Redstate

Rep. Blackburn, thank you for exchanging ideas with your fellow Americans on this forum.  

Is there perhaps more to your plan that was not posted?  In the few paragraphs that appeared, I tallied about 10 billion dollars in annual savings.  Am I correct?  If so, that is a drop in the bucket compared to the deficit spending the Congress and the President has created during the last few years.

Also, the Earned Tax Credit is essentially welfare for the poor.  Again, I must be missing something.  You're not suggesting that we balance the budget, to use a tired--but in this case appropriate--cliché, "on the backs of the poor"?  Are you suggesting we keep the bridge to nowhere, but cut government support to the poor.  

Please I know I'm missing something.

A story or two and hit Adam's link to Operation Offset at the RSC's website. The entire menu of options totals sum $900 billion. Included on that list is eliminating the bridge to nowhere.

EITC abuse by poor people is some pretty small stuff compared to the amount of cheating that goes on by people with higher incomes.  About $250 billion / year is lost due to people underreporting income.  It's hard for me to see why sending IRS agents to catch the small fish is a better idea than auditing wealthier taxpayers whose cheating (due to the larger sums of money in play) amounts to a larger per-person dollar amount.  

Personally, the best suggestions I've heard involve trimming three kinds of corporate-subsidy pork from the Medicare bill:

One is the enhanced subsidies to private insurers to provide core Medicare coverage. There's no earthly reason to do this. Health insurance for senior citizens can be provided more cheaply directly by the government, which has lower administrative overhead and benefits from a large risk pool. The second is the requirement that all prescription-drug coverage be provided by subsidized private insurance plans rather than directly by the government. Like the former provision, this increases costs and benefits nobody but the insurances companies. The third is the "non-interference" provision which prohibits Medicare from following the example of the Veterans' Administration (and, indeed, all private insurers) and using its bulk purchasing power to negotiate discounts on the drugs it buys. The potential savings here are large and, once again, patients would suffer not a whit, though drug makers would.

The third of these measures would itself save $190 billion over ten years.  

it may be small compared to some stuff, but every single $ not wasted is a $ saved...  

note, i'm not saying that there shouldn't be enforcement in the areas you mentioned, I'm just saying every $ counts...

And how much is it going to cost us to recover that money?  The people who incorrectly (or fraudulently)  claim the EITC are not big earners.  Plus...there are millions of them!  Are we really going to start auditing all these poor people just to find a few hundred bucks from some of them?  When income under-reporting for the rich is so much more?

Are there really any financial conservatives out there willing to call a spade a spade?  The President has let us down on spending.  Our budget deficit balloons and the idea of tax increases is totally banned from discussion?  I'm willing to sacrifice to help rebuild New Orleans; my children and grandchildren shouldn't have to.  I know when I pay my bills that spending can only outstrip revenue for a few months before the credit card companies come a-calling.  

The Medicare bill is absolutely awful and should be repealed, but if you think that "health insurance for senior citizens can be provided more cheaply" you are crazy.  Federal employees have the best health care system (including members of Congress) precisely because the system utilizes private companies -- and the efficiencies allow for more care at a cheaper cost.  

And the "non-interference" provision you speak of is to guard against price controls which will lead to shortages.  When the government purchases such a large share of a product (Medicare, TRICARE, VA health, Medicaid, etc.), it can completely effect the market if allowed to -- its called monopsony, in economic terms.  Your ideas are not free-market at all and come straight from the Democrat playbook for healthcare.  

I'm willing to sacrifice to help rebuild New Orleans; my children and grandchildren shouldn't have to.

Easy. Take however much you think your taxes should be increased, and buy Treasuries with the money. Bequeath these to your children. When the government's debt comes due, so will these.

