Tudamorf wrote:Fyyr wrote:Military spending is one of the only real Constitutional reasons to spend money.
Paying to feed Tyrone's baby, who knocked up Latisha,,,,,That's not really Constitutional.
Article 1, Section 8: "The Congress shall have Power To . . . provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States."
(Maybe that was edited out of the new Libertarian revised edition of the Constitution?)
Maybe you need to read the Federalist Papers, which were written to clarify the meanings of the Constitution.
Federalist Paper No. 43 wrote:It has been urged and echoed,that the power ``to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States,'' amounts to an unlimited commission to exercise every power which may be alleged to be necessary for the common defense or general welfare. No stronger proof could be given of the distress under which these writers labor for objections, than their stooping to such a misconstruction. Had no other enumeration or definition of the powers of the Congress been found in the Constitution, than the general expressions just cited, the authors of the objection might have had some color for it; though it would have been difficult to find a reason for so awkward a form of describing an authority to legislate in all possible cases . . . 'But what color can the objection have, when a specification of the objects alluded to by these general terms immediately follows, and is not even separated by a longer pause than a semicolon? If the different parts of the same instrument ought to be so expounded, as to give meaning to every part which will bear it, shall one part of the same sentence be excluded altogether from a share in the meaning; and shall the more doubtful and indefinite terms be retained in their full extent, and the clear and precise expressions be denied any signification whatsoever? For what purpose could the enumeration of particular powers be inserted, if these and all others were meant to be included in the preceding general power? Nothing is more natural nor common than first to use a general phrase, and then to explain and qualify it by a recital of particulars.
Congress can provide for the general welfare in the following areas:
Borrow money to (Maybe the Federal Reserve can be excused here)
Regulate Commerce with nations, states, and Indians (This is where the ATF gets its authority)
uniform rules of Naturalization and Bankruptcies (Dept of Immigration derives its funding here)
Coin money, regulate its value, establish standards and weights, prevent counterfeiting (FBI, IRS, etc fall in here)
Establish Post Offices (Woo, post office is safe from cutting!)
Establish Post Roads (Department of Transportation is safe)
Establish Patents and Copyrights (US Patent office gets its funding)
Establish the lower Federal court system (All those Federal circuit court judges can keep buying golf clubs)
Fight Pirates (Go get em, Navy)
Declare War, make rules of war (I think they keep delegating this to the President)
Raise Armies (Department of Defense is a go)
Provide and maintain a Navy (Also a DoD function)
Make rules for them to follow (Military courts and tribunals can keep operating. Convict more terrorists)
Call forth the Militia, suppress Insurrections, and repel invasions (National Guard can be organized and given federal funding)
Provide for means to organize the Militia (Same)
Exclusively rule the 10 mile area here-fore known as Washington DC (The beltway is Congress's playground)
Make laws necessary and proper for executing aforementioned powers. (Department of Justice is safe)
That is it. Nothing else. Strike everything else down as unConstitutional, illegal (For the Constitution is the supreme law of the United States of America), and do away with it.
No mention of Department of Education, Social Security, Housing, Medicare Part A, Medicare Part B, Medicare part C, Medicare part D, Medicaid and 503 other programs.
I bet you don't agree with that, but there it is. How about Jefferson? After all, he is the sole and only originator of the phrase "separation of church and state", so you shouldn't have ANY objection to his views.
Thomas Jefferson to Gallatin, 06/16/1817 wrote:Congress had not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but were restrained to those specifically enumerated; and that, as it was never meant they should provide for that welfare but by the exercise of the enumerated powers, so it could not have been meant they should raise money for purposes which the enumeration did not place under their action; consequently, that the specification of powers is a limitation of the purposes for which they may raise money
If that is too harsh, how about AT LEAST CONSOLIDATING the myriad, overlapping, redundant ones we have into ONE organization per area?
In a 333 page report, the GAO (Government Accounting Office) listed ludicrous amounts of waste and duplication of effort in every level, every branch, and every spending category that could be consolidated without significantly crippling ANY Department.
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d11318sp.pdf
The WSJ has two articles about it, one here:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... %3Darticle
And it also made a miniscule 12 point summary of the smallest amount of waste found in the larger report:
1. Food safety: 15 agencies are involved in implementing numerous federal laws.
2. Defense: Numerous redundancies in the purchasing of tactical wheeled vehicles, procurement, and medical costs.
3. Economic development: 80 different programs spread across numerous agencies, often with similar goals.
4. Surface transportation: More than 100 programs run by five divisions within the Department of Transportation deal with surface transportation.
5. Energy: Eliminating duplicative federal efforts to increase ethanol production could save $5.7 billion each year.
6. Government information technology: 24 federal agencies deal with information technology.
7. Health: The Defense Department and the Department of Veterans Affairs could work together – instead of separately – to modernize their electronic health records systems.
8. Homelessness: More than 20 federal programs deal with homelessness.
9. Transportation Security Administration: Assessments of commercial trucking overlap with another federal agency.
10. Teachers: 82 programs that deal with teacher quality, spread across multiple agencies.
11. Financial literacy: 56 programs dealing with financial literacy.
12. Job training: 44 employment and training programs.
I have so many other founding quotes I could give, but I'm sure all the objections based on what the founding fathers
actually thought the phrase "general welfare" meant will be summarily discarded with the old liberal standby: "That was then; this is now."
Now, today, right this second, we so need to cut the bloat if we don't want to go the way of Greece. Cut in every department. All of it, including most of the troops we still have stationed in South Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan. We got Osama, let's wind down most of our mobilization. Cut, cut, cut.
{Edit: Eri said the Europeans don't really want us there, because we do tend to act like alpha dogs, so we can also remove all US military presence from the European theatre. We can keep military R&D running so we are not surprised by some new upcoming BRIC (Brazilan, Russian, Indian or Chinese) space age weapon that we had no idea was developed, and we can keep all the military aid services up and running, because of anyone in America, those guys(and gals) have ****ing earned it. DoD functions are one of the real functions on that short list at the start of my post anyways. }
In an ideal world, I'd like to see everything that is authorized in those 17 things trimmed by 33%, and everything else by 100%. I know I will never get that wish. I know that nothing substantial will ever be cut from the US budget. I also know that it is unsustainable. As such, I need to prepare things that are sustainable.
Time to go turn my compost pile. I need to get ready to start a garden, as I seriously doubt our currency can survive a third round of qualitative easing. And you have to amend the soil a year in advance if you want a good crop!
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