As opposed to standing in front of a TV camera and some local police officials threatening the loss of their jobs, why doesn't President Obama work with Congress to come up with a solution?
As opposed to invoking fear, why doesn't he go to these same extreme lengths to create a sense of stability?
Instead of threatening the jobs of Americans, why doesn't he offer a way to cut spending without implementing layoffs?
Last week, I unveiled a plan to offset the anticipated layoffs by cutting unnecessary spending within our federal budget.
The first way to do this is by bringing the federal employee pay in line with the private jobs.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the average compensation of a federal employee is 16% more that their private equivalents. By reducing salaries to align more with their counterparts, we could save as much as $32 billion per year.
Next we must stop hiring federal employees.
As I noted earlier, since taking office President Obama has increased domestic agencies' budgets by 17%. Every year thousands of federal employees retire or leave their jobs.
In 2011 roughly 62,000 people ended their careers with the government. By not replacing all federal bureaucrats we could save anywhere from $60 billion to $200 billion over the course of 10 years.
Another way to reduce spending is by reducing federal employee travel by 25%.
The latest data provided by the General Services Administration suggested that the federal government spent $9 billion on travel. Reducing these travel funds by 25% will save us $2.25 billion per year.
Next, we must focus military research strictly on military needs. According to research done by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., $ 6 billion has been spent by the Department of Defense on research that has nothing to do with military or military-related health inquiries.
To save $19 billion annually, we should require competitive bidding for government contracts. By repealing the Davis-Bacon Act and ending blocked government contracts the government could save money by making pay competitive to all government employees.
The Heritage Foundation estimates that this will save $9 billion a year.
Also, many contracts in the federal government are provided to companies without requiring a competitive bid — or the opportunity for the government to contract work at the lowest price possible.
This provision would require the government to competitively bid all contracts. It would save an additional $10 billion a year.
Finally, we must stop giving foreign aid to countries that burn our flag. We spend more than $40 billion a year on foreign aid.
When we're dealing with a budget crisis here at home, it's only responsible to keep this money here. This provision would eliminate half the foreign aid budget.
Sequestration is inevitable, necessary, and only a first step. Our nation's leaders should be coming up with even more solutions to our debt problem.
Not every federal dollar is well spent and in order to dig our nation out of this financial hole, we must make real, clear and sensible cuts.
A true leader would look for a way to stabilize our nation by solving the crisis, which is why I have unveiled this alternative plan.
Thursday, February 28, 2013
Rand Paul in IBD: The Sequester is the First Step to Solving Our Spending Problem
Glenn Beck Interviews Rand Paul and Asks About the Hagel Vote
Huffington Post: Rand Paul is Worth Watching
At the end of the interview, Hannity -- a conservative host with an overwhelmingly conservative audience, including plenty of dyed-in-the-wool self-identified Republican voters (and that means many recent Romney voters) noted that Rand Paul is one of the "four strong conservative voices" in the Senate that he looks to "to bring sanity back to Washington." He didn't call Rand, "one of the four libertarian voices" in the Senate, and yet the four Senators he mentioned (Paul, Lee, Cruz and Rubio) are without much doubt the most pro-liberty members of that house).
And what "strong conservative" views did Rand Paul proceed to elucidate as Hannity endorsed his conservative credentials? They were as follows.
The need to audit the Pentagon, the need for term limits, the GOP's need to win in New England and on the west coast, the fact that he (Rand) is a libertarian Republican, which approximates to a constitutional conservative, the need for the GOP to appeal to Independents, recognition thatAmerica doesn't need to be involved in every war around the world, the fact that people shouldn't be locked up for 20 years for taking drugs, and the need to embrace immigrants.
This is not your grandfather's conservatism. But it is slowly looking more like it might become Hannity's -- and (much more importantly) your grandson's.
Take note. Here is an established conservative host in mainstream media recognizing as conservative the least neo-con version of that creed that has been heard from a Republican for decades. How far all this is from the only conservatism that was "licensed" by the GOP just a decade ago.
This is extremely important because, for good or ill, the labels that the mainstream media use -- and the way in which they use them -- set the concepts and parameters of popular political debate, and thereby, the "mainstream" range of political views of the majority of the electorate.
Moreover, people are much more willing to change their views than their political identities or labels or "teams." Hence, converting 100 million self-identified conservatives to another philosophy (such as libertarian) or Republicans to another party is much harder than nudging the definition of "conservative" or the platform of the GOP over time. In fact, not only does such evolution of the meaning of political terms and philosophies have precedent: given enough time, it is inevitable.
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Some libertarians are calling out Rand for the subversion of libertarian ideas that they perceive derives from an instinct toward neoconservatism. Time will tell, and I expect it will prove them wrong. But what is already certain is that to take only that perspective is to choose not to see the very part of Rand's approach that is the most likely (by far) to bring about any practical improvement in American liberty: he is slowly redefining conservatism and Republicanism by packing more libertarian ingredients into the jars that bear those labels. (And it's the content of the jars -- and not their labels -- that matter.)