...I have a lot of problems with the "Operation Offset" plan (I'm a Democrat, so stop reading here if you wish), but I have to know, is this accurate? If so, this plan is a disaster, both politically and for the nation. Cuts in federal programs are needed, but I've been over this list and I think you're going after Liberal chimeras that you've wanted to get rid of all along. Please reconsider at least some of the programs you've included. I know you want to get rid of them, but they shouldn't be sacrificed like this (especially, for me and from my viewpoint, the Peace Corps cuts) in bulk under the pretense of hurricane aid.

Thanks for participating in the blogs, however. It takes quite a lot of bravery to do so and few politicians, right or left, have the guts to post directly.

Thanks for standing up for limited government and fiscal restraint.  I fear that the very principles that swept the GOP into power in 1994 are being compromised  in order to dole out the pork spending in a depressing and disillusioning attempt to curry favor and gain power.  

It is extremely important that we create a system of enterprise while at the same time facilitating the care of those who cannot care for themselves.  

Instead of the government throwing money at the Gulf Coast I would rather see them throw (away) tax policy at it.  Keep your relief funds and instead forgoe future tax revenues from the region by creating a low flat tax.  Turn the Gulf Coast into an experiment in economic opportunity much like Eastern Europe is doing.  If Blue State Northerners came south in a hurry to take advantage of low taxes and pro-business climate, get ready for a thunderous herd of them headed to Biloxi if the Gulf Coast set taxes at a flat tax of 5-10%.  They'll rebuild the region infinitely better than any government program, and the Big Easy will rise again.

If you think they wanted taxes raised because of Katrina - wait till we get Rita....

Reading about Operation Offset, I'm reminded of the Contract With America.

No vague talk of conservatism, but specific plans to implement.  If the will to implement them is there, this could keep me voting Republican for a few more years.

My friend, we're talking about non-interference on pharmaceuticals.  Do you have any idea what the cost structures in the pharmaceutical industry are?  It's like $100million to do all the research leading to a medicine, and then <$1 a pill to actually manufacture the medicine.  There is simply no way you're going to get pill shortages here -- there's profit in cranking out more pills as long as the government will pay you the cost of manufacture, which they will even after cancelling non-interference.  

If you're thinking that this'll provide a disincentive for drug manufacture, remember that the drug companies were doing reasonably well before the drug benefit, and adding it onto the pre-Medicare-bill system doesn't hurt them.  While they'll have to sell at a lower price to some customers, they'll sell larger volumes.  Larding on non-interference is just gratuitous pork.  

Thank you ma'am for making a stand for reduced spending.  And thank you for posting here at RedState.

and either/or situation when, in fact, it is both/and. The IRS should pursue scofflaws vigorously regardless of their income.

i have heard that operation offset also wants to cut medical benefits to veterans families

in a time of war, i believe that any cuts facing the military, should be taken off the table.

... but I think that it's a fundamental mistake of both politics and policy to target the EITC.  It's a modest sum; it plays into the Republican stereotype of being anti-poor; and it's particularly ill-timed, given that Katrina has had a disproportionate effect on the poor.  If the goal is to increase revenues by improving enforcement, logic dictates that we go after deeper pockets.

But that's a bit beside the point.  A better cut would be to focus on rolling back the massive new entitlement program that this Republican Congress passed in the form of the prescription drugs program.  Good, too, would be to cut out the pork that provides the dominant flavor for highway bill.  Small government, after all, is not defined solely by tax cuts; it's defined by, well, a smaller government.*  

Thanks for your service.

von

*By the way, I don't mean to suggest that these cuts haven't been proposed by Republicans or that you necessarily favor or disfavor them.  I mention them only because they don't appear on your list.

But I was surprised by the Representative's lack of "beef" in her posting.

Tell you what, reduce the money going to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to ZERO and you can have half of the reduction for the Peace Corps.

Lets move to a flat tax, abolish corporate taxes and virtually all deductions.  Everyone will then file on a post card and the IRS will generally have nothing to do.  And congress won't have a tax code to sell exemptions to.

