Paul Ryan's Record On Science and Government

sciencehabit writes "U.S. Representatives Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) don't have much in common when it comes to politics. Kucinich is a very liberal Democrat who's leaving Congress this January after being defeated in a primary election by a more moderate colleague. Ryan is a conservative leader and now the Republican Party's presumptive candidate for vice president. A dozen years ago, however, the two men found one thing they could agree on—killing the National Ignition Facility, a multibillion dollar laser fusion project at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. The article goes on to explore other impacts Ryan could have on science as VP."

Comments

I visited the National Ignition Facility this year

[daveschroeder]

...and it's one of the most impressive scientific endeavors we've undertaken.

Yes, one of it's missions is "stockpile stewardship" -- maintaining the integrity of the United States nuclear stockpile without nuclear testing, via simulations and tests.

But it also has a goal of initiating "ignition": a sustained ("sustained" being relative, here) fusion reaction which produces more power than was put in.

Even if there is no immediate practical application, understanding various aspects of fusion, and the science it takes to get there, is critical to our energy future.

In short, like many military and national security projects, this is a truly dual-use.

The NIF just made history by firing its 192 beams to deliver more than 500 terawatts and 1.85 megajoules of energy to its target -- more than 1000 times the power the United States uses at any particular instant, and more than 100 times the power of any other laser.

We do need science like NIF, and I'm still pained by the US decision to kill the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC), what was to be the most powerful particle accelerator in the world -- significantly more so than the LHC -- after 14 miles of tunnels were dug and over $2 billion spent.

I hope this article wasn't unintentionally accurate when it called the SSC the "high water mark of American science"...(must see photos by the way).

We NEED big science.

Re:I visited the National Ignition Facility this y

[Freddybear]

The article acknowledges that the LINL project still suffers from some of the fiscal management problems which Ryan objected to, which were some of the same problems the SSC suffered from as well. I guess we are to conclude that wasting taxpayer money on bureaucratic snafus is necessary for the advancement of science.

Re:I visited the National Ignition Facility this y

[Ziggitz]

Every branch of government and every government funded project wastes money. Every. Single. One. Are we to conclude that we should just shutdown all government because it isn't 100% efficient with its cash flow? Given the potential for huge scientific advances, the interest such projects can invoke in our children, and the relatively paltry amount of spending in comparison to other government agencies and departments, like DARPA and the DoD, we can easily justify absorbing the budget overflow.

Re:I visited the National Ignition Facility this y

[readin]

We NEED big science.

And we need health care...

and welfare...

and food stamps...

and national defense...

and the space program is really important...

and drug rehabilitation programs...

and the FDA...

and the EPA...

and without the NEA our kids won't learn about art and learning about art has been shown a correlation with higher math and science scores...

and we need to protect our borders...

and did I mention healthcare??



Nearly everything our government does is important to someone but it's clear from our high taxes and massive deficit that we just can't afford it all. Cutting waste will help but it won't enough. Some programs that are good and useful need to be shrunk or eliminated too. Doing so is of course unpopular. Whether or not this particular program was the best one to cut, I'm glad Ryan has the guts to make the hard decisions that need to be made and deal with the political fallout.

VP Waste product

[EmperorOfCanada]

The VP is generally considered a waste product. You don't pick your VP to match your views you pick your VP to fill in the blanks in your own personality. Romney is generally a centrist so he needs a fairly right wing VP. Romney being a Mormon needs a more "Christian" VP although I am surprised he didn't pick a protestant. Also you pick a VP from a swing state. Wisconsin could go either way and has an OK number of electoral collage votes. But at the same time you can't make it look like you have picked a token VP that is unbelievable. Obama has the black vote locked up so a black VP would be a waste and might actually lose Romney some white vote. The same with women voters. A token woman would doubtfully unlock many votes and again might have lost votes that he otherwise owns. The key for both candidates is to get out the existing vote and that is who you are picking the VP for. When I say lose votes I mean that they stay home not that they vote for the other guy.

Where I worry is that Romney's wealth is built upon going into companies that aren't performing well and unlocking hidden wealth. Often this came by doing short term things like cutting R&D. The wealth would be "unlocked" and they would sell the company and make a pile of money. They did other interesting short term things like loading these companies up with debt. This all was great for them when they could cut and run but a country is the opposite. When you look at a policy now you need to think about the implications a century from now.

