"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 15 Feb 2008 18:22:05 -0500, with neither quill nor qualm, "Ed
Huntress" quickly quoth:


"Hawke" wrote in message
...

Why, that's a very nice way of calling him ignorant. You're such a
diplomat.

FOAD, Parakeet.


Almost everyone gets surprises when they dig into the federal budget.
Larry
has identified a number of expenses that actually are quite small. Then he
says (facetiously, perhaps) that cutting them ought to cut out half of the
budget.

They're all superfluous, too. A properly wielded line item veto would
do wonders for the future.

You think $173B on the war on terrorism is small potatoes? And $28B
for DHS? Granted, the $167M for the EPA isn't a large expenditure,
but it stifles a lot more economic growth than that figure. (SWAG)

I can only do this using scientific notation on my calculator. d8-) But the
things you list here amount to 6.5% of the budget. If you want to make a
real dent or start a real ball rolling, you have 93.5% to go.

That's the way we typically look at it. We pick some emotional hot-button
items, look at the big bucks, and think those things are the problem. But
they're typically so trivial that they almost disappear in the woodwork.

When you look at the big items (which you can see; I'm not going to start a
big thread by listing them), you realize that this is a bigger problem than
it looks like. Making meaningful cuts in the federal budget is murderously
difficult.


The program terminations look like a good step. There are only 2
which look like they should stay--the preventive health items.

That's a long list of tables. /crossed eyes

And you haven't even seen the detail. That's just the summary.

--
Ed Huntress