How the government can save money?

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   Justsilvieposted 12 years ago

   
   I used to get stressed the end of the fiscal year because my bosses demand I spend the money our organization had left over. I had worked hard all year to make sure I got us the best deals available and having money left over, said I was doing the job right.
   
   I know their reasoning was if I did not spend it they would cut our budget for the next year and we may not have enough money to cover our future needs. And this same scenario plays out in most government offices throughout the country and I wonder if the budget practices themselves might not just be a starting point to cut spending?  There has got to be a better way than the current one!
   
   Anyways I thought it would be cool to see how other people think we could improve how OUR money is spent. And please some real ideas... not quick fixes like cutting food stamps or Obamacare. But ways to improve them would be a plus… who knows we may just send it on to Washington.

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2. 60

   Al Baconposted 12 years ago

   One of the best ways to save money on a federal government level is to find those things the federal government does which can be done as well or perhaps better on a state or even city level.  Many  federal bureaus can be cut back or perhaps even eliminated.
   
   We have for example a national weather bureau but that same function is also done by most states with a weather channel or sites such as the weather channel online making it possible to cut back on many of the functions of the national weather service
   
   The federal government owns millions of dollars worth  of vacant buildings which cost millions to maintain for things such as electricity and simply signing those buildings over to the states where they are located would save millions of federal dollars.
   
   The site CAGW.ORG publishes a "pig list" showing the worst offenders as far as wasted government dollars and simply demanding an end to those wastes would save billions of dollars.,  There are some 16.5 billions of dollars given out in grants and while some of those may be good, some actually hurt the American public more then they help, such as grants to millionaire wall street "farmers" which are not available to family or local farms where the money is needed more, causing food costs to rise.
   
   We can best save federal dollars by telling our local elected officials that we do not want federal grants in our state because for every dollar our state gets, 49 other states also get the same amount or more. 
   
   We could same millions of dollars by combining Social Security and Civil Service so that civil service employees retire with  the  same restrictions placed on those living on social security, such as an age requirement to retire and an end to an  elected official serving 4 years before receiving a life time pension which he or she hasn't paid into.
   
   We can pass laws that any bill presented must deal with only one piece of legislation and contain no riders or additions which add to the cost of that bill.  If someone tries to add a rider to a piece of legislation, there is no way to tell who added that usually and it allows pork to be slid under a back door that we would never allow were we to know about it.
   
   If we cut up all of the credit cards in Washington D.C. and  reimburse legitimate expenses relative to job performance, we would eliminate the elaborate misuse of those cards on issues totally unrelated to doing the jobs we elected them to do.
   
   The best way to save federal dollars is to bring into the open what is done behind closed doors without the knowledge or consent of the people themselves who would never agree to many of the things money is spent on.

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      Justsilvieposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      You have a lot of good ideas and so do a lot of other people.  What is it going to take to make the government listen?
      
      One of the subjects on this campaign is the number people on food stamps. To me the program is a necessity but so is the retuning of it. We hear people complain about the abuses from the recipients, but we rarely pay attention to the abuses from business. And that is one of the major problems and so is the fact that they rarely go after them.

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3. 60

   Al Baconposted 12 years ago

   Perhaps the answer to the food stamp  program would be to restrict those places where the stamps can be redeemed.  I suspect in most areas there is a major grocery store so restricting the redemption to them would eliminate neighborhood stores allowing the stamps to be used for alcohol or cigarettes instead.  Using computers today it should be possible to use bar coding to tell who used the program for what to some degree although there will always be someone who finds a way to cheat on that.  A bar code could include a social security number which would make it possible to find someone receiving food stamps and also some other income, such as the Michigan woman who won a million dollar lottery and was still receiving food stamps until someone pointed that out.  The law was changed to make that illegal in Michigan - she  died shortly thereafter from a drug overdose - but there will still be others trying to find a way around that.

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