If defense were to be cut in half and schools spending doubled the implications on defense would be immediate. But the benefits from the school increases might be 20 years down the road. But it would be glorious 20 years from now.

I am a Canadian but it looks like the US suffers from the common malady of all democracies. Somehow we end up with choices that are all crap. In my life I have had the option of voting for one politician who turned out to be good. Somehow we need to be able to weed out these guys earlier in the process. Or maybe eliminate the party system?

How can we have any hope that these guys(most world politicians) will spend wisely on science when they won't even listen to the majority of the population who want the war on drugs to end. Not a peep on an issue that is destroying the culture and economy of the US. This goes way past the issue of who some guy picked to be his spare.

Re:VP Waste product

[ColdWetDog]

The VP is generally considered a waste product. You don't pick your VP to match your views you pick your VP to fill in the blanks in your own personality.

Given that Romney's personality is totally blank, his VP needs to combine Winston Churchill with Groucho Marx mixed in with a bit of Madonna and Gandhi.

Re:I visited the National Ignition Facility this y

[CanHasDIY]

Nearly everything our government does is important to someone but it's clear from our high taxes and massive deficit that we just can't afford it all.

What're you, poor or middle class?

All sardonic social commentary aside, tax rates, at least on the wealthiest of Americans (that's not you nor I, BTW), is the lowest it's been in over half a century.

Not to say the government of today isn't chock-full of waste and bloat, just pointing out facts.

Taxes much higher than you think

[SuperKendall]

You may think taxes are low, but the U.S. corporate tax rate is the highest in the world.

You might be able to raise taxes even more on just the working class, but you'd not come within spitting distance of even eliminating the DEFICIT, much less actual debt.

The only serious way out involves LOTS of cuts, everywhere. If you pretend otherwise you are simply ignorant or on a mission to doom us all. Sure some taxes will be raised also, but it's foolish to pretend taxing will get you all the pretty baubles of government rule you have grown accustomed to.

Re:Taxes much higher than you think

[Vancorps]

So what you're saying is that the tax rates in the 90's, one of the more prosperous times in this country's history was what? Last I checked our economy has grown since then. During that time not only could we afford most of these programs but we had projected surpluses had we stayed on target. It doesn't take a genius to realize that when times are really tough and you're too far in the whole simply cutting back isn't enough, you'll need a second job until you recover.

Let's also probably not mention that companies can write off expansion expenses negating the tax burden. At 39.2% according to your own link, that would be pretty high, care to see how much taxes corporations actually pay? Tax rates are manipulated so much in the political landscape that its no wonder it makes most people's heads spin.

Consider Japan, they lowered their corporate tax rate but use value added taxes to make up the difference. There are incredibly few businesses that actually pay 39.2% in taxes.

Cuts are indeed necessary, but they need not be nearly as severe as the Republican party would have you believe. When asking for sacrifice you should probably make sure that everybody is sacrificing instead of young women who no longer have access to planned parenthood to get birth control pills because they have had so much of their funding taken away that they are only open a few hours a week if at all in certain states. These types of cuts only cause additional problems and more importantly expenses as you then have more women getting pregnant and needing assistance in other ways since they don't have health insurance that covers birth control.

Look at California for trying this method. They have vote mandated spending and their constitution requires that taxes can only be increased through a voter iniative. So people vote for a program and then when it comes time to pay for it they opt out and then you run out of money. The programs would not have been proposed to begin with if there wasn't some problem that needed to be solved. So the answer is to raise taxes and pay for the programs that fix the problems that ravaged this country at the start of the 20th century. All the assistance programs out there were created for reasons, all the regulatory bodies were created for certain reasons. If they aren't working then the answer most often isn't to throw them out entirely, it's to fix the process so that it actually accomplishes the stated goals. Cutting food assistance programs isn't going save the country any money, people need to eat, what is someone that is starving going to do when they can't afford any food? We are seeing already with crime increasing in almost every part of the country.

There is a difference between being a bleeding heart liberal that wants rainbows to shoot out of everyone's butts and a compassionate person that understands that we are all part of a community and that you can help the people in your community and all prosper or leave people to their own devices and end up needing a police state to keep those like myself with means safe.

Re:I visited the National Ignition Facility this y

[Chirs]

Are we NOT to conclude that we should shut down wasteful programs, that we should just carry on?

