U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., has a good idea for the new Congress: He plans to seek to eliminate $200 billion in federal government waste.
That’s a fine plan — so long as neither he nor any other cost-cutting lawmaker believes that dropping $200 billion worth of spending is “enough,” when we are running a total national debt over $14 trillion. Issa’s proposed cut would be a “good start,” but it is far from what we ultimately need to do as a nation to get our fiscal house in any sort of reasonable order.
With Republicans having won a majority of seats in the House of Representatives in the November elections, Issa is the new head of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. That puts him in a position to identify and seek to weed out lots of wasteful and even unconstitutional federal spending.
Commendably, the congressman has joined much of the Republican majority in the House in vowing to de-fund the trillion-dollar ObamaCare socialized medical program and to work for its eventual repeal.
That, too, would be a step in the right direction. But even that would not be enough. So many departments and programs are getting so many taxpayer dollars unjustifiably that it is going to require a huge, top-to-bottom review of Washington’s spending priorities to have any hope of cutting government down to size. The spending runs the gamut from farm subsidies to costly “incentives” for various “alternative energy” schemes. The list is almost endless.