The new budget proposal

President Obama has come forward with a budget proposal that is uniquely his; until now, he had remnants of Bush proposals mixed into his numbers. The budget presented is staggering. It is designed to heap enormous debt onto the American people. Indeed, I believe that this is part of the plan. If four years of Obama leave us with another seven trillion dollars in debt, that will mean that going out into the future the USA will have to pay another 350 billion dollars every year just in interest costs. That will be enough to reduce economic growth and also to reduced the power of the USA. After all, it will be harder to find the funds to cover the costs of the armed forces. The inevitable rise in entitlement programs will also make defense needs progressively harder to cover. At some point, people will vote to elect representatives who will cut military spending just on budgetary grounds with the result that superpower status will no longer apply to the US.

The truth is that there are a number of steps that have to be taken ASAP. First, the 500 billion dollars in medicare and medicaid waste and fraud have to be taken out of the system. A real push to save in these programs could bring marked results -- not half a trillion dollars, but meaningful results nonetheless. Second, social security rules also have to be changed. The minimum payment has to be frozen, the cost of living raises have to be stopped for three years, and the age of retirement has to be put back to 70 from the current 66. In the 1930's social security set the retirement age at 65. There is no question that life expectancies have increased more than a year since then. The program should reflect reality. Third, every government program should be reviewed to determine if it is worth keeping. A freeze is not enough. There should be a minimum of 100 billion in government programs cancelled. Fourth, the government should lay off ten percent of its non-defense employees. And that is just a start.