The federal budget diet

Spring is rapidly approaching and with it swimsuit season. You know what that means: it’s time to slim down. Yeah, I’m talking to you, federal budget.

Everyone knows the federal budget needs to be reduced. With our disgustingly huge deficit, one has to wonder what we can do to get this country’s checkbook balanced and under control. Last year, the federal deficit was at $163 billion and, surprisingly, that’s considered good.

In fact, last year USA Today reported that under the Bush administration, the federal deficit hit its lowest point in five years thanks to the tax cuts (it’s almost as if tax cuts generate revenue.interesting). But this isn’t enough.

Useless programs and pork-barrel spending is further running this country’s economy into the ground, and with talks about a recession circulating in the media, it’s time to take a serious look at where our money is going.

Let’s first address the elephant in the room (no pun intended): the U.S. military. I’ve heard a lot of talk about how our government is spending more than half our budget on defense, but this simply isn’t true. The federal budget consists of two categories: mandatory and discretionary spending. Mandatory spending consists of social security, Medicare, Medicaid, interest on debt and different entitlements.

Discretionary spending is whatever is left over, and this is what Bush writes his budget proposal on every year. In 2008, defense took up a little more than half of our discretionary budget, but when you look at the budget as a whole, it’s a lot less. In reality, we only spend 21 percent of our budget on national defense (compared to 15 percent in 1999 when we weren’t in a war).

Sound like a lot? Well, we also spend 21 percent on Social Security, 13 percent on welfare, 13 percent on Medicare and 10 percent on Medicaid. Considering half of those are failed programs, perhaps it’s time we looked at options other than cutting back on that familiar scapegoat, the military.

Our country spends approximately $477 billion every year on welfare and trying to fight poverty. That’s approximately $13,000 for every single person in poverty, and realistically, only about half of the people in poverty are enlisted in this type of program, so that amount can easily be doubled. Obviously something is wrong with the program if spending $26,000 per person isn’t enough to pull them out of poverty.

If the government just handed every enrolled person a check for that amount, that might work, but this money gets funneled through so many useless programs that it just goes to waste. A perfect example of this is in our own backyard. It’s obvious that federal funding doesn’t go where it needs to when there is no homeless shelter run by San Luis Obispo County and the homeless in the area have to rely on the generosity of local churches for shelter.

Though the welfare program went through reforms in 1996 that cut the amount of people in poverty, they were obviously not enough. Funding for this program needs to be drastically cut until we determine the programs that actually work.

Next to be cut (and eliminated) are pork-barrel spending and “earmarks.” Congress has just passed a program that will put aside $1.5 billion to make sure every family that wants it can have digital TV since all television will be broadcast in digital format starting in 2009 (after the Super Bowl, of course).

They’ve also given $1.35 million to study obesity in the military (what obesity in the military?). Then there’s the $12 million to improve ticket identification on intercity buses (damn those fake bus passes!) and the couple of million dollars given to Montana to study bear DNA (for more examples, look up “The Pig Book” by Citizens Against Government Waste).

John McCain has got something right in his pledge to aggressively cut down on this spending that is just dragging our country further into debt.

There’s no doubt that our economy isn’t where it needs to be. Our government needs to take an honest look at what they are spending our taxpayer’s money on, to cut through the bureaucracy and manage our budget. The answer to all the problems in this country isn’t to throw more money at them, the answer is smart spending that’s a lot less than it is right now.

Jennifer Gilmore is a microbiology senior and a Mustang Daily conservative columnist.