Romney Talks Real Budget Cuts. . .YESSSSS!

Oooh! The Obamawhore/Leftywore media (one in the same) are going crazy because the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, is actually talking. . .wait for it. . .real budget cuts!
And to that I write a hearty YESSSSS!
It is about time.
According to the linked article, Mr Romney is seriously considering eliminating, yes eliminating, the Department of Housing and Urban Development. And treaded into territory that, while not complete, would cut or consolidate the dreaded Department of Education.
HUD, as the Department of Housing and Urban Development is known, has a current budget of $43,000,000,000. And the ED has a current budget of $71,000,000,000.
Combined that is $114,000,000,000 of an over $3,000,000,000,000 federal budget.
And the combined workforce of each department is 17,000.
That may not seem like much to budget hawks. And it clearly is not. But the fact that Mr. Romney is actually considering such things shows a seriousness not seen since Ronald Reagan was president of actually cutting the size and yes scope of the federal government.
One very serious difference between Mr. Reagan during the 1980s and Mr. Romney of the 2010s is this.
While Mr. Reagan was president, congress was very Democrat-dominated. Mr. Reagan never had more than 192 Republicans in the House of Representatives. And while the senate was Republican, the RINO quotient was much stronger than it is today.
If Mr. Romney is the GOP nominee and he does win election in November, the chances are that he will have a Republican congress. At the very least the House should be Republican. A worse-case scenario in the senate is a 50-50 partisan split. And a Republican vice-president, well that makes the senate Republican.
So while Mr. Romney has given a clue as to how he would cut the budget, this is what I think is very interesting from the linked article:

According to NBC, Romney told the fundraiser guests that he would combine many departments in Washington, adding: "Some eliminate, but I'm probably not going to lay out just exactly which ones are going to go. Things like Housing and Urban Development, which my dad was head of, that might not be around later. But I'm not going to actually go through these one by one. What I can tell you is, we've got far too many bureaucrats. I will send a lot of what happens in Washington back to the states."
What Mr. Romney is suggesting is what happens in the private sector all the time. When the money is not there, parts of any company have to be consolidated and or eliminated. It is not always great, but it is a reality.
And another reality is that yes, there are too many bureaucrats. Not just in Washington. But every state capital. Every county and many, many cities.
In another nod to Mr. Reagan, Mr. Romney suggests that a lot of what is done out of Washington will be sent back to the states.
Which leads to the ED.
The ED was created under former President Jimmah Carter in 1979. What the link will not tell you is that it was a huge payoff to the teacher unions as they sought to make education policy more uniform across the United States. Thus the power of states, counties, cities and most importantly local school boards was usurped.
Those of us that believe the federal government is too big and way too involved in local education policy have long sought to eliminate the ED. As well as another Carter-era boondoggle, the Department of Energy.
Of course the left will tell you that it is necessary to have a Washington bureaucracy, especially in education, because of the failure of education in the United States. Never mind that the failure has dramatically increased since the formation of the ED.
The fact that Mr. Romney broaches this subject is a sign that he is serious about sending some departments back to the states.
When he ran for the senate in 1994, Mr. Romney also suggested that he would seek to eliminate the ED, of course it was used to make him out to be anti-education.
No, Mr. Romney was right then and would be right now. Education is best handled when at all possible at the most local level.
Of course as noted this will clearly freak-out Team Obama and their allies.
But I believe that the American people have come to realize that the federal government is too big, too unyielding and in many ways most ineffective in most of what they touch.
That is what the election in November is going to be about.
It is important that Mr. Romney not let the Obamawhore/Leftywhore media  (again, one and the same) lead the narrative. Mr. Romney needs to say it again, again, again and again.
The federal government is too big, out of control and yes, out of touch.
That states need to be taking up the slack, if they choose of things that they have long depended on Washington to fund if not operate.
By telling people that he will actually seriously make budget cuts, department consolidations and total elimination, Mitt Romney is telling the truth. And Team Obama. They will lie and lie often.

