Republicans Propose Significant Cuts

The Republicans keep impressing. This time, the influential Republican Study Committee issued a list of cuts they want to make in the budget. The headline number is less than inspiring at only $2.5 trillion over ten years. But what does impress me is the long term effect these changes would have on our country.

As I said, the $2.5 trillion in cuts don’t thrill me. This represents only a 7% cut in the budget, which is not very impressive. But when you start looking at some of the things they are proposing, you see some radical thinking which will go a long way toward stopping the government from using tax dollars to prop up leftists. Consider the following:

1. Repeal of the Davis Bacon Act: The Davis Bacon Act requires government contractors to pay their employees the “prevailing wage rates” determined by the Department of Labor. Why does this matter? Because this makes non-union labor as expensive as union labor. In effect, Davis Bacon is intended to eliminate the handicap unions have given themselves so that unions can remain competitive. Repealing this law will deal a serious blow to private sector unions throughout the United States. Annual savings: $1 billion.

2. Eliminate the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Subsidy: For decades, a horde of leftists has dominated public television and public radio. They’ve survived in a taxpayer-funded bubble that let them completely ignore the views and sensibilities of the American public. This proposal will end that support and force them to start satisfying the market place, i.e. the taxpaying public, or go out of business. Annual savings: $445 million.

3. Eliminate the Legal Services Corporation: You’ve heard of public defenders? This is the same thing for civil cases. Here’s why this is wrong. A public defender protects a person who has been accused by the government of a crime. They make sure the government can’t run people over. That’s good. But the LSC does the opposite, it uses government funding to run people over. The LSC uses federal money to sue private individuals on behalf of “poor people," who are often acting as fronts for leftist public policy institutes. Typical targets include corporations, small businesses, landlords, and even government agencies. In other words, the government is giving your tax money to leftist groups so they can sue you to push through leftist policy. Annual savings: $420 million.

4. National Endowment for the Arts/Nation Endowment for the Humanities: For decades, the government has used taxpayer funds to promote “art” and “theater” that promotes leftist, anti-American, anti-capitalist, anti-religious ideas. Under these programs, the federal government has paid for everything from crucifixes dipped in urine to homosexual and sadomasochistic photography to pro-Obama plays. Essentially, the government has propped up a cabal of leftist “artists” on your dime. Annual savings $335 million.

5. Amtrak Subsidies: Amtrak is a failure. It’s also regional robbery. Indeed, poor and middle class taxpayers all over the country have been paying so that rich, liberal Northeasterners could ride heavily-subsidized trains. Now they even want to build a trillion dollar high speed rail system in selected liberal states. . . that's called a "hidden economic stimulus." If you want it, you pay for it. Annual savings $1.565 billion. Vastly underestimated annual saving from canceling high speed rail: $2.5 billion.

6. US Agency for International Development (USAID): These are the people who take money from steelworkers in Ohio and send that money to China to help them build steel mills that take away steel jobs in Ohio, all in the name of developing markets to which US companies can sell their products. . . which are now made overseas. Annual savings: $1.39 billion.

7. Eliminate subsidies to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: These are the people who issue false reports and fraudulent data all in the name of destroying the American economy to solve a problem that doesn’t exist. . . climate change. Annual savings: $12.5 million.

8. Federal Employees: Elimination of automatic pay increases for civilian federal workers for five years and a 15% reduction in the federal work force through attrition by hiring only one new worker for every two that leave. This is a good start, though I would like more. But this achieves two things. First, it starts to bring federal pay back in line with the pay earned by the people paying their salaries. Secondly, it potentially reduces the strength of federal unions by 15% or 150,000.


As you can see, none of these changes will result in huge dollar savings in the budget, but the effects are significant. If these changes are made, the Republicans will eliminate most of the nests of leftist that have survived by clinging to taxpayer support. Everything from leftist “journalists” to “artists” to unions to legal “public interest” groups will lose their funding and will need to fend for themselves. Moreover, we will stop supporting foreign companies that take away American jobs, and this will eliminate a huge hidden subsidy paid to liberal states like Massachusetts, New York and California.

This would go a long way to breaking the back of the "leftist establishment" by cutting off their unearned funding and making them have to state their case with the open market. And that would be a significant change.