The republicans/tea party has said they have 10 points; I thought I’d list them, 2 at a time and give my thoughts and concerns. This is 5 & 6
- Restore Fiscal Responsibility & Constitutionally Limited Government in Washington: Create a Blue Ribbon taskforce that engages in a complete audit of federal agencies and programs, assessing their Constitutionality, and identifying duplication, waste, ineffectiveness, and agencies and programs better left for the states or local authorities, or ripe for wholesale reform or elimination due to our efforts to restore limited government consistent with the U.S.
Create more government to decide if we need less government. Then there’s the point about auditing the federal government agency by agency and program by program, sounds like a great idea, it might be done by the turn of the century. To determine the constitutionality it a different animal altogether, some programs my not be constitutional but are legal by act or law.
I agree 100% that agencies/programs should be evaluated for duplication, waste, ineffectiveness and if its need at all. When I joined the military back in the early 80’s we had programs, fraud waste and abuse, people would earn money for coming up with ways to save money. Sometimes it takes a fresh pair of eyes to see what others miss just because as they say, "Well we’ve always don’t it this way."
Finally limited government doesn’t mean better government. If we examine what we have and just evaluate performance of the people and systems it should allow a better government to emerge.
- End Runaway Government Spending: Impose a statutory cap limiting the annual growth in total federal spending to the sum of the inflation rate plus the percentage of population growth.
Sounds good in writing but in practice I dough it would actually work. There are always unforeseen situations that would cause for spending increases. Just the fact of replacing out of date technology would make this proposal to be unattainable.