Why We Are In The Mess We Are In

Living deep in Blue California is sometimes mind-numbing because of the way so many people think.
Consider this.
A group of far-left Democrats are not happy with the Democrat congressman that represents my town of Pasadena, Adam Schiff.
They made their feelings known in a protest outside Congressman Schiff's Pasadena office yesterday.
FTR, Congressman Schiff did vote for the debt-ceiling plan just passed in Congress and signed by the Dear Leader, President Obama.
But these "progressives" are not happy that Congressman Schiff voted for the plan.
For these people think that this is awful. Just awful. That there will potentially be necessary budget cuts to bring about a balance of the federal budget books.
Here is what Paul Krehbiel, an organizer of the protest had to say:

“We’re really upset our Congressional representatives, including Schiff, did not find new areas of revenue creation in this debt-ceiling agreement. We’re concerned cuts mandated by the deal will be devastating, especially to people who are already suffering.”

Get the euphemism Mr. Krehbiel uses for taxes. "Revenue creation". Ooh boy! These lefties love to use private-sector buzz terms to make it seem like they are not promoting tax hikes.
Look, when the federal government is talking "revenue creation" there are only one of two options. A slew of fees and or taxes.
I do agree that many people are hurting. The many able-bodied, mind clear Americans that have no job and or no hope for a job. There are about 5,000,000 Americans that are out of work and have given up looking for work.
Ahh, but another bright light offers a solution to that problem.
Here is Linnea Warren, 56, of Pasadena. Do you know her solution to the unemployment problem in the United States? Well, here it is:

“We didn’t get out of the Depression by cutting spending, but by creating government jobs.”

Yes, there were a lot of make-work projects under a slew of alphabet agencies, but one of the most famous or infamous known as the Works Project Administration or WPA.
Now yes, people were working creating a slew of make work projects. Many are still around today. But did it solve the problem of high unemployment?
Hell no.
When President Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office in March. 1933, the unemployment rate was a staggering 24.75%. Until 1940, unemployment never went below 14% of the workforce.
So Linnea, how did those government jobs work out? Not well at all when it took getting into a war to eventually bring the unemployment rate down.
The problem with so-called progressives is that they really have no clue as to how the private economy works.
They really believe that people making $250,000 a year in gross income is the filthy, degenerate rich. The problem with that is that could be a married couple, say a doctor and a lawyer, whose combined income meets that magic wealth figure. Never mind that the doc may be in private practice, employing office staff and or nurses. Or the same for the lawyer. Maybe that lawyer has hung their shingle rather than work for a firm. Guess what? That lawyer needs support staff. There! Many potentially long-term jobs are created.
If one looks at the WPA program so touted by the "progressives", it was at best a temporary program to alleviate long-term unemployment. It was in fact the stated aim of the WPA that it was a stop-gap until the economy recovered. Remember, unemployment never went below 14% at the height of the WPA program.
Yet people really believe that make-work government jobs is the path to prosperity.
Before the Great Depression, there was a depression in 1920-21. Yet the solution was not massive government, but tax cuts and lessening the government's role in the private economy. In fact, at the beginning of the 1920-21 depression, unemployment was at 5.2% of the workforce. By the height of the depression, it was at either 8.7% or 11.7%. By 1923 during the Roaring 20s, unemployment was at either 4.8% or 2.4%. In fact, supply-side economics worked. The tax rate was lowered and expanded and the government had more money coming in. And during this period, there were time when there was no federal budget deficits and the surplus money was going to pay off the national debt.
Another aspect is the entitlement culture that "progressive" policies have made.
Take this protester, Suzanne O’Shea, 50, of Altadena. She was there for her mom. Her mom, according to her, relies totally on her social security check and Medicaid for her healthcare. From Miss O'Shea's mouth:

“She’ll have issues if these government social programs are cut as will millions of American seniors. It’s unfortunate to take money from government programs in this kind of an economy.”

I would like to ask a question to Miss O'Shea. What is she doing to help her mother out? Does she help with her mom's foodstuffs? Does she help with any of her mom's basic bills like the electric and gas? If the intrepid reporter asked those questions, there might have been a little clarity.
I am not heartless. There are people in our society that do need a hand up, not a hand out. But what "progressive" government has done is taken family responsibility out of the picture. Parents helping children. Children helping their parents. Neighbor helping neighbor. In this case, the mom is given a false sense of security with government assistance. The daughter thinks that the government should provide the money and healthcare for her mom. It is a mindset.
With this mindset, that the government can solve all, it is why we are in the mess we are in. Economically, socially, politically and yes, spiritually.
And there is no short-term fix for any of it. And it will be fraught with painful choices. But I am an optimist. I think that this is a time to restore our nation to a time of helping each other out and self-reliance. Other wise, this mess continues.