Draining the Swamp, Part II

An essential part of getting rid of corruption, influence-peddling, and bureaucratic over-regulation lies in reducing the size of government.

For some background information on HOW the federal government grabbed all of that power, see the link here.

The real questions are:

• What should we do? and
• How should we do it

The first question can be answered simply - 10% less.

Cut department budgets by 10%. Challenge every Secretary to examine budgets for the last 5-10 years, and eliminate any program, grant, or increase since that time. Give incentives to people who identify places to cut in their departments - perhaps a substantial bonus, or paid vacation time, or a bump to their retirement savings?

What? Employees don't have retirement savings? They depend completely on government pensions?

Offer a match for any employee setting up an account - for every dollar you save, we'll add $1 the first year (or two). Get them to set up regular payments through payroll deduction. Use the idea of Nudge, which says that people are lazy (well, many are), and will likely keep the deduction going even after you stop the matching.

We need to gradually move government employees from dependency on pensions, to taking control of their own future.

Back to cuts - if the management DOESN'T successfully hit the target, their own pay gets cut, by the same percentage.

Eliminate 'bumps' to retirement payouts. If an employee is fired for not doing their job (are you listening, Lois Lerner and others?), the ONLY way to reduce jail time would be to give up their pension rights. They can have back any money that they personally contributed, but have to walk away from the rest.

Privatize anything that can be. Eliminate whole departments:

• Energy
• Education
• EPA
• Labor
• ATF
• Consumer Agency
• Farm/Agriculture

There should be a wholesale removal of any vestige of the above. If you get rid of it completely, they can't just come back later and re-build.

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