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Rand Paul unveils plan for $500B in budget cuts

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posted on Jan, 26 2011 @ 09:45 PM
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www.msnbc.msn.com...


Critics lashed out Wednesday at a proposal by U.S. Sen. Rand Paul to slash numerous federal programs, including food stamps, to save $500 billion in a single year.

"Some of the elements of the plan, which would remove the safety net that poor and vulnerable people need, we would find morally objectionable," said the Rev. Patrick Delahanty, executive director of the Catholic Conference of Kentucky.


• Slash $42 billion from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's food stamp program
• Eliminate Corporation for Public Broadcasting
• Eliminate Consumer Protection Safety Commission
• Eliminate National Endowment for the Arts
• Cut $16 billion for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
• Roll back federal spending to 2008 levels


"I am proud to introduce my own solution to the mounting debt our spendthrift, oversized government has accrued," Paul said in a statement. "By rolling back to 2008 levels and eliminating the most wasteful programs, we can still keep 85 percent of our government funding in place."


At least someone in our federal government is taking this deficit and spending crisis serious. While everyone else sits around twiddling their thumbs thinking of more ways to bailout everyone, Rand Paul is taking a stand and demanding that government tighten its belt and take this situation serious. We are at that metaphorical ‘tipping point’ where either we do something now and reverse our economic turmoil or continue down this road of reckless spending and government growth.

How about the government stop bailing out people, stop bailing out businesses, stop bailing out states, stop bailing out unions, stop bailing out cities, and stop bailing out other countries. And instead they could create a healthy atmosphere for entrepreneurship, economic growth and investment, job creation, business expansion, and fostering a healthy atmosphere for manufacturing.

Thank you Rand Paul for taking this crisis seriously.



posted on Jan, 26 2011 @ 10:01 PM
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Slashing 42billion from food stamps at a time when the unemployment is close to 10% and food prices are rising, and the threat of food shortages, is not a good move IMO. I do not get foodstamps but have had to in the past. I could since I am only working part time but instead I live off the land. Starving the citizens and their children is not the way to do it.

We give billions and billions of dollars away to other countries each year. This is the first thing that needs cut, then we need to make a much bigger cut in defense spending than what Rand calls for. We don't need to be the world police, especially at the expense of starving the population. People have it hard enough right now because of the big banks and the housing market crash, which the Elite brought on us. Don't punish the poor even more!



posted on Jan, 26 2011 @ 10:12 PM
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Originally posted by Misoir
• Slash $42 billion from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's food stamp program

Rand Paul has stated that he believes in cutting help towards the needy and social security but advocates a transition period for the people that have grown dependent on such resources.

With that said... what the hell is the Dept. of Agriculture doing having food stamp programs?

About 40.5 million people, more than an eighth of the population, will get food stamps each month in the year that began Oct. 1, according to White House estimates. The figure is projected to rise to 43.3 million in 2011.

www.businessweek.com...


Originally posted by Misoir
• Roll back federal spending to 2008 levels

I guess he's trying to compromise but this will just welcome attacks on how Bush also enlarged govt. and increased departments.
He will throw the rollback into a partisan war



edit on 26-1-2011 by ModernAcademia because: (no reason given)



posted on Jan, 26 2011 @ 10:16 PM
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The thing is something has to be done or else this country will not be able to function. I see a start and agree with parts, but it will never pass. The issue is does the country want to be viable and functioning or fail? Which would be worse for the poor? Now, whether or not his proposals are the right way to go I leave that up to you to decide but those are just my two cents, maybe less then cents *sense for those non joking kind.



posted on Jan, 26 2011 @ 10:24 PM
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curbing inflation is helping the poor
they are the first ones hit by inflation



posted on Jan, 26 2011 @ 10:33 PM
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Just cut the #$*@ defense budget already. They're building another 8 billion dollar base we don't need. Cut the corporate welfare to Lockheed Martin and Boeing and DynCorp and every other greedy defense contractor. You could cut Welfare in half just by eliminating the price gouging by HMOs and hospitals and all the fraud.



posted on Jan, 26 2011 @ 10:34 PM
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He addresses some issues here



posted on Jan, 26 2011 @ 11:03 PM
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Not sure whether or not I agree with all of it, but it's great to see someone taking this crisis seriously.

In theory, I'm all for cutting long term food stamp/ welfare type programs,
but, realistically,
how do we do that with unemployment at 10% (or 25%).