The answer to waste in a program isn't always to shut down the program. Sometimes you should get rid of the waste within the program.

Re:I visited the National Ignition Facility this y

[flaming error]

Ziggitz is right. While we all love to grouse about government waste, government is not really all that unique. The stereotypical hyper-efficient corporation is a myth - most of us know of stunning wastes of money at our own employer. And our vaunted household finances, while smaller in magnitude, probably include some waste too.

Every human endeavor has waste, and if scrutinized under a microscope, something that somebody could interpret as corruption is nearly everywhere too.

We're not always angels, and we're not always robots. But let's not let that stop us from doing what good we can.

Re:Something more recent and positive?

[khasim]

The bottom line though is the country is broke.

Hardly. We are not managing the economy very well at the moment but that is very different from "broke".

Eventually a welfare state drives out all other spending.

Nice use of a "dog whistle".
What, exactly, is a "welfare state"?

Don't even talk about raising taxes, won't do anything for the deficit.

Actually, done correctly, it will do a LOT for the deficit.

And, done correctly, it will do a lot to get manufacturing jobs back in this country.

Which will do a lot to get the middle class growing again.

Which will further help with the deficit and the economy.

If you want to be a socialist and talk about 'economic justice' and crap like that, go ahead; just don't delude yourself into thinking it is going to raise any actual net revenue.

I think you've just revealed the limitations of your position. You use the word "socialist" and you don't know what it means.

Re:I visited the National Ignition Facility this y

[Vancorps]

Name one government or corporate program that doesn't waste any money. There is a big difference between mismanagement and wasting small amounts of resources. You're right in that projects like the bridge to nowhere should be stopped. The problem from people I know involved in government projects is that companies will bid low to get a contract and then make up their money in change orders. This is the same whether it is an IT project, a construction job, or a defense contract.

Defense contractors are so good at it that they build factories everywhere imposing enormous inefficiency transporting goods needlessly. If the government tries to reign in this project then thousands of jobs are lost across many districts impacting a large number of representatives. So there is no incentive to fix the inefficiency to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars but we can instead tackle waste in small places to the tune of tens of millions. Makes a lot of sense doesn't it?

Re:I visited the National Ignition Facility this y

[Ziggitz]

If you think Ryan is some sort of deficit hawk looking out for the nation's debt and deficit, you haven't seen his voting record over the last ten years.

Re:I visited the National Ignition Facility this y

[uniquename72]

You won't believe me so I won't even cite.

This is perhaps the most cowardly comment ever made on Slashdot.

Re:Something more recent and positive?

[TopherC]

But what if it's a pro-reality bias as well? What kind of balance are you hoping for anyway? I actually thought the article itself was as unbiased as possible. I read slashdot in part because I am a scientist and I care deeply about these kinds of issues. Also science funding is not strictly a democrat/republican issue. The Clinton presidency (actually the congressional election that followed it) marked the beginning of the end of basic science in the U.S. with the cancellation of the SSC.

I want to hear about our candidates individual science policies before I vote. I'm not voting on the basis of party affiliation. It's very hard these days to squeeze out details of science policy, but this article does a good job. My take on the prospects of the U.S. remaining relevant in global, basic science is:
Obama: bad
Romney: maybe slightly worse?
Ryan: horrible
Expectations given the economy: poor

This matters to me, and if my conclusion is wrong due to a media bias, then please let me know! But balance is not bias. I don't need 10 climatologists and 10 anti-global-warming creationists to get the facts on global warming. To gauge Ryan's stance on basic science funding I need nothing more than a careful analysis of his own budget proposals and voting record. This is great stuff! By contrast, in the 2004 election I searched and searched through platforms and speeches to find any mention of basic science at all. I eventually found very brief statements from Kerry and Bush deeply buried in lengthy platform statements. Kerry said that basic science should remain on a par with applied science spending. Bush said that basic science should be privately funded. Since industry has proven to be irrelevant in recent years (post Bell labs) when it comes to basic science, I voted ... well I got outvoted.

Re:Who again?

[iluvcapra]

Romney has a clearly laid out plan for what he wants to do. You may not like the plan, but he has one.

As numerous sources have pointed out, his proposals do not work mathematically. Coming to even this conclusion is problematic because Romney maintains his budget proposals cannot be scored". I don't think this satisfies a common-sense definition of a "clear plan."

