Ron Paul's book #1 on Amazon.com

Here here.

Harry Kooter wrote:

Even though I don't know that I'd want Paul as president and I don't support all of his ideas, I'd like to see a congress and president who would cut out all the unnecessary programs (ie get rid of 90% of the government).

this is way too good to pass up. please, please, please, please, please identify the 90% of government spending that you want to get rid of because it is "unnecessary". since you mention "congress and president", i'll assume that you are fine with state government spending (i.e., public schools, police, fire, local infrastructure), and that your ire is directed towards the federal government.

here are some links to get you started:

as an aside, if you click on the latter link, take a look at the completely irresponsible and runaway growth in expenditures that took place during the W years.

and if you look at this link, you can see how having a republican president, over the last 30 years at least, has led to a dramatic rise in federal outlays, while having a democrat in office has meant more restrained growth.

reagan, 1981 through 1988, from 590.9 (this is the 1980 number to show 8 years of change) to 1064.5 - with crude math around 10% growth per year (i'm calculating this as 1064.5 - 590.9 = 473.6, 473.6/590.9 = .801, .801/8 = .10;

h.w. bush, 1989 through 1992, from 1,064.5 to 1,381.6, or approximately 7.4% per year;

clinton, 1993 through 2000, from 1,381.6 to 1,789.2, or approximately 3.7% per year;

w. bush, 2001 through 2007, from 1,789.2 to 2,730.2, or approximately 7.5% per year.

to be fair, the rate of inflation should be taken into account to shrink these numbers. reagan's number would shrink the most, clinton and w's the least. nevertheless, the trend is clear. the 3 most recent republican presidents have not only enacted irresponsible tax policies, they have also adopted irresponsible spending policies too.

Cutting taxes is always a good thing, it is simply the fact that politicians can't cut spending that gets us into trouble.

What exactly is an "irresponsible" tax policy?

Irresponsible tax policy is enacting large tax cuts while failing to cut spending to maintain a somewhat balanced budget.

letsrun political debate aside, has anyone read the book? Is it worth a read?

If 90% is a good number or not, I don't know, but right off the bat if you cut SS, Medicare/Medicaid that is 40%. The military budget would shrink a lot as well. I bet that would be another 10% to many in the RP camp. That gets you to 50%. Then all of the departments, education, transportation, and whatever else makes up the discretionary spending, would likely be scrapped. Perhaps not all, but at least 30%. That gets us to 80% by my guesses. Is RP and his supporters saying this is politically feasible right away? No. At least on the SS issue I think RP has said the government does have an obligation to pay people who got fooled by the pyramid scheme, but young Americans should be able to get out.

You also must not be familiar with RP, if you want to lump him together with W. That or you just can't wait to bash Republicans wherever you can. Supporters of RP in almost no way support or defend Bush. So your whole rant in the second half of your post is really just your frustration at the political process and Bush and irrelevant on many fronts. Also, you can not ignore the "unseen" amount of regulation which is passed. It creates an invisible burden in some ways upon the American population which is not captured in budget growth. It still may be the case more regulation is passed under Republicans than Democrats, but it is important to consider.

kaitainen wrote:

this is way too good to pass up. please, please, please, please, please identify the 90% of government spending that you want to get rid of because it is "unnecessary". since you mention "congress and president", i'll assume that you are fine with state government spending (i.e., public schools, police, fire, local infrastructure), and that your ire is directed towards the federal government.

While the 90% figure was a bit of an overstatement, there is a hell of a lot of spending that could be cut out. As far as your little budget chart goes, we need to start shrinking SS and I'm sure that there is a lot in "other discretionary" that we could cut back on (of course, your source doesn't go into much detail about what that includes--probably intentional). We could also stop funding projects like the famous "bridge that goes nowhere" in AK. I know that this is a cliche example, but there are certainly a hell of a lot of similar spending (ie federal spending on state issues or federal spending on issues that shouldn't be dealt with by government at all). We could also cut spending simply by demanding more efficiency out of existing government programs.

As far as your comment about state government goes, that is exactly what I believe. The federal government should be in charge of interstate issues. The state government should be in charge of pretty much everything else. As mentioned, if the AK tax payers want to connect Gravina Island to Ketchikan, the AK government can do it. A road running between states is federal government business. A road running within a state should be state government business.

"as an aside, if you click on the latter link, take a look at the completely irresponsible and runaway growth in expenditures that took place during the W years. "

In this quote, you seem to contradict yourself. First, you're arguing that there isn't much that needs to be cut. Now you're saying that there has been irresponsible and runaway growth? Yes, there has been. That's exactly what I'm talking about cutting. I guess the whole republican vs democrat issue might have been directed at someone else, since it doesn't make any sense as a response to my post.

