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Rand Paul’s $500 Billion Spending

Cut Proposal – Food Stamps,
Defense, You Name it
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
By T. CHRISTOPHER

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Newly elected Senator from Kentucky Rand Paul is ready to
make his presence felt on Capitol Hill, and after looking at his
first piece of proposed legislation, I’d say 800 lb guerrilla in the
room would just about sum it up. The bill titled as “Cut
Federal Spending Act of 2011″ (cuts right to it doesn’t
it?) is an equal opportunity slasher.

Here is the bill…

Here is a summary…
I have included the totals below for your enjoyment…
Take a look. Lots of zeros here folks.
• Legislative Branch: $1,283,000,000
• Judicial Branch: $2,434,000,000
• Agriculture: $42,542,000,000
• Commerce: $5,322,000,000
• Defense:
o Military Personnel: $14,000,000,000
o Procurement: $13,300,000,000
o Operations and Maintenance:
$22,430,000,000
o Research and Development:
$8,000,0000,0000
 o War Funding: $16,000,000,000
• Education: $16,256,000,000
• Energy: $27,270,000,000
• Health and Human Services:
$26,510,000,000
• Homeland Security: $23,765,000,000
• Housing and Urban Development: Defunded
• Interior: $10,934,000,000
• Justice: $9,057,000,000
• Labor: $2,803,000,000
• Transportation: $42,810,000,000
• Army Corps of Engineers: $1,854,000,000
• Environmental Protection Agency (EPA):
$3,238,000,000
• General Services Administration:
$1,936,000,000
• National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA): $4,448,000,000
• National Science Foundation: $4,723,000,000
• Office of Personnel Management:
$9,070,000,000
• Federal Communications Commission:
$2,150,000,000
• Miscellaneous Budget Savings
o Collecting Delinquent Taxes From
Federal Employees: $3,000,000,000
o Freeze Federal Government Employee
Pay: $2,000,000,000
o Reduce Federal Government Travel:
$7,500,000,000
o Davis-Bacon Repealed: $6,000,000,000
o Prohibit Union-Labor Project
Agreements: $2,000,000,000
o Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP)
Repealed: $4,481,000,000
o Unused Federal Assets Shall be Sold:
$19,000,000,000
o Reduce Federal Vehicle Budget:
$600,000,000
• Repeal of Independent Agencies
o Affordable Housing Program: Defunded
o Commission of Fine Arts: Defunded
 o Consumer Product Safety Commission:
Defunded
o Corporation for Public Broadcasting:
Defunded
o National Endowment for the Arts:
Defunded
o National Endowment for the Humanities:
Defunded
o State Justice Institute: Defunded
The Social Security Administration and the Department of
Veteran’s Affairs are not on the list of proposed cuts however –
“for the year 2011.”
I think we all know that the likelihood of this thing passing is
slim to none, and Harry Reid fell on Slim when he feinted from
reading this list. That said, I commend Senator Paul for being
first out of the gate with a real proposal that presents “real
cuts” to government spending. I very much look forward to
the push-back. The dirty little secret that no one wants to talk
about is the inefficiency in Defense spending, so it will be
rather interesting to see how more than $70 billion in cuts
there will resonate with his colleagues.

posted on Wednesday, January 26th, 2011

http://republicanredefined.com/2011/01/26/rand-pauls-500-billion-spending-
cut-proposal-food-stamps-defense-you-name-it/
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Below is the Bill:

‘Cut Federal Spending Act of
2011’
http://budget.house.gov/News/DocumentPrint.aspx?
DocumentID=221249
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http://www.randpaul2010.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/500Bcutsbill.pdf
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Senator Rand Paul Introduces $500
Billion in Spending Cuts
Published on 25 January 2011 by RyanH in Press Releases

In the face of an ever-expanding national debt,

WASHINGTON, D.C. –
newly elected Senator Rand Paul is taking a bold and proactive
step in protecting our national security and lowering our
deficit. By introducing $500 billion in spending cuts today – to
be enacted over one year – Sen. Paul is starting an important
conversation with his Senate colleagues about how to fix our
nation’s current economic situation.
“I am proud to introduce my own solution to the mounting
debt our spendthrift, oversized government has accrued. By
rolling back to 2008 levels and eliminating the most wasteful
programs, we can still keep 85 percent of our government
funding in place,” Sen. Paul said today.
“By removing programs that are beyond the constitutional role
of the federal government, such as education and housing, we
are cutting nearly 40 percent of our projected deficit and
removing the big-government bureaucrats who stand in the
way of efficiency in our federal government,” he continued.
###
http://www.randpaul2010.com/

http://www.randpaul2010.com/2011/01/senator-paul-introduces-500-billion-in-spending-
cuts/