Meanwhile Obama and Democrats in general have failed to produce a budget for THREE FUCKING YEARS. How can you vote for that kind of nonsense?

The OMB submits a budget recommendation every year. The House also passes a budget every year, the last one was passed under the Budget Control Act.

You're confusing a knock against Senate Democrats with a knock against Barack Obama, a complaint which is itself baseless and relying on semantics.

Re:I visited the National Ignition Facility this y

[Titan1080]

well, i can think of LOTS of 'projects' that could've saved the trillions of dollars, in absolute, 100% waste. The B1 bomber. The B2 bomber. The stealth bomber. The F22. The F35. The war in Iraq. The war in Afghanistan. Shall I go on?

Re:I visited the National Ignition Facility this y

[trout007]

I've worked in private industry and for government and let me tell you the difference from what I've seen.

In business if you put out a quote for a project you can shop around and use other companies reputation and try to come to a decision.If there is is something vague they will call you and try to figure it out. They will sometimes let little changes go. But sometimes they won't. Let's say you pick a company and they nickel and dime you on changes. You finish that project and decide never to use them again if you though you got screwed.

In government it's the opposite. The lowest bidder get's the job as long as they have the capabilities to do it. If there are two ways to interpret something they intentionally pick the wrong way and deliver it so that they can get paid to make the changes. They are legally right. And next time there is a job they are right back in line and you can't bar them from bidding. A companies reputation for screwing over the government doesn't prevent them from winning the bid. What this does is cause the government to waste even more time and effort to make "perfect" requirements. But as any of us know when you are building something from scratch your requirements are going to evolve.

Re:I visited the National Ignition Facility this y

[s73v3r]

Every branch of government and every government funded project wastes money

The same can largely be said of the private sector as well.

Re:I visited the National Ignition Facility this y

[s73v3r]

Ten percent. For everybody with absolutely no deductions, classes of income (capital gains, unearned, etc) credits (refundable or none) or anything.

Ahh, so you're a Regressive. Glad to have that cleared up.

Because anyone with half a brain can realize that "flat" taxes are inherently regressive, and shift most of the tax burden to the poor and middle class. 10% from someone making $10,000/year is felt far, far more than 10% from someone making $100k/year, and that is felt more than 10% from someone making $1MM/year.

Not to mention the fact that the 10% would not actually bring in enough revenue.

Re:I visited the National Ignition Facility this y

[s73v3r]

The tax should be even at all levels of income, period end of statement. That is the Constitutional answer, as well as the most logical and "Fair". If I pay 13%, then some person making a bazillion dollars a year should pay 13%. If that person pays 10%, I pay 10%.

No. This is inherently Regressive, and has absolutely nothing to do with "Constitutionality".

Re:I visited the National Ignition Facility this y

[s73v3r]

It doesn't hurt the rich at all, like everything it rolls downhill and hurts US

A rich person paying their fair share in taxes does NOT hurt "us". It helps us.

Higher tax rates force the rich to switch from asset appreciation and economic growth to wealth preservation and tax avoidance.

And they magically decide to pay taxes when they're lower?

Re:I visited the National Ignition Facility this y

[Vancorps]

I see the same stuff in business though. Anytime consultants are brought in I see it again and again. I saw it big time when dealing with IBM and even bigger when dealing with Oracle. This problem is not unique to government but it definitely happens a lot more and to large excess which is unfortunate, tragic, and completely unnecessary.

Of course parent I was replying to was trying to say this problem was unique to government implying that government only wastes money and that's simply untrue. I look at hundreds of low-income housing projects just in Arizona and even though the projects come in over budget they do a great deal in helping people get back on their feet after prolonged periods of unemployment. I look at the alternatives and feel like I have to conclude that it was worth it. Hordes of homeless have a tendency to cause a whole host of other problems and I suspect when you add up all the other costs that you at least break even.

There definitely needs to be more accountability in regards to government contracts. My impression is that there simply isn't enough personell available to oversee all the projects that are in motion. Of course this is just because I have friends that work in government so it's mostly hearsey as to the true causes of the bloated spending.

I would love to see a GA database that includes a company's history. If they are always over budget then that should definitely be considered when accepting a low bid from them.

Re:Something more recent and positive?

