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Solutions to out-of-control spending by politicians:

1. Reduce all Government department and agency budgets by 30% and initiate hiring freeze limitations until the Federal debt is paid.

2. Eliminate 20% of Government departments.

3. Stop the automatic increases and continuance of department budgets.

4. Reduce the pay of Representatives and Senators by 30% each year if there is a budget deficit and less than a 10% reduction of Federal debt. (For Senators, this could mean they would owe money to the Government in their fourth year and beyond).

5. Stop accepting RFCs (request for changes) to contracts over an accumulated 5% of the initial contract for the contract duration.

6. Reduce Federal regulations and laws.

7. Make each civil service job subject to four-year contracts.

This solution only seems harsh and impossible, but consider there are over 430 departments, agencies, and sub-agencies in the Federal Government. That number is a guess on the low side since there is no authoritative list of Government agencies. One site estimates the existence of 456 agencies.[1]

For example, take a look at eliminating the Department of Education. Doing this would impact over 4,000 employees and fifteen departments, each with many sub-departments and organizational groups. The Carter administration created the current Department in 1979 with a budget of 14 billion and 17,000 employees. The budget has expanded to about 68 billion today, with fewer reported employees (about 4,000).

Compare the Department of Education with the Apollo program, which had the goal of landing on the moon. The Apollo program spent 28 billion between 1960 and 1973.

In today's dollars, the amounts for the Education Department began at over 44 billion a year while the Apollo program spent about 23 billion per year–both numbers using adjusted dollars per year. So, yes, the Department of Education – one of the minor Federal departments – costs more than putting men on the moon.

This is not to say the Education Department should be deleted. Try picking other departments, but choose wisely to reach a 20% reduction. Consider the value added to America vs. the cost. Entire departments need not be deleted, but reducing their budgets may require deleting agencies and sub-agencies within numerous Federal departments.

Defense contractors bid on a project knowing the Request for Changes, RFCs will double or more than double the initial cost of the contract. More RFCs occur when contractors assist in writing detailed requirements with unknowledgeable government officials. The details are part of the contract. When the Government officials ask for an ‘improvement’ to the design or service, an RFC is made in response.

Government officials are rarely versed in engineering, systems design, or production. As a result, they may request a configuration that details a costly attribute that duplicates what they know but does not fit what they want. Multiple government contracts doing the same thing are not uncommon.

Cost-plus contracts must be avoided.

Contractors often ‘sell’ improvements to establish functional changes that always cost more money. Military people and contractors are patriotic, intelligent, and mission-oriented. Still, the lack of purchaser expertise concerning design is often displayed within the detailed requirements that change too often, and every change can be costly. The paperwork on a large contract change can cost over $60k, and that is not the change – just the paperwork documenting the change. Federal contracts can avoid this problem by limiting their ‘desires’ to a high-level description of what they want without inserting specific design criteria. The Fed could also employ non-involved experts instead of military and political servants to oversee contracts. (They will say this is done, but it has not been done successfully). A General or Admiral might demand a design and implementation that uses only a fraction of a capability while not considering a method or process that is not easily understood. Yes, it has happened, but you won’t know because it was classified.

Another aspect that must change is the removal of political representatives involved with the contract. Politicians control the budget, but rewarding contracts based on donations from companies within a region they serve should not be allowed. This corrupt practice can reduce the quality of military acquisitions. Our servicemen deserve the best.

Federal systems have an inefficient model of reward, also exemplified by many business practices. First comes the employee requirements. Credentials hire employees, i.e., we need so many people with master's degrees or doctorates who fit within this payment amount and are deemed necessary to achieve contract goals. At least one major aerospace company avoids hiring anyone with less than a master’s degree.

One should note that many successful business people have made brobdingnagian fortunes without the credentials required by the Government.

Government employees, however, are limited by the scope and salary caps of the ‘rank’ assigned to them within Government specifications. Unfortunately, in many circumstances, getting promoted requires becoming ‘management’ which, in turn, requires a more extensive staff. This paradigm explains why bureaucracies grow while production and services remain stagnant.

