Let's Cut! Whose Fat Would You Carve Out?

By John Tierney

Let's get down and dirty.  What would you cut?   Whose fat would you carve out? Tonight's speechifying is all about positioning: which party is the stronger agent of budgetary famine?  President Obama says he'd like to freeze federal discretionary spending over the next five years.  But of course that's just a way of trying to take the steam out of Republican desires actually to cut spending.

The Republicans are eager to portray themselves as willing to starve the recipients of federal largesse: If they were any damn good, they wouldn't need government money!  Of course, Republicans talk a good game, but they don't like to come up with specifics about whose ox should be gored.  Democrats don't like to discuss particulars either.  That's because one person's budgetary fat is another person's favorite pâté: rural Americans see no reason why the federal government should be supporting urban mass-transit systems; urban Americans blanch at the thought of continued farm subsidies; and so on....

And let's face it: our governmental system is pathologically incapable of dealing with problems of this sort.  Members of Congress are wonderful at passing out the goodies, but horrible at allocating costs or imposing sacrifices.  They're political cowards.  (I know: for this kind of insight, you come only to The Atlantic!)   We have a Congress that the Founders never anticipated: it's full of careerists -- people intent on having a career as a member of Congress.  To accomplish that, they have to get reelected time after time.  They have to avoid making decisions that disappoint and anger people, decisions that allocate costs or sacrifice.  But that's a horrible structure of systemic incentives for making policy decisions.  It leads to really lousy policy -- and huge budget deficits.

So, my friends, the job falls to us, the people. Right here, right now! What would you cut?
 
Let's start this discussion by listing things across the board, picking from the discretionary portion of the budget (everything but entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security).

Let me help get us started:

• I'd cut out light bulbs for the Supreme Court building.  Really.  Most of the Justices seem to work in the dark anyway.  Let Alito, Scalia, Thomas, and Roberts bring in their own damn bulbs if they really want them!
  
  
• Let's cut out uniforms for the Marine Corps band.  Have you ever seen the MIT Marching Band?  They look fine without uniforms. (See below, if you don't believe me.)  Snip.  Done!
  
  
• Toilet paper in government office buildings.   No more!  I don't see anywhere in the Constitution where it says that federal employees are entitled to personal hygiene at work.
  
  
• The $8 million earmarked for the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate.  Good Lord!  We've already funded the Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center, the Howard H. Baker Center for Public Policy, and countless(!) other such havens for sinecures and hacks.  How much more of this do we need?  What's next?  The Barney Frank Institute for the Study of Congressional Rudeness and Mumbling Logorrhea?  The John Boehner Center for Tanning Studies and Tearful Reflection?

You get the idea.  We can do this!  Send your ideas and suggestions right here to me.  I'll see that your voice is heard.  As God is my witness, I will.
 
And, oh, yes:  God bless America!

The MIT Marching Band

James Fallows is a staff writer for The Atlantic and has written for the magazine since the late 1970s. He has reported extensively from outside the United States and once worked as President Carter's chief speechwriter. He and his wife, Deborah Fallows, are the authors of the new book Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey Into the Heart of America, which has been a New York Times best seller and is the basis of a forthcoming HBO documentary.

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