(06-14-2010, 07:16 PM)kandrathe Wrote: I just don't think you'd ever hear a politician declare they are willing to quit spending on any back water hole. As a general principle, it rarely works to have the clueless congressman wielding the shotgun approach to looking for the best opportunities for investing our wealth. It's a great way to maximize spending, and minimize productivity. The best answer I can think of is to limit the amount of money in their control to only what is absolutely necessary.
As Pete has already pointed out, the amount of money wasted on pointless government spending is really quite small. The largest chunks of the budget are spent where they are for obvious reasons, on perfectly justifiable things: The military. Health care. Social security payments. Debt service. You can't stop making those payments without breaking contracts, or cutting back on the military in wartime. This is not the "clueless congressman" with a "shotgun approach". These are obvious expenses that exist for perfectly coherent reasons. The amount of money spent on wacky random crap is, at most, a few percent. If you killed every last pork earmark, the US fiscal situation would not look noticeably different.
-Jester