The number of Generals, Admirals, and high officers grows asymptotically because that is the only path for increased reward or a pay raise outside the confines of a currently held rank. Compensation is based on position, not merit. The class structure of the military is mimicked within government organizations as well as private businesses.

For some Government officials, including contractors, the most crucial part of any contract is an organization chart.

However, the work must still be done, and more groups are grown or created to ‘support’ the actual workers.

Over two hundred highly educated employees might support fifteen principal engineers. The employees have meetings and cycle changes through departments and organizations for review. At the end of the cycle, the originating engineers are empowered to approve the changes/products they created. If the two hundred supporting engineers were removed, the most significant change would be a drastic shortening of the time involved in making more cost-effective changes or creating updated products. Yes, that happened, and yes, it was classified.

If that portrayal sounds ridiculous, consider the effort to reduce a thirty-day timeline to one day that could not be approved because it would eliminate over 2,000 jobs in one building. When organizations and livelihoods are threatened, they fight back to retain the fiefdoms they have created. Bureaucracy growth results from intelligent people seeking to improve their livelihood by the only means provided within Government edicts.

This may sound unbelievable to those who have never attended a preliminary meeting to a preparatory meeting to support an actual meeting. However, it would also be a mistake to think only a few profitable private businesses run this way. This model is not a planned effort. It is the result of a reward based on structure, not capability, quality, or timeliness. Within this structure, managers refer to employees as ‘slots.’ Their goal is to create more slots to improve and create managerial positions.

Government organizations also buy similar products from different contractors. Each contract offers a slightly different list of requirements but generally results in many efforts performing duplicate tasks and building similar systems. The cost of maintaining each system incorporates the potential to last forever. Sometimes, different systems will share functionality to create a new stovepipe of bureaucracy. If you want to make two or more projects more expensive, put the word ‘Joint’ in front of them.

Why isn’t this public knowledge? Contractors often ‘classify’ what they do for the Government using political endorsement. A citizen cannot change or critique what they cannot see. Any employee postulating an improvement that eliminates ‘slots’ should have another job in reserve. The needs of many will crush the need for improvements. Whistleblowers are not protected.[2] The attempt to achieve mission objectives is not necessarily a whistleblower action but merely employees trying to achieve a contracted goal. In some cases, failure is rewarded.

The budget, however, speaks for itself. Changing this model of inefficiency will be difficult as many loyal, honest, and patriotic citizens will lose their jobs and, in some cases, careers. Finding employment or training employees for other non-government programs can help individuals succeed in a growing economy. Attrition is another avenue of cost savings, but removing management is necessary. All too often, when discovered, as in the example of two hundred vs. fifteen employees, the administrators did not lose their jobs, but many others did. Management was moved to create new organizations with more ‘slots’ to justify their existence. It is a self-sustaining model with repeatable outcomes.

Combining stovepipe organizations can be as necessary as it is challenging. The status quo is always difficult to overcome. If the ability to lay off employees is an essential aspect of reducing costs, removing management is even more critical. Reductions need to start near or at the top of organizations. Four-year contracts with employees would provide some measure of job security while allowing an unchallenged employee reduction as necessary. Civilian contractors have no guarantee of a position on a year-to-year basis.

No Colonel ever made General by deleting his organization.

Regulations and laws often create debilitating costs to businesses and contracts. Removing rules and laws also eliminates the expense of enforcing them. Lawmakers often grant regulations to agencies to apply to specific programs but impact many operations not considered by the originators. Nonetheless, the full power of the Federal Government is used against those who fail to adhere to each legislative edict.

Approximately four to six million words of new laws are created within each two-year Congress. Congressional leaders do not have the capability, expertise, or time to write each rule imposed by agencies. The agency's response is to incorporate the larger view of what Congress has made into law. Congress does provide procedural statutes to dictate the rule-writing process of their agency minions who are otherwise unaccountable for what they create.

