questionable stealth, terrible maneuverability, extremely limited payload, ton of software problems, and costs like $115m a pop to make. (You could buy 72 F-16s for the price of 10 F-35s)
-The US found $1.7b pretty easy to pay Iran's ransom.
-Does the US really need SEVENTEEN intelligence agencies?
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This article (man I am using a lot of Forbes links today) sums up a nice little list. Read this and tell me that there isn't much room to cut.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonynitti/2014/10/22/how-did-the-government-waste-your-money-in-2014-separating-fact-from-fiction/#25b6d1ef6ca2
"The following groupings contain three items of government spending pulled from the Wastebook, and one pulled from my own imagination. See if you can guess which one is the fake!"
1 Animal Division
a. $387,000 to study the effects robot-provided Swedish massage has on the physical recovery of rabbits after exercise.
b. $856,000 to train three mountain lions to run on a treadmill in order to measure the energy consumption of the cats’ hunting techniques.
c. $171,000 to teach monkeys to gamble in order to determine if monkeys, like humans, believe in the concept of a “hot hand.”
d. $473,000 to house 100 chimpanzees in a room with 100 typewriters for the entire year to determine whether, if given enough time, they could recreate the complete works of Tucker Max.
2. Public Safety Division
a. $3 million to create a snarky social media presence named “Think Again Turn Away” to counter the propaganda movement of terrorist organizations.
b. $331,000 to study whether the concept of “hanger” was real by testing whether hungry spouses were more likely to stab a voodoo doll representing their significant other.
c. $335,000 to build 38 “speed humps” (which incidentally, is how six of Adrian Peterson’s children were conceived) in two Portland, Maine neighborhoods.
d. $820,000 to determine the impact of public breastfeeding on the rate of car accidents at crowded intersections.
3. Tax Division
a. $4.2 billion lost to improper tax refunds issued to identity thieves.
b. $10 million in lost tax revenue by permitting the super-rich to rent their homes for up to two weeks each year tax-free.
c. $4 billion in funding issues to states who improperly achieve a double benefit on federal Medicaid payments.
d. $1.9 million in lost tax revenue attributable to the ill-advised one-year extension of the “Too Tired to Work” credit.
4. Military Division
a. $1 billion to destroy $16 billion in unneeded purchases of military-grade ammunition.
b. $80 million for the development of a real-life Ironman suit.
c. $21 million for the Army Corps of Engineers to rebuild buildings that continue to burn down because of their shoddy construction.
d. $37 million for an initial inquiry as to the total cost for the U.S. to quell rising unrest in the middle East by “having everyone pretend to convert to Islam for a year or two.”
5. Animal Division, Round 2.
a. $371,000 to study if mothers loved their dogs as much as their own kids by studying the way their brains responded to pictures of both.
b. $1.97 million in grants to crate a new communication network for “fossil enthusiasts and professionals.”
c. $307,000 to study the impact schools of swimming Sea Monkeys have on ocean current.
d. $1.2 million to study whether eating radioactive tuna caused by the Fukushima disaster as part of a balanced meal will provide humans with mild superpowers.
6. Recreational Division
a. $194,090 to determine if automatic text messages can encourage heavy drinkers to stop boozing.
b. $100,000 for the Coast Guard to patrol some of the country’s most exclusive real estate to stop uninvited guests from crashing private parties.
c. $120,000 in performance bonuses paid to an Environmental Protection Agency employee who admitted to viewing porn up to six hours a day on government computers.
d. $484,000 to study whether “drunk recall” of information learned while intoxicating is a real phenomenon, as part of a program titled “E=MC hammered.”
7. The Arts Division
a. $10,000 to produce “Zombie in Love,” a musical about a teenage zombie “dying to find true love.”
b. $15,000 for the Colorado Symphony Orchestra to produce “Classically Cannabis: The High Note Series,” with the intention of attracting younger audiences to the symphony.
c. $10,000 to return to the stage ”RoosevElvis,” a pay about a shy woman who channels the personality of Elvis Presley and her imaginary friend, Teddy Roosevelt.
d. $27,000 to produce “One-Man Jurassic Park,” a play meant to terrify and tantalize audiences after “‘mankind’s desire to play God backfires in spectacular fashion.”
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Answer Key:
1. d is the false answer.
2. d is the false answer.
3. d is the false answer.
4. d. is the false answer.
5. d is the false answer.
6. d is the false answer.
7. d is the false answer.
The federal budget is about $4 trillion. That means you need a cut of $40 BILLION just to reduce it by 1%.
And cutting "lost tax revenue" does not reduce the budget. So all of the thuings you mentioned here would not even total $1 billlion which would be .025% of 1 percent of the budget.