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Below is the Summary of the Bill:

‘Cut Federal Spending Act of

2011’
http://www.randpaul2010.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Overview-
500-billion-cuts-2.pdf
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http://www.randpaul2010.com/wp-
content/uploads/2011/01/Overview-500-billion-cuts-2.pdf
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Senator Rand Paul’ Response to SOTU

Senator Rand Paul’s State of the Union Response

Published on 26 January 2011 by admin i

Video & Audio of Senator Rand Paul’s
Response to SOTU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0B8--
qw1ws&feature=player_embedded

Thank you for joining me today. As we begin the first week of

legislative work in the Senate, there are many issues I look
forward to addressing.
Last week, the House of Representatives voted to repeal the
government takeover of health care. I applaud them for that –
and I will fight to see it brought to a vote in the Senate, so we
may end this misguided big-government attempt at solving a
problem better addressed by free-market principles.
As we gather this week for the President’s State of the Union
address, I am hopeful he will speak to the urgency of the
budget, which should be the first order of business for him and
the new Congress. Washington has gone off the rails with
spending – and if we don’t act – our debt will soon consume us.
The President is likely to introduce more spending – which he
wrongly calls “investment”. We must enact fiscal restraint if
we are to keep America competitive in the international
marketplace.
With that in mind, this week I will introduce my first budget
proposal, which features over $500 billion in spending cuts.
This is the first step of many, needed to confront the biggest
threat to our national security – our country’s perpetual debt.
My proposal includes an overall rollback to 2008 pre-Stimulus
spending levels, plus 10 percent cuts in some defense spending,
and at least 20 percent cuts to a number of other department
and agencies like NASA, TSA, Agriculture, and Department of
Energy. My proposal also includes elimination of those that
have gone beyond their usefulness or are not fulfilling their
stated missions like Department of Education, GPO, and
International aid programs.
Keeping in line with the idea of putting our economy back on
track, I also plan to introduce legislation that would allow for a
full audit of the Federal Reserve. We must take a critical look
at the Fed’s monetary policy decisions, because it is more
crucial than ever that we have real transparency with our
central bank and the way the American people’s money is
being spent.
And as myself and my fellow freshman members of Congress
were chosen to represent Americans’ best interests, it’s
important to constantly gauge our progress in taking back our
government for the people.
On Thursday, I’ll be meeting with Senators Jim DeMint and
Mike Lee, and grassroots Tea Party leaders from across the
country to continue the conversation on how we defeat the debt
and reduce the size of government. This inaugural meeting of
the Tea Party Caucus will work to enact real change to protect
our country and its taxpayers from an ever-expanding
government.
I hope you’ll check back next week for an update on what
we’ve accomplished.

http://www.randpaul2010.com/2011/01/senator-rand-paul
%E2%80%99s-sate-of-the-union-response/

Link to the Budget Cutting Bill:

http://budget.house.gov/News/DocumentPrint.aspx?
DocumentID=221249
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There’s Only So Many Ways Obama Can
Spin Failure