This must stop. Elected officials should write laws, not hirelings. The Constitution and first amendments comprise less than 7600 words. Millions of words, often not understandable by citizens, open an avenue of corruption and unaccountability that impacts our budget and the freedoms of citizens. Rules and regulations add to the morass of procedures and documentation that obfuscate representation and give the Federal Government too much power while raising the Federal Government's costs.

Congress, the public, and the Executive Branch can review the rules before activation. The process is extensive and requires a staff of people to ensure all the legal jargon appears legal.

The resulting Code of Federal Regulations is over 175,000 pages.[3] No one should think our Congress accomplishes very little. They establish agency rules, regulations, and enforcement measures that can be adjusted, scrutinized, and even deleted. The rules impact every citizen in the nation. They may conflict with local laws, permits, and licensing enforceable by the full authority of unelected agency representatives who can apply their power in a draconian manner. They can and often do abuse their power and have no accountability.

Most regulations must be relegated to State authorities, not the Federal Government. That is why the Tenth Amendment is part of the Bill of Rights.

These solutions need one more method to achieve success—establishing a citizen committee tasked to review budget allocations and extract individual budget items deemed wasteful or unnecessary for further study. This committee would not have veto power but could remove line items from a budget before a congressional vote. The bill’s voting process will then continue without the extracted items.

Each extracted item can be resubmitted by Congress and reestablished within a separate budget bill. Having already deemed the proposal a wasteful expenditure, the committee will not review the specific item in the following legislation. Still, each rejected item will require a separate bill for a vote.

In today’s budgets, anyone can point to an absurd article but cannot remove it. This committee is tasked with setting aside wasteful items before a vote. Another vote by Congress, however, may approve each ridiculous allocation of taxpayer dollars in a separate bill. Extracting specific items might disrupt the bundling nature of bills that coerce representatives to agree to wasteful line items to pass a budget. This committee will consist of a maximum of only one member per state, and no bundled appropriation shall be introduced for a vote without their perusal. The committee members appointed by State Governors will serve a two-year term. Committee evaluations will be done electronically.

This anti-pork committee is a seemingly unnecessary oversight made appropriate due to the dysfunctional nature of Congress. Each nominated extraction will require the support of thirty anti-pork committee members to be approved. Out-of-scope, waste, and inapplicable expenditures are the only criteria allowed for extraction. The anti-pork committee's sole reason for existence is to remove pork, not change or impede legislation.

Line-item vetoes are designated as unconstitutional. The anti-pork committee has no veto authority, and the content is extracted before a vote. Congress can create a new bill to reintroduce individual pork items for a vote. The anti-pork committee will not review solitary items.

However, even an anti-pork committee cannot curtail spending not regulated by the Treasury and not budgeted by Congress.

Funds the DOJ collected from settlements paid by banks can be distributed to politically aligned groups rather than taxpayers or bank customers. Financial industry fines in 2015 allowed and incentivized banks to send money to far-left non-victim groups.[4] Over 120 billion dollars were ‘extracted’ as settlement fines. The distribution is opaque.[5] Money collected by any government agency must have a treasury accounting for the distribution of funds. Deals, including settlements that forgive two dollars of fines for every dollar given to selected groups or used to fund a program whose budget was eliminated by Congress, should never occur–again.[6]

Your home is the first note in the symphony of American Culture.

[1] http://infomory.com/numbers/number-of-agencies-in-the-federal-government/

[2] https://www.longislandpress.com/2017/01/14/obamas-legacy-historic-war-on-whistleblowers/

[3] https://regulatorystudies.columbian.gwu.edu/reg-stats

[4] https://redstate.com/diary/qstarweb/2017/03/06/obama-doj-busted-funneling-bank-fine-money-far-left-activist-groups-n236462

[5] https://www.investors.com/politics/commentary/justice-department-says-bank-shakedowns-public-service/

[6] https://dailycaller.com/2016/05/20/feds-divert-millions-to-slush-fund-that-fuels-these-liberal-activist-groups/