Budget Crisis Woes: real opportunities to get spending under control

-exerpt from the movie "A Man Called Peter"

April 23, 2011 - One night I was sitting and munching, flipping through channels looking for nothing in particular when I
happened across a documentary about so-called “shadow agencies” which are off the radar of the American people. In
the course of the documentary there was an agency with some insignificant name like “office of government supply” or
something like that. Hearing that you would think “ok, it’s a warehouse where they keep pens and paper to supply govern-
ment agencies”. Not so.

A person being interviewed said “NASA launches satellites for environmental and weather purposes; they send up
shuttles for their purposes. We launch satellites for our purposes and send up shuttle missions for our purposes.” Ok,
so now that means there’s an agency that parallels NASA. But are there others?

Another person interviewed said he worked for some agency that goes into foreign countries, recruits contacts and
gathers information. They also work to destabilize foreign governments and were very active in Panama in the 1980s,
for example. The interviewer asked “but I thought that was what the C.I.A. did?” The response was “the C.I.A. has their objectives and we have ours.”

In the current day of governmental crisis, what with the economy in shambles, government spending out of control, debt soaring and the deficit seemingly uncontrollable, are there areas other than Medicare for the elderly that need cut? Are there so called “black ops” or “shadow” programs that are bleeding the American tax payer?

If you mentioned cutting some of these “behind the scenes” programs a Republican might call you unpatriotic or un-American. If you mentioned this to the Democrats they would probably criticize you and call you ‘anti-establishment’. Its sad because we know the government is one of the most wasteful spenders in the world.

If you listen to politicians you hear things like “Medicare is so costly” or “social security is going bankrupt” and other criticism of entitlement programs. But those items are what are known in the public budget. But what about the secretive or blacked out budget items? Perhaps its time for the government to clean under their own rug before cutting the tax payer’s rug out from beneath him.

I’ve heard for years that social security is going to go bankrupt and those of us retiring years down the road may be left in the cold. But what if congress sliced wasteful spending and began repaying the social security trust back all the money, with interest, that they “borrowed” and threw away all these years? Oh, but that would give the working class citizen a sense of security wouldn’t it?

To begin with cutting junk items such as bridges to nowhere, hundred-dollar toilet seats and other perks would be a great start. Instead of having two NASA styled agencies, combine into one and trim the fat; instead of having two C.I.A. styled agencies, ditto, combine and trim the fat; and continue on streamlining government. Try calling FEMA to ask about your earthquake zone and you’ll get nowhere. I did and the inept agent told me “now if you ask me about a hurricane I could help, but I just don’t know anything about no earthquake”. What the hell is FEMA prepared for? He said he could tell me about hurricanes, but after Katrina we know that his knowledge was dismal, just like congresses knowledge about how to manage the government.