It's HUNTING SEASON. Let's cut theses Federal Budget Items to save America !

Hunting Season wrote:

It's open season on cuts. No sacred cows. We're broke !

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The Post Office has to be spun off to private industry.

How much money do you anticipate saving with this?

I suggest you look up how much we are paying for everything before you make a list of items we should cut. Either that, or you can continue to believe that the Post Office is bankrupting America.

Hunting Season wrote:

Retirement and Medical benes for president, senators, congress, politicians, bureaucrats, judges, safety workers, civil servants ended totally. (They can still buy their own insurance with their own money like we have to do).

I don't see how offering benefit packages is really any more expensive than not doing so. If you cut benefits, you just have to offer higher salary to make up for it.

you just have to offer higher salary to make up for it.

No you would NOT. We MUST Cut FEDERAL salaries and eliminate benefits to Reduce the deficit ! If gov't workers don't like it they can join the private sector and create jobs. The gov't doesn't make money for America.

Bear of Bad News wrote:

I don't see how offering benefit packages is really any more expensive than not doing so. If you cut benefits, you just have to offer higher salary to make up for it.

Why? That doesn't happen for the rest of us. They make more than enough already.

Teabaggers.......idiots.......even establishment republicans are not this stupid.......even Reagan was not this stupid; although we do need to cut military spending. We do not have to pay off the debt in three years.

Reagan was 30 years ago. The US in 2010 is broke. We have to have a budget deficit for 2011 spending NOW, TODAY ! Then we have to go below zero in 2012, and start paying down the balance. You know exactly what I'm talking about because you do it with your personal and family finances (or I at least hope you do).

Correction...We have to have a ZERO budget deficit

The Original EDL wrote:

Why? That doesn't happen for the rest of us.

Sure it does.

Keep the USPS, but cut delivery down to 3 days/week.

Businesses need 6 day a week delivery to keep the economy going. What is delivered on Saturday is work for Monday morning. The Post Office has to undergo private industry reforms. There's too many forms, too many regulations, too much dead weight. The way to reform the Post Office is to outsource and privatize the labor. The Gov't would still set the regulations and award the bids to the private sector. Key technologies will be to used to replace paper mail and to speed package delivery.

You are beating around with the twigs on the ground and ignoring the forest. Ramp up the age to SS and Medicare eligibility more dramatically. Full benefits after 75. Needs test those benefits. Start collecting SS taxes to a much higher level - an incredibly regressive tax at this point. But while doing all of this stuff, the economy needs to be grown. If it was an easy problem to solve, people already would have solved it.

How much money do you anticipate saving with this?

They ~ $3.8 Billion in their fiscal year - 2009:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/16/post-office-lost-38-billi_n_359646.html

And if this article is to be believed, they should do much worse this year:

http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/post-office-loses-3-5-billion-as-2011-cash-crunch-looms/19582624/

privatizing isn't free. In fact it usually ends up being expensive.

Privatize is a catch-all phrase. Rather the USPS should specify "standards" for US Postal Operations, and Regulations so that they can be bid on and implemented by private sector entrepreneurs and companies. The Internet, Telecommunications Systems, Cellular Telephony Systems, television broadcasting system, electric grid, etc. are all built and operated according to common standards and regulations.

even if does cost more, the essential functions of our nation and the safeguards of our core values should be left to the hands of shareholders and the cutthroat private sector as a whole. corporations exist for the sake of profit. if something's not profitable, they stop. sometimes the right thing is not profitable.

it's the government's job to take care of this country, not some wacko collective of stock nerds in business suits who work only for money. though politics attracts scum, it also attracts inspired individuals sincerely interested in the public good. even the ones i disagree with. i'd rather have bush or reagan in charge of this country any day, then complete the turnover to the private sector and hand some Enron-copycat the nuclear codes.

Check his papers wrote:

No you would NOT. We MUST Cut FEDERAL salaries and eliminate benefits to Reduce the deficit ! If gov't workers don't like it they can join the private sector and create jobs. The gov't doesn't make money for America.

Yes they may not make money for America but they do things that we need, like govern and protect the country and such. If you would like to argue that there are specific services we do not need, than just cut those jobs altogether. That does not eliminate the principles of supply and demand which necessitate that any loss of benefits must be replaced by other forms of compensation or the supply of labor will fall.

ONE FOURTH OF AMERICANS who want a job don't have a job so WHERE is the money coming from to pay outrageous gov't salaries, gov't retirements at 55, and Cadillac benefit plans ?

ONE FOURTH OF AMERICA wrote:

ONE FOURTH OF AMERICANS who want a job don't have a job so WHERE is the money coming from to pay outrageous gov't salaries, gov't retirements at 55, and Cadillac benefit plans ?

Why shouldn't the American government be the nation's most friendly employer? People are literally working to directly support the nation. I applaud my taxes going towards that cause.

The goal of America is be to be good, not rich. I say that is the goal of America because we declared ourselves a Christian nation.

"It is harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of a heaven, than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle." And I'm not Christian myself.