The Budget

LET'S BALANCE THE BUDGET

I believe that there are a number of reasons that, year after year, the government spends more money than it takes in:

The government pays too much for its purchases.

Often, when a government agency buys something, be it a weapon or a supercomputer or healthcare, they pay top dollar, and the quality of the products is not a major factor. Government agencies sign contracts with corporations that require them to purchase specific things from that company, no matter how much they charge. A middle-class American could never survive if they used the government's spending strategies.
Although I think the federal government is much bigger than it needs to be, in this case, I believe the introduction of a new government agency is warranted. I propose the creation of a purchasing agency. Whenever any other agency wants to buy something, the purchase must be authorized by the purchasing agency first. The purchasing agency will shop around in search of the best price. There will no longer be a bias for the same company that this thing was purchased from last, unless the quality of their product was worth the price. The improved spending strategies will encourage competition, which will bring down prices. Short-term contracts with companies will be permitted, but only if the price is right. And, if the purchasing agency cannot find an acceptable price, they may decide that the product should not be purchased at all, and then it will require Congress to overrule the purchasing agency's decision.

Congress chooses the salary of its members.

Congress has the responsibility for determining what the salary of the members of Congress should be. And, unsurprisingly, they raise their salaries on a regular basis. They also select their benefits, such as healthcare.
Certainly, the obvious solution to this problem is to authorize some other agency to make these decisions. However, that won't work if Congress can determine the salary of members of that other agency. There needs to be incentives for Congress to keep their salary low. Here are a couple of suggestions:
  • If Congress is unable to balance the federal budget, their salary will be cut to reduce costs. If necessary, their salary will be reduced all the way down to minimum wage before a deficit budget may be passed.
  • The minimum wage set for American jobs will be a fixed percentage of the salary of members of Congress.

The richest people are not paying their taxes.

There are many loopholes in the tax code. In fact, as I understand it, people in Congress created those loopholes on purpose! As a result, the richest people in the nation find it more cost effective to hire lawyers that will scour the tax laws searching for these loopholes than to actually pay the intended amount. As a result, the people who are most capable of helping the government balance its budget are not doing so. If there was a way to make the wealthy people pay the amount that they really ought to be paying, that would make a huge difference.
The first thing I would do is get a hold of the lists of millionaires and billionaires, and declare that everybody on those lists would pay a flat tax for the next five years. Everybody on the millionaires list would be required to pay exactly ten thousand dollars each year, and everybody on the billionaires list would pay exactly ten million dollars per year. There would be absolutely no exceptions --- no loopholes. The government has these people's social security numbers, so there would be no way to get away with fraud. And even though they might complain, the fact is this isn't going to break them. It is, at most, a 1% tax. Most of them would retain their status as millionaires and billionaires. However, you can be sure that those lists would disappear very quickly. So this is only a temporary solution.
A solution that would last longer would be for the government to hire those lawyers that make a living by finding loopholes in the tax code. Just like hackers who are paid to find security weaknesses, the lawyers would find the loopholes, and we would get them all closed up. And every time a new change to the tax code was proposed, these people would analyze it before Congress votes.

Many fines for breaking the law are not collected.

The government has other sources of income besides taxes. One of them is by charging fines to people who break the laws. This is a money-making opportunity that is under used. There are so many crimes that are unenforced. Here are some examples:
  • littering
  • jaywalking
  • letting dogs run without leashes
  • loitering in places where a sign prohibits it
And there are so many unenforced driving violations:
  • stopping beyond the solid white line at a stop sign or stop light
  • changing lanes across a solid white line
  • changing lanes or turning without signaling for at least one full second first
  • failing to come to a complete stop at a stop sign or before turning right at a red light
  • tailgating
  • honking the horn without good reason
  • driving on the shoulder
  • using a handicapped parking space without a permit
  • double parking
Now you might not like the idea of paying fines for these things, because you do some of them regularly. Well so do I. But our government desperately needs money. I view these things as optional taxes. Ultimately, the obligatory taxes would be abolished, so everyone would have the opportunity to choose how much they pay the government each year. I think that many of us would voluntarily choose to obey the laws, and, as a side effect, America might become a better place to live, and perhaps car accidents would no longer be the number one killer.
You might have noticed that I didn't put "driving faster than the posted speed limit" on the list. That's because I think that the posted speed limit is too low, and it's probably intentional. Since people drive about 10mph faster than the speed limit, that is taken into account when setting the speed limit. So, before I would add "driving faster than the posted speed limit" to the list, I would require that all of the speed limits be increased to be reasonable.
But this won't help much if the fines are low. Remember, the important thing is to generate money for the government. I suggest that whenever a person is charged with a fine, they are informed that they will have to pay twice as much if they commit that crime again. These fines will rise pretty high pretty fast.
The reason that many of these laws aren't enforced is because it has been impractical, and hiring additional police officers to do it would not be cost effective. Well, we don't need so many police officers anymore. Practically everyone now carries a digital camera in their cell phone, and many have video cameras. We should encourage everyone to take pictures of people committing crimes, email them to the police along with a message providing any other information to help find the perpetrator, and then receive a portion of the fine as a reward. And the person who committed the crime wouldn't know who turned them in.