It's hard to tell people to "get a job" when there are so few available.

Winding down our wars,
reigning in the financial assistance to other nations,
and reducing (or ending) the financing for our failed war on drugs would be great places to start.
edit on 26-1-2011 by Oaktree because: (no reason given)



posted on Jan, 26 2011 @ 11:43 PM
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Originally posted by Blackmarketeer
Just cut the #$*@ defense budget already. They're building another 8 billion dollar base we don't need. Cut the corporate welfare to Lockheed Martin and Boeing and DynCorp and every other greedy defense contractor. You could cut Welfare in half just by eliminating the price gouging by HMOs and hospitals and all the fraud.


Yeah it seems Rand Paul's proposals are out of whack. Cut 42 billion from the food stamp program, I looked it up, in 2010 the whole program cost around 70 billion. So he basically wants all food stamp recipients to take a 50+% cut.

And then he proposes cutting only 16 billion from the Iraq/Afghanistan war ?
What's the pentagon's budget these days ? Wikipedia says total US defense expenditures last year were over a TRILLION dollars. en.wikipedia.org...

Since 1/2 of all food stamps go to children, it's one of the last things that should be cut. I agree with an earlier post, let's start with foreign aid, specifically foreign aid to Israel. I've read we give more aid to Israel than the entire continent of Africa !

I like Ron Paul a lot more than his son.



posted on Jan, 27 2011 @ 12:33 AM
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I am all for cutting the budget. There is only one problem with his proposal. This was the only mention of cutting the defense budget in his proposal.

Paul said the proposal, which also would cut $16 billion for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, would roll back federal spending to 2008 levels and eliminate what he considers the most wasteful programs.

www.msnbc.msn.com...


Here is the proposed 2011 budget sent to congress.


President Barack Obama today sent to Congress a proposed defense budget of $708 billion for fiscal 2011. The budget request for the Department of Defense (DoD) includes $549 billion in discretionary budget authority to fund base defense programs and $159 billion to support overseas contingency operations (OCO), primarily in Afghanistan and Iraq. This proposal continues the reform agenda established in last year's DoD budget request and builds on the initiatives identified by the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) and 2010 Ballistic Missile Defense Review (BMDR).


Also accompanying the 2011 budget proposal is a fiscal 2010 supplemental request of $33 billion to support the added costs of the President's new strategy in Afghanistan and strengthen U.S. force levels with approximately 30,000 additional troops.

www.defense.gov...

What is wrong with this picture. He only wants to cut $16 billion from a $159,000,000,000. Are they inflating it on purpose just to cut it back a little and say, see were saving money? This is not even money in the black projects that are for our "safety".

I am sorry but the $708,000,000,000 budget is what is killing this nation. But nobody will mention it because the Military Industrial Complex runs the show. This is absurd and you have to ask yourself a question. Do you feel like you are getting your money's worth? Do you feel more safe with all of the media "terrorist" fear mongering? What the he*l is going on here?

Here is the gross national product for the third quarter in 2010.


Current-dollar GDP -- the market value of the nation's output of goods and services increased 4.6 percent, or $166.4 billion, in the third quarter to a level of $14,745.1 billion. In the second quarter, current-dollar GDP increased 3.7 percent, or $132.3 billion.

www.bea.gov...

We are almost spending one in fifteen dollars on defense. Seriously is this necessary?
Personally I do not feel safer, I feel like "they" are making the problem more worse than it was. But of course that is the plan. I really do not like politics. I really despise politics.



posted on Jan, 27 2011 @ 12:41 AM
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One other thing I forgot to mention. I would rather spend the money on a hungry neighbor than to send the other neighbor to a political mess we call "war". A war which if they are lucky the will come home with no psycological problems and hopefully with all of their limbs. I have alot of friends that came home "not right"... Such a shame.


edit on 27-1-2011 by liejunkie01 because: install with



posted on Jan, 27 2011 @ 11:50 AM
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reply to post by Misoir
 


I'm a big fan of Rand Paul and helped him out a little bit during his campaign, but his idea for food stamps is simply stupid. The whole budget is $2 trillion. Food stamps are a small fraction of that... what 3%? if that. And yet 8% of the budget cuts should come from food stamps? He is essentially saying that is one of the worst programs we have though common sense would say its one of the ones that come close to being helpful... if not the very last one you'd want to cut. The military budget is a huge fraction of the spending and yet he only wants to cut that a small amount despite it being easily the worst of the government programs. So stupid. Is there really anybody out there except for Rand Paul who thinks food stamps are one of the things that should get cut first?

