In the wake of the demand that we triple federal spending and tax those bastard rich to pay for it, I thought I'd offer you the other side...the primary reason why I believe that EVERY government department, EVERY program, could stand at least a 10% cut. It's also a reason why I've come to loathe the way our bureaucracy so often works.

For 5 1/2 years, as you all know, I was the manager of a group home for the developmentally disabled. I'd get to see the budgets "from the inside".

Our food and household budgets were the same from month to month, but every year we would get a budget for "big ticket" items. Ideally, this was to pay for furnishings, home maintenance issues beyond our maintenance budget, etc. Every January, we would have this budget to work with.

When I started managing, being my frugal self, I tried to pace out the budget. After all, we needed to keep a reserve in case a TV stopped functioning or something not covered by the maintenance budget or the residents' funds (in the case of items damaged directly through their actions). The first thing my supervisor taught me was that in our agency, this was a nono. This budget was ideally to be spent before January 31, under the idea that if an emergency occurred, they would HAVE to cover it, whether they wanted to or not, and that if we had money held in reserve, they would draw out of that first.

We were also taught the "if you don't use it, you lose it" principle. One year we learned in October that our food budget had been miscalculated and that we had money coming into the food budget that hadn't been provided to us. We had two and a half months to spend down the surplus, in addition to our regular food budget. As a result, our Christmas party included lobster tails on the menu...all on the taxpayer's dime.

Yet despite these surpluses, our bosses were constantly begging for extras, constantly complaining there wasn't enough money in the budget to take care of these poor, needy individuals. Every year, it was the same story: we were struggling, and these poor people would be left homeless if legislators didn't vote in X% increase.

I believe that virtually every department could be cut by 10% without the people who are most reliant on the aid feeling it at all, provided those cuts are made in the right places. Take food stamps, for instance. Federal guidelines currently state that a family of four is eligible for food stamps as long as their net income does not exceed $19,356. A family my size (family of 8) is eligible as long as the net income does not exceed $32,400. I believe that cutting at the top end of that, as well as cutting the dollar of food stamps received at the top end is not only reasonable and fair, but necessary. During the brief time we received food stamps, we received well in excess of $500 a month. It was so much more than what we needed that we found ourselves having to find ways to spend down the surplus, because there is no incentive for money not spent. Without some hard research, I would have a hard time saying exactly where the income cap should lie, but I personally believe that no family, regardless of size, should be receiving food stamps if their annual net income exceeds $25,000. Remember, this is net, not gross, income.

For too long our government has been treated like an endless trough: "if you spend it, they will pay" is the mantra of far too many bureaucrats. It is not until we begin cutting off the agencies that operate on this mentality that we will begin to see an effective change. I guarantee that if the local HeadStart program has to shut its doors November 15, somebody will find a way to fill in the gap and some heads will roll once the poor money management that resulted in the closure is exposed. Sure there will be people demanding bigger government (sadly, there always are) but the simplest way to counter that is to show them just HOW MUCH money was flushed down the drain. If people knew, for instance, how much their governments actually spend on education, they would not be so quick to demand a raise.

The figures do not lie: we are spending over $9000 per man, woman and child on the federal government. That is simply too much, and we need to figure out how to reign in the runaway spending. If we don't do it now, we will have little choice but to become a socialist nation to pay for the excess. And the entire country will suffer greatly if that happens.