Those in the liberty movement who would not have any part of their philosophy peddled by this man whom they do not see as a true believer should ask whether, when Rand is fighting for just one of the things that they believe in, it would be better if he stopped? And if he were to stop, who (and in what position and party) would be more effective in doing liberty's work?. (The same question can be asked about any of the new breed of liberty-oriented Republicans on Capitol Hill.)
If Rand is in any way enabling conservatives to shift their views without changing their labels , then he may yet become as important for the popular acceptance of whichever version of libertarianism he holds as was his father. That rather large claim rests on the possibility that most of those who were won over by Ron Paul's wonderful message of liberty (this writer included) were willing and able to undergo a large and conscious shift in political identity, but whereas we count in the millions, there are tens of millions who will come with us only slowly and only if we don't challenge their political identity - and that "conservative" label with which, for reasons or culture, upbringing or religion etc., they feel comfortable .
As the Bard said, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
Two other factors make Rand worth watching.
The first is the simple fact that he has started very early for a 2016 run. He has been quietly garnering support from various groups across a wide ideological spectrum (from true conservatives to true libertarians). Getting ahead of the campaigning curve while keeping on the right side of media that still have not understood what the response to Ron Paul last year means for this country, helps to protect the GOP against having the media pick another candidate in 2016 who doesn't have the Big Three Ps for victory -- principles, pragmatism and personality.
The second is a little more subtle -- and ironic. If Rand closes in on a 2016 race facing vocal criticism from the libertarian purists who fear the apple has fallen too far from the tree, he may well be seen as less alien to the party than his father (which helps in winning the party's nomination), and more at one with the broader Republican base (which helps in winning the presidency). In other words, those who would make the perfect the enemy of the good might help focus everyone else on what "the good" really is -- and American liberty could be the better for it.
We shall see.
But for now, let's not judge Rand's contribution to liberty just by debating how far the apple fell from the tree: let's watch what grows from its seeds.
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Rand Paul's Foreign Policy Tightrope
Paul is, in essence, a non-interventionist who's been trying to rebrand himself as a realist to better influence a party that's been dominated by hawkish voices since the early 2000s. And his strategy, crucially, has been neither the "go along to get along" approach that McCarthy criticizes nor some kind of frontal, guns-blazing assault on the "Fox-fed" ideas of "Tea Party neocons." Instead, Paul has done what successful politicians tend to do: He's picked his battles, done outreach to his critics, and consistently framed his arguments in language that conservative voters and activists understand. This has enabled him to break with the party's hawkish tilt on a number of substantive questions, from the Libya and Syria debates to issues of executive power to the question of whether containment should be an option for dealing with Iran, without coming in for anything like the attacks that greeted Hagel's nomination. He's put his foot in his mouth here and there and taken fire from both his friends and foes along the way, and future world events (particularly events related to Iran) may upset his tightrope walk. But at the moment he seems like living, breathing proof that there's room for actual foreign policy debate within the Republican coalition, and that not every non-hawk need be dismissed as a RINO and read out of the party.
What Paul seems to understand is that the Republican base doesn't really have a detailed set of foreign policy positions: What it has, instead, is the cluster of sympathies and instincts (pro-Israel, pro-military, nationalist rather than globalist, fretful about radical Islam, skeptical of international institutions) that Walter Russell Mead has famously dubbed"Jacksonianism," which can incline G.O.P. voters for or against different policy choices depending on how those options are presented. So if you want to reach the base, and move the party, you need to speak the base's language and respect its basic outlook on the world — which is something that Paul has done much more successfully than many members of Washington-based realist community.
This means, for instance, talking about war powers rather than the U.N. when the White House is contemplating a war of choice. It means invoking the constitution rather than international law to critique Obama's drone campaign. It means invoking Israel's own internal debates, rather than just blasting AIPAC's influence in Washington, to make the case for caution vis-a-vis a military strike on Iran. And it means finding ways to be a party loyalist on some votes in order to gain maneuvering room on others — as Paul tried to do, admittedly somewhat clumsily, by voting against cloture for Hagel but then voting to approve nomination.
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Rand Paul's Vote on Chuck Hagel
I don't think this is a fatal blow but the good Senator did damage his brand today, causing many of the people who he has convinced that he is not like his father to rethink their support of him. I think though that as long as he remains the tip of the spear, fighting government largesse and foreign aid to enemies of the United States, that people will forgive one vote, especially one as meaningless as the approval vote (the cloture vote was the key vote and he voted the right way there). This vote may still haunt him though in the 2016 primaries.
Once Again, Rand Paul Stands for Israel
Rand Paul: The Republican Leadership Doesn't Know What the Hell It's Doing
"We announce our surrender before we get started on every battle," Paul said. "That literally is our problem."
"We need to say over and over again…that the sequester was [Obama's] idea, that he's the one who's laying people off, we aren't, and that we have an idea to fix the sequester in a way that avoids any layoffs," he added.
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"To announce after we got a filibuster that we are already giving up, when we didn't even get a piece of paper or anything — what a waste of time!" Paul said. "That is people who don't know what the hell they're doing."