....that you can't recognize a joke. You won't recognize "real" solutions either, but I'll give it a try.
Okay, a serious answer. How to reduce the deficit? Easy - stop spending so much money.
To start, don't pay for the following:
$200,000 for recreation improvements in North Pole, Alaska.
$100,000 to renovate a Coca-Cola building in Macon, Georgia.
$3.5 million for bus acquisition in Atlanta, Ga.
$2 million for kitchen relocation in Fairbanks North Star Borough in Fairbanks, Alaska.
$1.5 million for a demonstration project to transport naturally chilled water from Lake Ontario to Lake Onondaga.
$500,000 for the Kincaid Park Soccer and Nordic Ski Center in Anchorage, Alaska.
$250,000 for the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, Tenn.
$200,000 for Fenton Street Village pedestrian linkages in Montgomery Co., Md.
$100,000 for a municipal swimming pool in Ottawa, Kan.
$80,000 for the San Diego Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Community Center.
$75,000 for the Paper Industry International Hall of Fame in Appleton, Wis.
$35,000 for the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame.
$25,000 for fitness equipment for the YMCA in Bradford County, Pa.
$200,000 for the Aviation Hall of Fame.
$100,000 for the Punxsutawney Weather Museum.
$725,000 for the Please Touch Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
$200,000 for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio.
$150,000 for a single traffic light in Briarcliff Manor, New York.
$100,000 for the International Storytelling Center in Jonesborough, Tennessee.
$500,000 for the Montana Sheep Institute.
$50 million to construct an indoor rainforest in Coralville, Iowa.
Oh heck, it would take too much time to list them all. How about we just eliminate the 10,656 such projects in the 13 appropriations bills passed in FY 2004 that accounted for well over $23 billion dollars.
Let the world deal with their own AIDS problem, they don't appreciate it anyway, and keep the $15 billion we're spending for that.
Return federal highway and mass transit spending to the states and save $37 billion.
Devolve federal housing programs to state and local governments and cut federal strings on how the programs are operated to save $31 billion.
Send job training programs back to the states and save $6 billion.
The federal government cannot even account for $25 billion spent in 2003, and The U.S. General Accounting Office refuses to certify the federal government's own accounting books because the bookkeeping is so poor.
Reduce food stamp overpayments and save $1 billion.
Verify parent incomes for school lunches and save $120 million.
Improve eligibility verification and tracking of student loan recipients and save at least $1 billion.
Prevent states from using accounting tricks to secure extra Medicaid funds and save $3 billion.
Eliminate fuel tax fraud and save $1 billion.
Stop veterans program overpayments and save $1 billion.
Collect $3 billion in outstanding debt owed to the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Stop Medicare overpayments and save $12 billion.
Reform Medicare so that it no longer overpays for prescription drugs and medical supplies and save $3 billion.
Recover the $7 billion owed by Medicare contractors.
Reform the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) to stop overpayments to save $9 billion.
The federal government makes about $20 billion in overpayments every year.
How about making it easy - we just implement an automatic across-the-board 10 percent reduction in ALL government spending, and continue for 5 years. And then we implement an across-the-board tax rate cut, and continue that for 5 consecutive years.
And all these things would ONLY be a nice start. Then we can get really serious about getting the government out of our lives.
NOTE: Is should go without saying, but these were all cut and pasted from a variety of sources.