I'd urge the Congresswoman to not specifically target the money to EITC audits and enforcement, but rather to give it to the IRS in general to pursue all tax chaters.  

Do you want to exempt a certain amount of income, given the size of the household?  Or do those deductions go away too?  

(If you don't there's the danger that the flat tax will make poor families who are living paycheck-to-paycheck homeless.)

If only everyone were so thrifty...  Unfortunately, we're not.  The my-children-shouldn't-have-to-pay-for-it metaphor breaks down when you actually try to address the collective problem.

There's this idea by which Big Nasty Governement forces everybody to pay for what BNG spends.  That way, everybody can hate BNG equally, instead of the nice altruistic folks bankrupting themselves and the cheapskates getting off without paying taxes.

You see, Mr. Cheapskate's kids shouldn't have to bare a greater share of the fiscal burden that Mr. Thrifty Altruist's.  You gotta make everybody sacrifice now, or it won't work.

funds are linked to programs by Congressional committees. It would be very unlikely that they'd vote money to go investigate, period.

All it takes is a quick google search friend.

http://johnshadegg.house.gov/rsc/RSC_Budget_Options_2005.pdf

There is NOTHING in Operation Offset affecting the medical benefits to veterans families.  

One shouldn't remove out-of-hand cuts to the military, to veterans, or to soldiers.  All programs should be subject to cuts and to accountability.  

That said, the military is woefully underpaid.  Woefully.  Some line items come before all others, and the pay of soldiers should come before any congressman takes home one red cent.  But other military programs could stand some evaulation as well as every other line item as well.

We are at war and the military was gutted by Clinton. Plus, we need to increase the size of the military and build a navy to prevent china from dominating the pacific.

WE ARE AT WAR!!!!!!!!! PEOPLE WANT TO KILL US ALL.

The size reach of the federal government into domestic affairs is too large and bneeds to be reduced for freedom's sake. And it is wise to try and keep the deficit as low as posible,

BUT

the deficit is not goiung to kill us and it is average historically as % of GDP and the size of the budget.

The GOP and old keynsian economists and Hoover were all wrong about the danger of the deficit as are the dems today, who want a surplus fro different reasons.

The problem is the size of government and its regulatory sapping of our freedom and self reliance.

But war and destroyed vital cities from disaters are the job of the federal government, and my fellow conservatives need to understand that.

And we also need to enact all the non-military cuts the GOP house heros want!!

Every proposal floated on the flat tax has an exemption that would make the "poor" non-tax-payers.  Most proposals still include a mortgage interest deduction, personally I would knock that one out as well.  It's probably not doable for primary residences but should certainly be doable for second homes and investment properties.

The whole idea behind a flat tax is to reduce the filing to basicly multiplying your income by a fixed percentage and paying that amount.

FWIW, I would also eliminate withholding.  If people had to actually write out a check to the feds and states every month or every year, it would change politics forever.

The thing that really gets you simplification, I think, is eliminating deductions and other things that add extra steps to the process.  Personally, I'd like to see the mortgage interest deduction eliminated, and especially the secondary home/investment deductions, as you say.  

Flattening the tax system in terms of imposing a flat percentage rate doesn't seem to add much simplification.  Since I do my taxes on the computer, there's basically zero extra time I spend dealing with different percentages on different brackets.  Getting all my paperwork together and clicking "no" on all the deductions I don't qualify for is what really eats up the clock.  Back when I did my taxes by hand, I still don't recall that taking much time (of course, I'm a poor low-bracket graduate student, but I can't imagine that being in a higher bracket would take anyone more than a few extra minutes, if they had a calculator.)  

the elimination of deductions and shelters are an integral part of same and the basis of the trade off.

The issues for business in calculating business expenses remains.

Your idea works great if I think taxes should be increased to pay for NO.  However, I would instead need the feds to refund me my share of pork projects I oppose which I will use to buy treasuries for my grandkids.

Dont think they are going to go for it.