Dieting is always in the future.

Don

Cutting out pork barrel spending completely would help a lot.

Cenydd,
Yeah, it’ll help some but not as much as you might think.  Besides, how do you define “pork barrel”?  The other guy’s project is pork; but one’s own is good federal spending.

But there will probably be lots of cash for Planned Parenthood to perpetrate its enormities.  Let’s hope the dearth of money destroys the Citizen Army idea.

“Around and around he goes and where he stops nobody knows”  Don’t take me wrong.  Someone better start paring some fat of the pig and now.  While we are at let us do some paring off both sides of the pig.  Banks and people debt.  I keep hearing both are at fault so it seems that both may have to give in on something.

Get used to seeing ‘change’ manifest itself in ways previously unimagined by his supporters. The main-stream media did very little honest vetting of this gentleman before we elected him, so our ‘tabula rasa’ President-elect will turn out to be whatever it is he decides he will be or perhaps, really is. Up to now he has enjoyed the benefit of each of us to visualizing him as the ‘change’ agent or the ‘hope’ personage in whatever beatific form we chose internally to envision him. Hopefully, reality won’t be too awfully surprising. (And I do mean awfully as a derivative of awful.) I remain unoptimistic about Mr. Obama in nearly every dimension.

#1 heh, that’s right.  January 20th.  Can’t come fast enough. 

Yes - its probably a good idea to eliminate pork.  Eliminate missile “defense.”  The war on drugs has cost $40 billion dollars this year.  End agricultural subsidies.  And oil subsidies. 

800 billion would probably cover medical care for every American for a decade.  And it would give businesses a break from paying health care themselves.  Ford would be liberated from the cost of paying health care to its retirees.  And employees.  It would be more effective than just bailing them out.

JW, why the fixation on health care?  Just curious.  Of course, if we just turn the drug dealers loose, the health care costs would rise.  IF farmers don’t grow grain/food/comestibles malnutrition and starvation would occur more frequently and health care costs would rise.  Oil subsidies ended would force more walking (healthier) and more urban congestion with possible rises in diseases of proximity and health care costs would rise.
Life’s just a bit more complex than you have indicated in its unfolding of the unintended consequence.  But if the 800 billion went for health care wouldn’t you want to end medical care subsidies to be consistent?  ;>)

When I was on active duty in the USAF years ago in the late 60s, the Defense Department established a cost-cutting program called “Project Money Tree,” in which spending was slashed to the bone.  We defined acquisitions in two categories:  (A)  Nice to Have, but Not Necessary, and (B)  Necessary for the Mission.  We all complained about it, but y’know what?  It worked!  We saved millions of taxpayer dollars.

Seems to me that the Obama Administration needs to do the same thing now.

#8

Health care is, by most accounts, the driving domestic issue.  It would ease the misery of millions of Americans and increase their productivity. 

Universal health care would have a pretty severe ripple effect througout the economy.  The total amount spent would go down, but less would go to the bureaucracies that have arisen to stop some people from getting benefits; and the middlemen (the insurance companies) would be eliminated.  Small business would benefit because they wouldn’t have to offer health care - it would be a payroll tax like social security.  One of the reasons the auto industry is so screwed is because every other country pays for health care costs, and most pay for pensions.  We don’t.  That’s our choice, of course:  would we prefer to be like Germany or Brazil?

In the end, costs would be more efficient and people would be a bit healthier. 

Ending the drug war would probably mean that we would save money by not spending it on prisons or police but on hospitals.  If anything, marijuana - for example - would finally be studied as a medicine by scientists rather than criminalized by big government.  Granted, when it comes to marijuana, conservatives love big government.  Conservatives love it when the government sends people to jail.  Unfortunately, its expensive. 

You seem to think that if we didn’t subsidize farmers, nobody would farm.  Not true:  we’d probably spend more on food, however, which would not be a bad thing for the environment or for our health.  Better that we do it in the marketplace, than have the government make the decisions for us.

#10
Please re-read your comment ... The last sentence completely destroys the rest of your comments!