It really makes Paul look like a bit of a jerk, though in his defense he does give free medical care to the needy as a doctor, so I can't question him too much. If you compare Huckabee to Rand Paul its pretty clear Huckabee is the last guy you'd want to go to for help if you are in need. I'm comparing the two since they are both are future possible US President candidates on the Republican side of things. Huckabee seems like a total con man to me... a bigtime pretender who on one hand says he was a pastor (and indeed was a pastor) and on the other hand lives a life of lavish luxury while others suffer. For Huckabee, being a pastor didn't let him boss around and control people with enough force, so he decided being a politician would help him out in his power trip. Obviously the guy is a freak of nature who I can't stand. I'm only mentioning him because he is a strong contrast to Paul when it comes to possibly being compassionate vs. a sickening hypocrite of the highest degree.

This does have a gold lining to it. CLEARLY, Paul does not care if he is re-elected at all considering he actually proposed such food stamp cuts which of course would be a contender's primary line against him. So he may be a possible jerk, but like his father, at least he seems honest. So he does get points for that.



posted on Jan, 27 2011 @ 11:56 AM
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It is a shame a fool like Rand Paul got elected, this kidnapper and liar.

He is just another well off conservative who doesn’t care about people in need.

Hopefully one day he will be near starvation and then he will understand his own moral stupidity



posted on Jan, 27 2011 @ 12:46 PM
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500 billion in cuts is not enough to stop the coming disaster.



posted on Jan, 27 2011 @ 02:03 PM
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Personally I like Ron much more than Rand. However, a lot of you have no expierance in politics and don't understand he is compromising because he belongs to the republican party. I am sure he wants to get something done and this is his way of compromising to get the party behind him.

Food stamps are ridiculous as is every other wellfare program. The states and regions should have some sort of last resort safety net as well as cities, but when you budget the way we have, by just piling on without cutting it bankrupts states, cities, and government. We as Americans have a moral obligation to help your neighbor instead of government intervention. The root cause of democratic decay is the lack of compassion and care for ones own society. Charities should get tax relief and funding from local budgets in surplus years. Not government creating wasteful programs.

For everyone crying about welfare do your homework and find out private companies like Lockhead Martin run them. Somehow the ptb got all the compassionate people to think social services help people. They don't. People help people and no amount of shoveling money will ever change that.

Why do you trust the same government that invades nations to give you food stamps. It's the classic company store system. You get credits to shop at the store but what you don't relize is you are going into debt trying to use them. When the government goes in debt the people working for minimum wage get hit with inflation. That $7 an hour buys less and less. It's a downward spiral and a fake solution.

Rand is right on this one. You have to start cutting everywhere or we will all be destitue and then no one can help each other.

The defense budget is a huge problem. But it will take decades to roll back. Getting out of the two wars will help tremendously but even then the budget is far to big.

Without giving power to local government the programs are complete waste. It's like a mile long garden hose, all the water goes to filling up the hose, then by the time the water gets where it needs to be it's a trickle and time to shut off the faucet.

How many people preaching about welfare actually have ever helped a poor person by their own deeds?

Not many or we wouldn't be in this mess.

If we keep spending money we don't have EVERYONE will be on government assistance.



posted on Jan, 27 2011 @ 02:08 PM
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reply to post by Misoir
 


Cut $42 billion from food stamps, but only $16 billion from the pointless wars.

Your boy is not only dumb as a sack of hair, he's also apparently a sociopath.



posted on Jan, 27 2011 @ 03:22 PM
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reply to post by TheWalkingFox
 


Why? What do you think would happen if he proposed a huge military cut? Absolutely nothing. The dems and repubs love war they will never vote for it.

I agree with you on the war issue but he's not the podus he's a senator. Obama could stop it but not rand.

Besides do you know who gets the money for food stamp programs and welfare?

All the liberals who whine about food stamps need to step up and work in a soup kitchen. I grew up in Amherst MA a liberal strong hold. The most selfish pompous people I have ever met live there.

Why is it liberal people never actually help people themselves through charity?

It's like the republicans who love war but nearly all of them dodged the draft from the last administration.

Try to learn how it really works before you start namecalling.



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