by Daniel Greenfield on August 9th, 2010

During the 2008 election, the media sold Obama on two key points,
repairing the economy, and bringing new focus and ideas into the war
in Afghanistan. As the summer of 2010 fades, it’s painfully clear that
Obama has failed completely in both areas.
Obama has come out on the wrong side of the economy. His
administration’s economic policies are based on the insane notion that
the private sector needs to be taxed more in order to fund more
government spending. When it’s only private sector capitalism that
has a shot at reviving the economy, not government spending. The
Democrats mistook their own “tax and spend” rhetoric for reality,
tripling the national debt, while ramming through smoking heaps of
pork for themselves and their buddies. And so the economy is a
disaster area, the public is angry, and the only answer the Democrats
have for them is more of the same. But more of the same just won’t
cut it.
The Democrats want to keep pushing the message that the problem
with the economy is that the rich don’t pay enough taxes. But that’s
not the problem with the economy, that’s the problem with their
spending bills. America isn’t suffering from economic problems
because the people who actually make money aren’t forwarding it fast
enough to Washington D.C. That’s the problem that Washington D.C.
politicians are suffering from. And they’re not suffering very hard
from it, because their approach is to just spend the money anyway,
and turn it into debt for the next generation.
And the argument by Dem pols that the people who actually stimulate
the economy need to send them more money, so they can spend it
faster, isn’t resonating too well with the general public. Americans
may not be big fans of big banks, but they’re not fans of big pols
either– and they know by now that it’s the pols and the banks who
joined hands in the bailout at their expense. Everything else is just
theater. After multiple bailouts, the Democrats want to turn around
and bash the same banks and companies they bailed out. And that
plays about as well as two criminals turning on each other in police
custody. “He was the one behind it!” “No it was all his idea.”
Running on the bizarre crypto-economics of Enron advisor and
liberal financial court jester Paul Krugman, the Obama
Administration and the Democratic congress acted as if the mere act
of government spending alone would revive the economy. The more
the better. And it’s hard to understand whether they actually believed
this insanity, or were just pretending so they could spend unlimited
amounts of money and possibly bankrupt America permanently in the
bargain, ending economic freedom for good. After decades of mocking
“Trickle Down Economics” and any notion that in hard times, it’s the
government that should cut back, they got the chance to put their
economic policies into action and the state of the nation’s economy is a
disaster.
While the public was growing increasingly frustrated, the Democrats
began ramming through more social services spending that they had
no way of paying for. By acting like it was the depression all over
again, they helped turn it into a depression. By selectively bailing out
some companies, they rewarded failure and cronyism. And by
building up the bureaucracy, they pushed states and small businesses
deeper into debt, and entangled them in more layers of government
bureaucracy and mandatory spending. Which is exactly the thing you
don’t do, if you don’t want to destroy the economy.
By putting the boot down, state governments were forced to lash out
at public sector unions. New Jersey Governor Christie became a
national celebrity just by taking on teacher’s unions. Democrats in
conservative quickly scrambled to follow suit. Suddenly public worker
pensions and compensation plans became a talking point. Those
swollen salaries and compensation packages were red meat to be
tossed to the public. And it turned out that the public even in Blue
States was much more outraged about public employees pulling in six
figure salaries, or getting paid for doing nothing, than they were
about CEO salaries. It’s not the way things were supposed to work in
the liberal handbook, where it was enough to point Michael Moore’s
camera at a corporate CEO’s golden parachute, and watch them be
torn apart by the lions. But it’s the way things work in real life, where
people are outraged about their mandatory taxes, than about
corporate compensation programs– unless those compensation
programs are paid for with their mandatory tax dollars.
Now the unions have turned on the Democrats, and are warning that
they won’t bother turning out for mid-term elections. Yet do they
really believe that after ObamaCare’s giveaway to SEIU helped nuke
Obama’s popularity, that Barry and this even more unpopular
congress are going to be taking any more bullets for unions? But
unions have been a core part of the Democratic strategy. Federal
funding flowing to states and their public sector unions, has meant
that taxpayer have essentially been spending untold billions on an
election machine for the Democratic party. ObamaCare was supposed
to be the next phase, dismantling private health care and turning it all
into one big union shop. This would be a model for taking over any
vulnerable industry, and turning it into a public utility. Socialism
feeding an endless money tap flowing to Democratic politicians
through compulsory donations from workers with no say in the
matter, thanks to Card Check.
But ObamaCare wasn’t everything the SEIU wanted, and its front
row thuggish presence in protest suppression helped bring the ugly
connection between the Democrats and corrupt union thugs into the
living rooms of millions of Americans. Obama has assured the AFL-
CIO that he’ll keep on fighting for Card Check, but who exactly is
playing whom here? Card Check at this point is the last thing the
Democrats need, particularly those congressmen who are already on
the edge in conservatives states. Card Check has limited popularity
even within the party. And unions are now about as popular with the
general public as cholera on the Orient Express. So either Obama is
running on a full tank of delusional, and will continue his policy of
trying to ram through the left’s agenda at any political cost, or he’s
lying to union bosses. Either way if it happens, Senator Brown will get
a chance to burnish his Republican credentials a little. But either way,
the show will only deepen the convictions of independent voters that
the incumbents need to go. Fast and hard.
From ObamaCare and Card Check, to the stimulus plan– the
common denominator of Obama’s domestic legislation has been to
bulk up government, increase centralized control from Washington
D.C. and spend, spend and spend on his own projects. His doubletalk
has alienated independents and even the left. Meanwhile the right is
re-energized and up in arms, a far cry from 2009, when mainstream
media pundits were gleefully predicting the death of the Republican
party. “It’s the Spending, Stupid”, has become the new rallying cry.
The only possible defense against it, would be an actual economic
recovery. But the best the media can do is peddle a fake economic
recover that fools no one.
There’s only so many ways Obama can spin failure, and he’s lost
badly on the economy. The attempts to refocus the public’s attention
on some other domestic issue, have only backfired. Americans back
Arizona over Obama on illegal immigration. They’re tired of the
Obamas’ endless celebrity tours, and they have a limited interest in
Michelle Obama’s arugula and caviar weight loss recipes. And that
just leaves foreign affairs.
The problem with foreign affairs is that it requires capable crisis
management. Obama and his backers have tried out a Great
Celebrity Theory of History, in which endless foreign trips and
televised speeches would lead to actual accomplishments on the
ground. As it turned out, leadership doesn’t work that way. You can’t
become a leader by reading things from a teleprompter in foreign
countries. All that gets you is some media coverage. And eventually an
image of impotence, Which is exactly what Obama has come out with,
along with a Nobel Prize that even he couldn’t credibly argue that he
deserves.
During the election, we were sold the idea that Obama would bring a
renewed focus to Afghanistan. As it turned out, Obama ignored
Afghanistan, left the Bush Administration’s policies in place, because
he didn’t have any actual ideas. This led to friction with McChrystal,
and his eventual firing. Obama’s deadline only emboldened the
Taliban. His undermining of Karzai backfired spectacularly, forcing
the administration to make nice. At the moment there is no policy on
Afghanistan. None whatsoever.
The surge has faltered, weighed down by harsh Rules of Engagement
that are supposed to win the hearts and minds of the locals, and by a
lack of any deep support from the administration. There is no Afghan
support worth speaking of, because unlike Iraq, Afghanistan never
even had the trappings of a modern state. There are calls within the
administration to cut a deal with the Taliban, other calls to pressure
Pakistan or cut a deal with Iran. And the sum total of all these ideas is
static and noise. And above all else, a sense of ineptness that the
enemy is capitalizing on. Obama still wants a pullout, but without the
negatives. And yet the recent Time Magazine cover of a woman
mutilated recently by the Taliban, part of the uptick in Taliban
atrocities, shows there will be a political cost for doing so.
Obama’s Afghanistan policy has been a model of indecisiveness,
refusing the instant pullout that the left wanted, and also avoiding the
full scale commitment that made a difference in Iraq under Bush. And
all that adds up to it is pain, suffering and more US military
casualties. The inability to fully commit to an engagement is worse
than not committing at all. Obama’s approval for a half-hearted surge
has not accomplished anything definitive, and the air of weakness that
accompanied it has only emboldened the Taliban. US troops are
operating under restrictions that are getting them killed, without
actually dramatically transforming the attitudes of the locals.

