by Tom Brown
We must start the discussion by saying what we cannot do;
namely rely on new programs, financed by tax increases on high income people,
to spend our way out of our problems.
There are not enough high income people, and even if there were for this
year’s issues, this wouldn’t work on a continuing basis as costs continued to
grow.
It is clear from the new demographics that there are not
enough people that would vote for a purely conservative approach, even if it would
work.
Presumably all of us would vote for a more efficient caring
government responsive to a broad range of issues deemed important to most
demographic groups. Here would be my
priorities.
Regarding employment:
1.
Make retraining a requirement to receive
extended unemployment benefits.
2.
Try to minimize what an employer must pay above
and beyond a basic wage or salary, such as unemployment insurance, social
security or health insurance so it is easy and cheap to hire people. Taxes and benefits should be the
responsibility of the individual but forgiven (in the case of taxes) or accrued
(in the case of insurance or retirement) when the individual is unemployed.
3.
Make vocational training available at the
secondary school level, as an alternative to college preparation.
4.
Make any federal school aid dependent on test
scores and improvements realized so that we are promoting and graduating many
more students that meet standards for their grade level
Regarding immigration:
1.
There must be a path to a work visa and later to
citizenship that exacts a one time penalty for being here illegally that is
high enough discourage future illegals, but reduces the number of undocumented
illegal immigrants.
2.
There must be sufficient temporary and seasonal work visas for needed unskilled and
semiskilled workers.
3.
There must be better policing of professional
work visas to prevent abuse and allowing foreigners to take jobs that young
people should be training for and getting.
4.
We must take politics out of immigration and
work visa quotas, by having congress write the principles and the INS to do the
numbers.
Regarding government’s contribution to the cost of living:
1.
Justify all government services on a cost versus
benefits basis.
2.
Privatize services where appropriate in a way
that access is not impeded and fraud on the part of the public and providers
can be kept low. Health insurance and
road plowing are examples.
3.
Minimum wage must follow inflation, at least on
a lagging basis, so as to be understood by the public as contributing to being
able to earn a living wage. We must
understand and accept that there will be some impact on low level jobs.
4.
Any regulation, existing or proposed, must be
justified on the basis that the harm it would avoid is significantly greater
(say 100x) than the effect on the cost of living plus the cost of
establishing the regulation plus the
ongoing cost of enforcing the regulation
Regarding health care:
1.
Go to two levels of care for all. Basic
which uses proven cost effective practices and efficient delivery systems,
available to all on a subsidized basis with the subsidy depending on income. Advanced which is private where the
delivery system and practices followed are as agreed between the policyholder
and the insurance provider and not subsidized by the government. A board of
experts is to determine on an ongoing basis what constitutes basic care.
2.
More effort to identify what works, especially
with analysis of electronic medical records on an anonymous basis.
3.
It should be noted that some of the Obama care
program is valid certainly including the requirement that all people should
have insurance. This concept would
accomplish this in another way.
4.
It is also important to note that a health savings
account and catastrophic insurance, with a deductible equal to the health
savings account balance at the policy anniversary should be an acceptable way
of meeting the requirement of being insured.
Regarding the tax code:
1.
We should move to a highly simplified tax code
with one or two progressive rates and few if any tax deferrals, exemptions and
deductions.
2.
We should strive for very low corporate taxes.
3.
A minimum tax might be considered but might not
be necessary with low rates and almost no deductions and exemptions.
4.
We could also use the alternate minimum tax
concept to simplify taxes. And in any case
tax revenue analysis must take it into account.
Regarding retirement:
1.
All pension contributions from a company or
government agency must be placed in a trust account in the year earned.
2.
Retirement age must be increased based on current
life expectancy; savings must be increased by removing IRA contribution limits.
Regarding infrastructure:
We need to catalog and prioritize infrastructure that serves
interstate commerce. We should pay for
it partially with an increased fuel tax and partially through eliminating ‘pork
barrel’ projects.
Otherwise infrastructure must be a state and local issue.
Regarding the balanced budget:
We must remember that we are now inflicting a horrible
financial burden on our children, grandchildren and beyond by having a budget
deficit.
We need spending cuts to balance the budget within 5 to 10
years. Maybe 8 years for political
reasons.
We need a temporary revenue increase to reduce the deficit and
finance the transition over a 5 to 10 year period.
The spending cuts need to be thought out and carefully
studied to minimize the impact on citizens.
As an example, we cannot simply cut Medicare reimbursement
rates. We need to establish qualifying
criteria for a given treatment and establish treatment protocols so that only
the lowest cost effective treatment is allowed.
This must be coupled with changes in how the treatment is delivered to
further lower costs.
We probably need to negotiate reimbursed drug costs; we have
high costs on branded costs the in some cases subsidize the cost of drugs to
other countries. It would not
necessarily hurt to have reduced drug research; we have a lot of “me too”
drugs.
Regarding efficient government:
1.
We cannot pay people who are not working except
for a relatively brief period. Some of
what is now extended unemployment could possibly be spent on retraining the
unemployed for available jobs.
2.
We cannot guarantee home loans for people who
cannot get them in normal private channels, as there are big risks of downstream
defaults guaranteed by the taxpayers.
