Ron Paul Suggests Axing 5 U.S. Federal Departments (and Budgets)

sciencehabit writes with this selection from Science: "Presidential hopeful Ron Paul's new proposal to slash federal spending would wipe out large chunks of the government's research portfolio. The congressman from Texas and Republican candidate has unveiled a budget plan to reduce the deficit that would eliminate five federal departments: Energy, Commerce, Interior, Education, and Housing and Urban Development. In one fell swoop, such a step would erase, among other programs, the Energy Department's $5-billion Office of Science, the $4.5-billion National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the $750-million National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the $1.1-billion U.S. Geological Survey."

Comments

Re:I like his IRS plan!

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

For further reading on his plan to see what else he cuts, here it is. [pdf]

Re:Which is what, exactly?

[MightyMartian]

You are aware, I trust, that the USGS is responsible for a large number of monitoring programs. Basically, killing it would essentially leave the West Coast of the United States without tsunami, earthquake or volcano alerts. I'm sure the people that live along that very geologically active strip of turf will be happy to know that Ron Paul considers them essentially expendable in his quest for ideological purity.

Re:In other words, we should give up.

[jittles]

No more weather forecasting either. It's not just the US that depends on NOAA's National Hurricane Center. Many Caribbean countries that would be hard pressed to track hurricanes depend on this service.

Get the overview from his website

[trevelyon]

http://www.ronpaul2012.com/2011/10/17/ron-paul-announces-ambitious-%E2%80%98plan-to-restore-america%E2%80%99/

Above is the link to his website directly. Some notable tidbits that the article (along with some slashdot commenters) seemed to miss:

"Cuts of this scale will also be accomplished by a Paul Presidency abolishing the Transportation Security Administration and returning responsibility for security to private property owners, abolishing corporate subsidies, stopping foreign aid, ending foreign wars, and returning most other spending to 2006 levels."

Full plan is here: http://ronpaul2012.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=5fe6ba5e2c7e9376850ed45ac&id=bfc0992023&e=8c0ac983f9

So as part of this plan he will get rid of:
-Entire TSA
-Corporate (including Oil) subsidies
-End the wars (likely the largest single current expenditure/drain on the economy)
-End foreign aid (which I suspect will keep the U.S. out of more wars and significantly reduce the terror threat to the U.S.)
-15% of military spending (on top of complete ending of war spending)
-Keeps Social Security and Veteran care in place but allows young people to opt out of social security (basically, ending the Ponzi scheme and recognising the debt owed from it).

I will agree that some things he wishes to cut are not things I would choose to get rid of BUT can anyone point out a single other candidate that has a plan in plain, simple terms like his to actually do something? I sure haven't seen anything like this from other candidates. Then again I feel they are all talk. Real problem solvers would have at least a moderately detailed plan up on their website with rough numbers on how to accomplish things. If anyone finds such from other candidates please post in reply. I'd be very interested in seeing other plans even at as high level as this one is.

The plan is extreme but note that even with everything he is removing and reducing it only ends the DEFICIT (i.e. we stop borrowing more) by year three. Most people seem to not realise or accept how much pain the U.S. will have to endure to climb out from the mountain of debt without defaulting. Much like those that make $40,000 and have $40,000 in credit card debt it's a long suffering process. Much more borrowing at the current rate and defaulting on debt is almost an assured result (hence the lowering of the U.S. credit rating). I should point out European nations, most local governments, etc are all in the same situation. Borrowing to get luxuries you can't afford is endemic in the western mentality currently.

I suspect this will also reduce the corruption considerably since there will be many fewer lucrative grants to bribe senators and congressmen to get. That is, if it passes at all. You'll likely need to toss the bulk of republicans AND democrats out to get anything like this through since it will dismantle many of the incentives for funnelling money to them.

Does not he?

[PaulBu]

15% slash (right there, top line on the second page here: http://ronpaul2012.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=5fe6ba5e2c7e9376850ed45ac&id=bfc0992023&e=8c0ac983f9) AND defunding all (undeclared) wars, resulting in immediate pull-out from all, what is it now, 5,6,7 places?

