Here's an Idea on How to Reduce the Deficit

This is an open letter to the Joint Select Committee-- the members of Congress who have the unenviable task of reducing the deficit. We all hear horror stories about the necessity for cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. We hear elected representatives fighting to protect the 2001 and 2003 tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans. No one has mentioned the obvious place to begin all this deficit reduction-- the expenditure created by our representatives. We don't need to cut Government programs as much as we demand cuts to Government overhead. This includes salaries, benefits, office furniture, entertainment expenses, all the perks that members of Congress have grown accustomed to but don't really need. The American people are asking for congressional prudence before they touch one red-cent of seniors and disabled dollars. They need to come back to earth with their own salaries and benefits packages and join the rest of us taking "a hit" in this economy.

Please participate in our democracy, sign your name and repost for others to do the same.

Thanks!

cut the flesh before you get to the bone

It is not likely that the Federal deficit was caused by all that frivolous spending on Planned Parenthood, or education, or health costs.  The deficit was caused by poor management, plain and simple.  The health of our nation depends upon healthy fiscal roots and simply put: we got root rot. 

It is the definition of hubris to cut 60 billion dollars in funds to the most needy while maintaining the same salaries for our representatives.  I'm calling for a ten percent cut in all salaries to elected officials across the nation.  They can do what they want to their appointed fellows.  What are they going to do?  Get elected somewhere else where they have higher pay?

Have we learned nothing from Cairo?  Are we not paying attention to what is happening in Bahrain and most especially what our fellow working-class citizens are doing in Madison, WI.  The Governor of Wisconsin remains "unfazed" by the protests.  Of course he is unfazed--he doesn't give a flying bee about the working class.

I will say this again, and probably again, management needs a functioning proletariat.

There will be more on this.