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Obama wanted what Gorbachev wanted, a short surge followed by a
timely withdrawal. That isn’t working. And he has no other ideas.
Which isn’t surprising because his international experience is limited
to his own time in the Muslim world. He has no clue how the game is
played at this level. He went from a State Senator, to a brief stint in
the US Senate, to the White House. His only skill set is smiling for the
camera and being non-threatening. Which is exactly the wrong skill
set when you’re fighting a War on Terror. And the people around him
are too busy fighting it out over their overlapping levels of authority
and contradictory ideologies to be of any real help. While the old
hands in the military are trying to make the best of a bad situation,
his radical foreign policy hands are busy selling out the country. The
Baird resignation just makes it obvious that the in-house politics are
unworkable. And there’s still no foreign policy. Just a muddled
combination of left wing radicalism and Clinton era moderate
appeasement.
Obama has failed miserably on both of his key areas. The economy is
a disaster. So is Afghanistan. The 2010 elections won’t fix that, but if
the American people come out in force, it will help inhibit the fallout
from his disastrous mismanagement of the United States government.
Obama was given complete autonomy and decisive majorities in
congress. He used them frivolously and greedily. His mismanagement
of the country’s domestic and foreign policies is both irredeemable
and irresponsible. I said back in November 2008, that the key to
winning is to hold Obama accountable for his failures. And now the
day is drawing closer, when he will be held accountable for everything
he has done and everything he has failed to do. There’s only so many
ways Obama can spin failure, before he gets tossed out with the rest of
the dirty laundry.

http://island-adv.com/2010/08/theres-only-so-many-ways-obama-can-spin-failure/

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