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

To recap:  yesterday I looked at the first pages of President Obama's proposed budgets for the Department of Agriculture, Department of Commerce and the Department of Education.   Without batting an eye, I found $1 billion and $210 million in the first two departments that I would cut.  Then, concluding that no amount of trimming fat would make the remaining meat in the Department of Education at all tasty, I would cut its entire $50 billion budget.  See how easy it is?

Today, let's move on to the Department of Energy's proposed FY 2011 budget.   Again, we're just looking at the first page.  

I am actually happy to see the following:

The Budget substantially expands support for DOE loan guarantees for innovative energy technologies, by adding $36 billion in new loan authority (for a total of $54.5 billion) for nuclear power facilities.

Look, I drive four or five times a year across Iowa to my visit my wife's family in Omaha.  I've seen wind farms till the cows come home.   I like them; they're pretty.  But we aren't going to power a 21st Century economy with wind farms.  Anybody who thinks we are hasn't looked at the statistics.  According to the U.S. Department of Energy, America in 2008 generated a total of 7.7% of its total electric power needs from "other renewables," which according to a footnote includes "[w]ood, black liquor, other wood waste, municipal solid waste, landfill gas, sludge waste, agriculture byproducts, other biomass, geothermal, solar thermal, photovoltaic energy, and wind."   Meanwhile, we get 76% from coal, petroleum and natural gas, and another 10% from nuclear.   So I am all for more nuclear.   For instance, I would be happy if we produced as much electricity from nuclear power facilities as France does... about 75% of their total electricity needs!  And they even export electricity!

Why we have let the Luddite ninnies on the left keep us from building nuclear power plants will be an interesting research project a hundred years from now when we are a third-class economy.   But never mind for now.  

Back to the DoE's budget's first page.  

Nearly $2.4 billion is provided for energy efficiency and renewable energy programs, an increase of $113 million over the 2010 appropriation, including $302 million for solar energy, $220 million for biofuels and biomass R&D, $325 million for advanced vehicle technologies, and $231 million for energy efficient building technologies. These investments will help reduce dependence on oil and create long-term, sustainable economic growth in the low-carbon industries of the future, helping to foster long-term job creation.

Now we're getting somewhere.  Solar energy?  Let private companies do that.  Biofuels?  Sounds like subsidies for the ethanol industry.   Advanced vehicle technologies?  That's what Ford and Chrysler used to be for.   Energy efficient building technologies?  Let these "green" venture capitalists like Al Gore fund that.  

Which leads me to a grand theory of everything in cutting the budget:  cut every program where the government arrogantly presumes to pick winners and losers better than the market could.   If a government is subsidizing something, that means as a matter of economic freaking law that consumers won't buy it at the price that it can currently be produced.  

So, $2.4 billion.  Not bad for a lunch hour.  Again, makes you wonder what your Congressman does all day, doesn't it?

Oh, right, I remember... well, not for long, sister.