And, since most libertarians agree that national defence is legitimate function of Federal government, and knowing weather and coast around your country has obvious military uses, I would see nothing wrong with NOAA and USGS being funded from DOD budget.

"Fix weights and measures" is explicitly constitutional, so, I'd guess, NIST would be also safe under Dr. Paul's watch.

Paul B.

Re:In other words, we should give up.

[DragonWriter]

But corporations do exist without any need for government.

False.

I can think of one that has been around for a very long time, is very well managed and highly profitable. Millions of dollars worth of goods and services move through this organization every year, and many of the consumers of the products would not have access to these products without this organization. The Mafia.

The Mafia is not a corporation. A corporation is defined as an entity with separate legal personality from its individual participants. It is purely a creation of law; the Mafia is just a collective label given to a number of different groups of people.

When legal action is taken against the Mafia, its not in the form of "The People of the State of New York v. La Cosa Nostra, Inc."; its individual actions against individual members because the Mafia isn't a corporation and therefore doesn't have distinct legal personality.

Sure, if you redefine corporation to just mean "group of people", a corporation wouldn't require government, just like if you redefine "water" to mean "any compound containing hydrogen" then water wouldn't require oxygen atoms. But words have meanings.

Re:Which is what, exactly?

[Thuktun]

Why should the people of North Dakota pay for tsunami monitoring for California? If the west coast wants earth quake and tsunami warning, they can pay for it.

North Dakota is not geologically inert. http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/states/events/1909_05_16.php

He also wants to axe NOAA, of which the National Weather Service is a part, which tracks weather events like thunderstorms and blizzards that affect North Dakota.

Besides, your callous attitude would seem to lead to something like this:
"Why should I have to do anything to help anyone? Screw 'em." (later) "Eeek, I'm in trouble, why won't someone help me?!"

Re:I like his IRS plan!

[interval1066]

Frank? As in Barney Frank? The man who pretty much SINGLE HANDEDLY caused the real estate fiasco three years ago? You bet I disagree with him. Kucinich will get nothing pushed through that anyone will pay attention to, same with Sanders.

Re:In other words, we should give up.

[rahvin112]

In response you you list of inventions. DOD, DOD, NASA, DOD, DOD, NASA, DOT (Interior), EPA (Interior). Electrical was a mix of the rural electric loan program and state and local investment including eminent domain purchases.

Nothing you listed would have happened without federal involvement, either in providing the research money or planning the result.

We know what private industry would have done

[Chris Burke]

We know what private industry would have done wrt creating the Internet in the absence of the federal government. Because they did create it. Or rather them.

Compuserve.
AOL
MSN
Prodigy
and others.

Each a walled garden, isolated from and incompatible with the others. Each created to require enforce the idea that customers are clients, rather than allowing arbitrary client/server or peer-to-peer relationships (as business has been trying to do with the Internet).

We already know what business would have created without the Internet. And they sucked in comparison to the real thing. That's why all of these networks began to wane the second the Internet became available to the public. They turned into nothing more than ISPs with portal websites and they only did that because it was that or disappear instantly.

In 1995 Bill Gates was saying that the Internet was a fad and everyone would return to the safety of MSN real soon now.

The idea that if the Internet didn't exist that private industry would have created it is simply a-historical.

Re:We know what private industry would have done

[Chris Burke]

Sorry, but this is just proof that a (relatively) free market worked. In this particular case, "public money" created the Internet, but it sure as hell wasn't public money that allowed it to beat the others in the *gasp* free market. It was the local net providers, the little ISPs, that provided a better experience.

I think you're confused. The topic of discussion is whether or not private industry would have created the Internet if the government hadn't created it for them, and the simple fact is that they wouldn't have because they didn't. They created their own networks, but they were nothing like the Internet.

And the Internet beat these corporate walled-garden networks among the corporation's own customers. AOL retained an enormous number of subscribers and was the nation's largest ISP long after the AOL Network was completely irrelevant.

Without the Internet, those small ISPs wouldn't have had anything to Provide Service to. Without the small ISPs, the Internet would have still won over the walled garden networks. We know this because it did win over the walled garden networks even among those who didn't change providers.

The Free Market -- i.e. the Ron Paul Libertarian version where there's no federal government creating the Internet -- was tried, and it fucking failed.