Maastricht Treaty revisions needed?

[--Pete]

Hi,

The US needs to back off, and let people take care of their own issues.

And this relates to taking money from state A and spending it in state B how?

In the case of States, you can look at the "2009 stimulus bill" for which the bulk of the so-called stimulus went to bail out States whose falling revenue could no longer sustain their social programs.

Your original remark was about US military presence outside the USA. I still don't see how that relates to the transfer of money from state to state by the federal government.

Come to Minnesota. We give away General Assistance checks every month to all who show up to collect them.

From your link:

Eligibility requirements

Program participants must fit at least one of the 15 categories of eligibility specified in state statutes. Eligibility categories are primarily defined in terms of disability and unemployability. Most applicants and recipients are required to apply for benefits from federally funded disability programs for which they may qualify, such as Retirement, Survivors, and Disability Insurance or Supplemental Security Income. In addition, the person or couple must have income and resources less than program limits. The resource limit for all units is $1000. After subtracting certain income disregards, a single person must have net income less than $203 per month, and a couple must have net income less than $260 per month

Hardly sounds like a walk in and get get money situation.

That is not the gist of what I was saying. If you reduce the need for the handouts, and increase the accountability for the handouts then you reduce the amount being given away, and you reduce the amount of fraud.

You have two different things going on here. One is reducing the need for handouts, which will indeed reduce both the amount handed out and the amount of fraud (although it might increase the percentage of fraud). However, I'm not sure how you propose to do that. Or, rather, I've read your ideas on how to do that, but I don't think most, if any, would work. Historically, many of them have been tried and had no success or even worsened the situation.

The second point is "increase the accountability". That doesn't come for free. I am not in a position to either calculate how much is lost to fraud nor what it would cost to reduce it. It may be that the state could spend a bit more in monitoring for a net savings. It may also be that a practical increase in monitoring (and not just some window dressing proclamation) would cost more than it saves. Indeed, it could even be the case that a reduction in monitoring would yield a net savings if the money being spent on monitoring is more than that lost to fraud.

You don't like it much when people put words in your mouth. Please don't do that to me. There is a difference between consolidating within the federal government, and consolidating to a federal government.

It seemed to me that those were the words coming out of your mouth. But, fair enough, my apologies.

However, I do fail to see the difference you claim. Economies of scale, better utilization of resources, uniformity of 'product', elimination of redundant efforts. All those and more apply to any consolidation. Indeed, the only difference I see is that one agrees with your point of view and the other doesn't. One reduces the federal government, the other increases it. However, the increase in the federal government should be more than offset by the reduction in the state, county, district, and city levels. Unlike you, I'm more interested in reducing the total size of government, not just the federal.

--Pete