The Regular Guy Believes... Cutting Federal Government Spending is Child's Play

There is a consensus in the country that the federal government is too large and spends too much.  Unfortunately, there is also apparently a consensus in the country that the federal budget can't be meaningfully reduced because.... well, just because.   We're like the teenager who has to do a chore who, although perfectly capable of figuring out how to download songs from the Internet, is suddenly incapable of doing the simplest task like making their beds or hanging up their clothes.   It's too hard!   It will take too long!   It might hurt a little!

Well, the Regular Guy -- the title character of this blog whom I conceive to be an American Everyman, a repository of the commonest of common sense, the man who pays his bills, raises his kids, refinishes his own basement, cuts his own grass, goes to work, comes home, loves his wife, walks his dog, greets his neighbors by name, and, in the words of Jimmy Stewart in It's a Wonderful Life, "does most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community" -- knows that cutting federal government spending would be easy.   There, I said it.  E-A-S-Y.   Forget about cutting funding for National Public Radio or the National Endowment for the Arts.  Let's get right to brass tacks... we can go department by department.  

Consider these entries from the very first page of the Department of Agriculture's section in President Obama's FY 2011 budget: 

• "Expanding access to broadband services by offering $418 million in loans and grants to transition rural communities into the modern information economy."   Cut it... it's not my job to work to make money to pay taxes to make sure that teenagers in rural Idaho can play Call of Duty online or check out the latest Katy Perry boob fest video.
• "Developing rural recreation and employment opportunities, including fishing and hunting for local residents and tourists by proposing more than $700 million to restore and manage public lands." Cut it... again, it's not my job to work to make money to pay taxes to make sure that the dads of the aforementioned Idahoan teenagers can get away from their snotty kids to hunt and fish.  Sorry, buddy, pay for it yourself.
• And here's the big one:  "At a time of continued need, the President’s Budget provides $8.1 billion for discretionary nutrition program supports, which is a $400 million increase over the 2010 enacted level. Funding supports 10 million participants in the WIC program, which is critical to the health of pregnant women, new mothers, and their infants."  Cut it... sorry, I know this sounds bad, but it's not my job to work to make money to pay taxes to buy food for other men's children.  Your boyfriend/husband is a deadbeat who can't support his kids?  Don't let him touch you, much less get you "with child."  If he catches you in a weak moment and you get pregnant, you've got moms and dads and sisters and brothers and grandmas and grandpas and uncles and aunts and cousins who can help.  But don't expect the government to come shove a gun in my face and take my money so that you don't have to be embarrassed by asking your own family for help(which is essentially what the IRS does).  

OK, so maybe I'm being facetious there.   Maybe cutting WIC is too hard.  That's why they name things the "Women, Infants and Children" program.   That's how they name government programs... so that anyone who wants to cut them later will be accused of wanting to starve babies.   If they called it the "Let Deadbeat Dads Buy Cigarettes and Whiskey Instead of Food for Their Own Children" program, you could probably gin up a little more support for cutting it.  But let's put that aside.

Even so, on the first page of the Ag Department's budget -- the first freaking page! -- I managed to find at least $1 billion in cuts for things that any reasonable person would conclude we just can't afford.  Broadband for people living in the sticks who don't have it?  Tough, we can't do that.  Better hunting and fishing resorts in national parks?  Tough, can't afford it.  $1 billion, out.   Child's play.

It took me a minute to find that $1 billion to cut.  But it takes a couple hundred Regular Guys like me working full time for our entire lives to make that much money.  It's not just stupid for the government to take our money and piss it away.   It's immoral.