This Christmas: Trim the Trees (and the Fat)

When it comes to eating meat, I love fat.  Eating the skin of the turkey is one of the parts of Thanksgiving that I look forward to the most every year.  I recognize that in order to preserve my long-term health, I can only consume fat in moderation. For this reason, I will probably rarely purchase meat at all when the time comes for me to live on my own.

Regarding the government, I have the opposite philosophy.  If I had to compare the government to a piece of meat, I would want it 100 percent lean and 0 percent fat.  Unfortunately, that ratio does not even come close to accurately representing the ratio of essential to non-essential employees at the countless government agencies in Washington. 

Right now, the United States of America has $23 trillion in debt.  The debt has done nothing but explode under administrations of both parties because neither party has the will to make difficult decisions, or as Hillary Clinton might say, “hard choices” about where to make cuts.  

If our leaders in Washington would open their eyes, they would see plenty of opportunities to trim the massive amount of fat that comprises our federal government.  To those who doubt that fat, sometimes referred to as pork by politicians, makes up a significant part of the federal government, think about this: in 2013, the federal government shut down; causing mass hysteria in the beltway.  However, the shutdown only affected “non-essential” employees. Essential employees still reported to work but did not get paid.  Fox News’s Greg Gutfeld delivered a succinct monologue when guest-hosting for Bill O’Reilly pointing out that of the 16,000 employees at the Environmental Protection Agency, only 1,000 fit into the “essential” category.  According to Gutfeld, “in a private business, a non-essential employee would be a non-employee.” Gutfeld also made the case that “a non-essential employee is what you get when the citizen foots the bill, and the government doesn’t care…a non-essential employee is what you get when you feed cash into a bloated bureaucracy without ever designating its necessity.” If America wants to achieve a balanced budget, Congress must start making some “hard choices” by designating the necessity of the 15,000 “non-essential” employees at the EPA and making cuts.  In fiscal year 2019, the EPA had a budget of nearly $9 billion.  An audit needs to take place at every single government agency, not just the EPA, culminating in the dismissal of most, if not all, of the so-called “non-essential” employees. 

The next set of government cuts that I see as necessary definitely do not fit into the “hard choices” category at least from a conservative perspective.  Every year, abortion giant Planned Parenthood receives $500 million in federal funding based on the premise that it operates as an organization focused on healthcare.  Anyone who has paid any attention to American politics knows that Planned Parenthood is a political organization.  Leana Wen, who only served as President of Planned Parenthood for a short period of time, found that out the hard way when the Board of Directors gave her the ax because she had the audacity to view her role as running “a national health care organization” as well as advocating “for the broad range of public health policies that affect our patients’ health.” Instead, they wanted her to “double down on abortion rights advocacy,” as she explained in her farewell letter.  Planned Parenthood has taken their outspoken advocacy in favor of abortion so far that they donated more than half a million dollars to more than 100 Democratic candidates for the House and Senate ahead of the 2018 election.  This ensures that the Democratic Party acts as a mouthpiece for the abortion industry; epitomized by Planned Parenthood.  While they claim that no taxpayer money goes to abortions, the appearance of impropriety and the fact that Planned Parenthood has lied about its role in selling fetal tissue should serve as grounds for defunding.  As long as third-wave feminism continues to plague America, Planned Parenthood should not have to worry about going bankrupt.

The taxpayer-funded National Endowment for the Arts has done its best to push the envelope over the years by supporting art exhibits featuring the Virgin Mary covered with pictures of vulvas and a crucifix submerged in urine.  Even if the NEA didn’t support this horrendous so-called “art,” funding art exhibits enjoyed mostly by the super-rich does not exactly fall into the purview of the federal government as envisioned by the founders. Yet, the federal government still dished out $155 million in funding to the NEA in fiscal year 2019.

If the impeachment inquiry has done nothing else, it has made it perfectly clear to the American people the existence of a permanent bureaucracy, sometimes referred to as a foreign service, that think they run the country and get to use the elected leaders as puppets to advance their preferred policies.  Washington must send them a message: they don’t. Most of the people who appeared on Capitol Hill last month to whine about President Trump’s foreign policy with regards to Ukraine work in the State Department.  Some of them managed to find their way into the Executive Branch; such as former Pence aide Jennifer Williams.  The EPA budget of $9 billion in fiscal year 2019 seems like small potatoes compared to the State Department budget of more than $54 billion.  Ann Coulter pointed out in a recent interview that the internet has rendered the need for full-time ambassadors living overseas obsolete.  As Coulter explained, “it used to take three months to sail from the United States to Britain. We have the telephone now. We have the internet.”