Anyway, after reading your post, I'll revise my number and say cutting the federal government in half, rather than by 90%, would probably be sufficient.

Harry Kooter wrote:

I'll revise my number and say cutting the federal government in half, rather than by 90%, would probably be sufficient.

thanks for the response.

i could likely agree that 20% could be cut. i'd start with the medicare drug benefit and then work on ways to get people more comfortable with cutting out relatively pointless end-of-life medical procedures to cut down medicare's growth. then i'd cut substantial portions of the military budget.

the point is, even when you cut your statement back to 50%, which makes it a not-completely-absurd long-term plan, you still have to be willing to basically eliminate social security for all but the bottom 1/4 or 1/3 of seniors wealth-wise, you have to be willing to slash medicare, slash the defense department, reduce the size of the homeland security department significantly, etc.

for that reason, i find it hard to believe that you could possibly cut more than 10% without cutting some "necessary" programs. the red herring is the idea that cutting out "pork" or earmarks would make a meaningful dent.

for the person who pointed out that i didn't need to include spending habits of republicans other than ron paul, i did it solely because i happened to see it when clicking around the wikipedia entry on the federal budget. many, or perhaps even most, ron paul supporters are unhappy with W. but do you think many of them realize how much the government grew under reagan? and how little it grew under clinton? i would have thought that most of you would have been interested to see that comparison. if you have open minds that is.

as you may have noticed, i prefaced that entire section by saying "as an aside". i didn't intend it to have anything to do with ron paul.

bring all the troops home

cut social security, medicaid, medicare

abolish the IRS, FDA, DHS, EPA, DOE

I post on the weight training site t-nation.com.

Most of the weightlifters there love Ron Paul, while most of the runners here think he's a nut. Why is that?

I have a theory. Runners, being relative effeminates, are more prone to liberalism and the belief that we need a big government to protect us. The bodybuilders, having more aggressive and independent personalities, are less able to tolerate the government robbing them.

I see your point as far as "pork" being somewhat of a red herring, as the elimination of such realistically wouldn't make much of a dent. I guess I see it more as a sign of underlying problems rather than a huge problem in itself. You're right that all of these little projects together are probably insignificant as a percentage of total spending. I guess my objection is that it shows a problem in the mindset of the people who allocate the money. It shows that they think that it's ok to waste money if it's just a little bit of money. But once you've wasted a little bit of money, you've set a precedent and it becomes easier to waste just a little bit more...and then a little bit more.

I guess to some extent it's like an employee stealing a dollar out of the register of the store that they work at. If your store's register has $5,000 in it at the end of the day, that one dollar that the employee took won't be missed, but as the store owner, you still wouldn't like the idea. The employee has shown you their attitude towards your money. Somewhat of a similar situation in government.

I guess the real problem with downsizing of government is deciding what to cut. Everyone is for limited government, but most people's idea of limited government is a government that only does the things that I want. If I support the war and oppose welfare, limited government to me means a government that pays for the war, but gets rid of welfare or whatever the current program is called (not my views, by the way. Just an example). I think that if we're going to decrease the size of government, we need to accept the negatives along with the positives with the understanding that, if we do it right, the positives will outweigh the negatives.

I don't support complete privatization of schools and such. There is solid economic rationale for having government involvement in programs that have positive externalities. I do think that many things that the federal government is currently involved in should be state or local government issues.

Harry Kooter wrote: I'd like to see a congress and president who would cut out all the unnecessary programs (ie get rid of 90% of the government).

Now if you can just get everyone to agree on which 90% is unnecessary... The government should not spend a penny on the Olympics or sports generally, for starters, right?

libraryterian wrote:

Harry Kooter wrote: I'd like to see a congress and president who would cut out all the unnecessary programs (ie get rid of 90% of the government).

Now if you can just get everyone to agree on which 90% is unnecessary... The government should not spend a penny on the Olympics or sports generally, for starters, right?

That wouldn't be a great place to start, but yeah, that spending should go as well. The USATF (assuming that they aren't controlled by the government, I don't know) should pay for this. And if they can't, then they need to convince companies like Nike and Adidas to help.

Cut medicare, medicare, SS, abolish the Dept of Homeland Security, Education, Veterans Affairs, Energy, the FDA, FCC, ATF, TSA bring troops home from the 100+ counrties they are in and cut defense spending.

That's probably closer to 90%. Really, about 90% of federal spending is unconstitutional, or at best is for things that the Constitution never intended the federal government to get involved in.