[TheGratefulNet]

what a cool experiment that would be!!

red states 'hate soshalizm'? fine, let them stand on their own. no federal funding, no federal support, etc etc.

all the blue states benefit since they're not afraid of the concept of sharing. (boggles my mind: all evolved people understand that when you share, you all win. why do people keep trying to deny this?)

maybe after the red states endure some hardships, they'll understand what being part of a civilized society is all about!

Re:I visited the National Ignition Facility this y

[ukemike]

We NEED big science.

And we need health care... and welfare... and food stamps... and national defense... and the space program is really important... and drug rehabilitation programs... and the FDA... and the EPA... and without the NEA our kids won't learn about art and learning about art has been shown a correlation with higher math and science scores... and we need to protect our borders... and did I mention healthcare?? Nearly everything our government does is important to someone but it's clear from our high taxes and massive deficit that we just can't afford it all. Cutting waste will help but it won't enough. Some programs that are good and useful need to be shrunk or eliminated too. Doing so is of course unpopular. Whether or not this particular program was the best one to cut, I'm glad Ryan has the guts to make the hard decisions that need to be made and deal with the political fallout.

Yep we do need all that, and I can think of three things that we don't need. We don't need to spend more than the rest of the planet combined on our military, we don't need a massively expensive police/surveillance state, and we don't need to have almost trivially small tax rates for the richest people. Imagine that! We could get rid of a handful of things we don't need and be able to pay for the things we do need!

Re:I visited the National Ignition Facility this y

[__aaltlg1547]

Nobody is forced at gunpoint to invest in any given business. The same is not true for Government programs. If you don't pay your taxes, sooner or later men with guns will come arrest you. Nice try at a strawman though.

That's the price you pay for living on a country with a government. Not coincidentally, everyplace with a decent standard of living has a very expensive government.

Re:I visited the National Ignition Facility this y

[trout007]

But you can't. Like I said these contractors did things by the book. They aren't doing anything illegal. It's just that in a business relationship sometimes you let things slide because both sides want the project to succeed so everyone can make a profit and can work together in the future. To government contractors it doesn't matter if a project is successful. As long as they follow the legality of the contract requirements they can make as much money as they can get away with. It's not like the government is going to run out of money.

Here is an example. We needed a test bed that you could mount a 150kh mass. Then accelerate it at 30m/s^2 for 4m and bring it to a stop in another 4m. It had to do this in the horizontal and in the vertical +z direction. Pretty simple request for proposal. A local company got the bid. They built it and we went to the acceptance test. It could do it horizontally but it didn't have the power to reach 30m/s^2 in the +z. We told them they needed to fix it. They said it met the requirement because you have to take into account that just sitting still it was resisting 9.8m/s^2 of acceleration from gravity. We said BS. We took it to the lawyers and they said since it was a small business contract they were going to side with the company. I then resigned the part that held the test mass to remove enough mass to get back the capabilities we needed. We did those mods on the tax pays dime.

Funny

[rsilvergun]

The lowest bidder that could claim to do the job always got the work anywhere I worked, except when there was nepotism involved (*cough*Paul Ryan*Cough).

Oh, come off it! Businesses and Gov't both screw up and get screwed. It's part of buying goods and services. The gov't stands out from private enterprise only because whenever society needs something done and it's too expensive to get anyone to pay for it we have the gov't do it. So the numbers are bigger and the loses are too.

Like cars? Like Roads? Guess what, a highway system was too expensive for private industry to bother with. Too much investment, there were better places to make short term gains. Same is true for drugs. You didn't think those companies actually PAID for their research, did you? Lately they can't even get the US gov't to pay for it (deficit cuts you see), and it's all done in Europe. They the drug Co's move it, do a little bit of testing, and release a product. Privatize the profits and socialize the loses. Capitalism at it's finest.

Re:I visited the National Ignition Facility this y

[MightyMartian]

Paying taxes is an obligation of a citizen, and has been for somewhere between six and ten thousand years. Don't like it, move to Somalia.

Re:I visited the National Ignition Facility this y

[dkleinsc]

You haven't cited anything to support this. The fact is, no one has any idea what side of the Laffer Curve we are on. Odds are, we're on the side that says we're collecting too little in taxes.

Actually, a group of economists crunched the numbers and found that the optimal top marginal tax rate was somewhere between 70% and 85%. So we do know which side of the Laffer curve we're on, and it's the side that means that lower tax rates mean less revenue and higher tax rates mean higher revenue. In other words, just like you'd expect, not the bizzaro world where up is down. And yes, reality backs up what the researchers found: For instance, when Bush cut taxes from 39.5% to 35% in 2001, revenue dropped.