The Trump administration, as well as the impeachment inquiry, have also reignited the debate about the usefulness of foreign aid.  Year after year, the United States sends billions of dollars in foreign aid; most of which get wealthier, less corrupt, and more democratic.  Just kidding.  In the fiscal year 2019, the United States spent more than $24 billion on foreign aid worldwide; with more than $400 million to the “northern triangle” countries of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. Yet, those countries still have a massive amount of people fleeing north because of the massive amount of corruption and poverty plaguing the “northern triangle.”

In 2011, then-presidential candidate Rick Perry promised to eliminate three federal government agencies: the Department of Education, the Department of Commerce, and the Department of Energy.  He failed to remember the third department he wished to cut when he attempted to tout his plan on the debate stage; an embarrassment that may have dealt a deadly blow to his campaign. Perry’s vision of a leaner government becoming a reality would save taxpayers over $100 billion although I ultimately have a hard time believing that the agencies would have gone away completely; a lot of consolidation would probably end up taking place.  

Congressman Thomas Massie actually introduced a bill to eliminate the Department of Education but not surprisingly, it failed to gain any traction. Believe it or not, the budget for the Department of Education actually exceeds the 2018 budget of the State Department and the EPA combined.  The Department of Education enjoyed a budget of $68 billion in fiscal year 2016.  If only money translated into results.  While liberals seem to think that more money can solve every problem, it obviously does not.  If a $68 billion budget for the Department of Education meant that the United States found itself on top of the world when it comes to test scores, fine. In spite of all the money thrown at education, a report from Pew Research Center found that students in the United States fared poorly when compared to other countries in terms of performance on the Programme for International Student Assessment.  The report detailed that American students came in 38^th out of 71 countries in math and 24^th in science. Instead of working to improve test scores, many schools have instead elected to brainwash their students with blatant SJW propaganda. 

At some point, a conversation needs to take place about entitlements.  This conversation meets the definition of a “hard choice” more than anything else I have discussed so far because people have had money taken out of their checks their whole lives so that someday they can cash in on the Medicare and Social Security that they have paid into when they retire.  While it looks like most baby boomers will get to enjoy these benefits when they retire, millennials have a lot less reasons for optimism. One time during a parent-teacher conference, the topic of social security somehow managed to come up.  The teacher said “he won’t have it,” referring to me. Unless and until some politicians make some “hard choices,” my citizenship teacher’s prediction will likely prove correct as the social security fund looks destined to go bankrupt in 2034.

No conversation on entitlement reform can take place until the leaders in Washington acknowledge the enormous burden that illegal immigrants have on social services.  A study conducted by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) back in 2010 found that social services consumed by illegal immigrants cost the American taxpayer roughly $19.3 billion annually and that figure takes into account the money that illegals pay in taxes.  It looks like Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick had it right when he proclaimed “We cannot educate, medicate, and incarcerate the whole world who wants to come here.” Educating illegal immigrant children costs the American taxpayer $2 billion, medicating illegal immigrants comes at a price tag of nearly $6 billion, and welfare benefits for the illegal immigrant population eat up roughly $4.7 billion in taxpayer dollars. 

While all of the proposals I have presented so far will hopefully accomplish the goal of preventing the debt from continuing to explode, it will probably do little to pay down the $23 trillion that the United States currently owes its creditors.  Getting rid of that debt will require a little bit of creativity.  Ann Coulter has proposed selling the UN headquarters in New York City and making it into a condominium complex.  Why not do the same thing with the enormous amount of federal buildings in Washington, DC?  Obviously, a leaner government with fewer agencies and employees will have to predate any massive sale of government buildings. These buildings would instantly become hot commodities thanks to their prime locations on Capitol Hill. 

It looks like it will take a number of “phases” to clean up the damage that the establishment has inflicted on America over the years.  Currently, America finds itself in the midst of a “nationalist” phase focused on implementing the “America First” principles of President Trump designed to end illegal immigration and restore national sovereignty.  When the “nationalist” phase comes to an end, America must enter a “libertarian” phase where politicians focused on reigning in federal spending sweep Washington, D.C.  Hopefully, the “libertarian” phase will focus exclusively on fiscal prudence and steer clear of the less attractive aspects of libertarianism; including drug legalization, open borders, and a laissez-faire approach to abortion. I honestly do not see that happening because Democrats control one chamber of Congress but I still include “trimming the fat” as an item on my “political Christmas list.”