Let me call to your attention a noble and popular (if perhaps slightly under-baked) political initiative launched by Congressman Eric Cantor and the House Republican Economy Recovery Working Group. It’s called YouCut. The goal is to let people vote for spending cuts they’d like to see Congress enact.
The response has been enthusiastic. Cantor reports that the first week YouCut was up and running, visitors cast an average of more than 3,000 votes an hour. People are also mailing in ideas of their own — tens of thousands of ideas.
Yet so far there have been only two “winners” of the YouCut budget-cut sweepstakes. One winning idea was to cut a redundant welfare program. The other was to drop the latest pay raise for nonmilitary federal employees. These cuts would save several billion in the short run and many more billions down the line.
Great . . . but why have only two spending-cut ideas passed muster so far? We’ve got trillions in expenditures to eliminate. And it’s really not that hard to find greasy marbled slabs in the federal budget to hack away at. YouCut’s contest rules are way too “conservative.”
Therefore, by the power vested in me as a fellow downtrodden taxpayer, I hereby authorize any and all spending cut ideas vetted by YouCut visitors that earn more than a dozen votes be judged victorious and worthy of immediate implementation.
Congratulations to all you winners.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.