The Laffer Curve argument is basically a fraud. You can make the argument that government should always have low taxes, but you can't make it on that basis and have a leg to stand on.

Re:I visited the National Ignition Facility this y

[Weezul]

I'd planned on saying the only companies I've worked at that were more efficient than academic research labs were small start ups. I then realized the small start ups were less efficient than the labs I know too.

Anything big wastes money by the boatload. Avoid bigness unless absolutely necessary. In science, we usually avoid bigness whenever possible, just ain't always possible. In the corporate world, they try achieving bigness though stock value destroying mergers simply to justify a higher salary for the CEO.

If the U.S. doesn't do the science, someone else will. And someone else will reap the rewards. American PhD who wish to actually *do* science are already moving to places like China. America is done.

Re:Who again?

[iluvcapra]

Ryan's do though. With Ryan as the VP a final plan would be much more grounded in logic.

With Ryan as the VP he will no longer be able to vote on his own bill :/ With him out of the House, negotiating the bill falls on John Boehner and Eric Cantor.
If I want the Ryan bill, my most logical course of action is to vote for a Republican House rep, and a Tea Partier in the primary.

As it is, Romney has already started undoing the Ryan budget's Medicare cuts, because he's running for president.

The President should have enough clout to bludgeon Congress into passing a budget, or at least present a budget that even a single member can agree is somehtig worth voting for.

That's the most unconstitutional thing I've ever heard. President's don't "ram" budgets through; don't you remember the Bush administration, when the most pork-laden, deficit-spending omnibuses were drafted and signed without even token opposition from the White House?

But ignore our own blithering incompetence in governing!

I'm not telling anyone to vote for anybody, someone made an argument that had no basis in fact, and I corrected it.

Meanwhile, "blithering incompetence" compared to what? Was the Iraq War "competent"? Was holding House voting open for three hours in order to strong-arm reps into voting for Medicare Part D "competent"? Was the Senate floor debate on Terri Schaivo's life support "competent"? Was flat employment and a lost decade of stagnant wages "competent"? Was the response to Hurricane Katrina "competent"?

I don't know if you're defending Republicans, but I don't understand the "competence" criterion. If running government was about "competence" and "logic" we wouldn't need to hold election. The whole point is that rational, very smart people disagree, and that people, Republican and Democrat, are perfectly happy to live with unsolved problem X if it gets them objective Y. What you call incompetence I call priorities.

So far Romney (tempered as he will be by Ryan)

How does a vice president "temper" a president? VPs have no institutional authority -- at least Cheney had a Rolodex, a long memory and a history with the Bush family. Did Quayle temper Bush I? Did Gore temper Clinton? Does Joe Biden temper Obama?

Your complete interpretation of American politics is ahistorical and groundless, and seems to go no further than shallow sloganeering. It is bullshit. Which is not to say you're voting for the wrong guy, but good luck convincing anyone else.

Re:I visited the National Ignition Facility this y

[Nemyst]

Have you ever tried making a budget with income below the poverty line? It's fairly enlightening. Any cut hurts, even just 5%. The GP didn't mean "feel" in a pseudo-psychological viewpoint, but in a "how much money do I have left" viewpoint. The guy making 100k/year, if getting higher taxes, will hold off on the 2012 TV and keep the 2010 one, or he'll take a smaller car next time, or he'll do 3-week vacations every two years instead of every year. The guy making 20k/year can't cut shit. He's already tight between the rent, food, transportation, hygiene, school/business and perhaps the occasional entertainment.

If you can't realize that living off 90k instead of 100k is much easier than living off 18k instead of 20k, you haven't put much thought into it.

Re:I visited the National Ignition Facility this y

[Maxo-Texas]

Coincidentally, the CBO analysis of the Ryan plan shows a shutdown of the entire government within a decade except defense, medicare, and social security.

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3708

Does that seem sane, smart, wise?

What is with this insistance on keeping a defense budget over the total of the next 20 nations combined? Could we perhaps get by on a defense budget over the total of the next 10 nations combined and leave a little money for the SEC, the agencies that prevent massive chemical spills, those who fund the national high way system, perhaps a small space program, etc?