Senator Mark Pryor wants our ideas on how to cut federal spending. Take a look at this video clip below:
Senator Pryor has asked us to send our ideas to him at cutspending@pryor.senate.gov and I have done so in the past and will continue to do so in the future. Here are a few more I just emailed to him myself at 7:29 pm cst on April 28, 2011.
John Brummett in his article “Pryor’s words drift in gentle breeze,” Arkansas News Bureau, April 24, 2011 noted:
Pryor had not declared that he would insist on real and meaningful spending cuts before he voted to raise the debt ceiling. He had declared only that he would insist on a real and meaningful “commitment” to debt reduction.
Commitment is not an empirical thing. It is of the heart, mind and soul, thus not visible to the naked eye. Pryor was not making his debt-limit vote contingent on actual reductions in spending. He was making the vote contingent on reading the minds of his colleagues.
That was more like the Pryor we know.
He also told the political animals that Republicans who eschew all tax increases are wrong and that Democrats who insist that the nation’s budget problem can be solved solely by higher taxes on high incomes also are wrong.
Perhaps, then, you are waiting for his plan to reconcile these polarized views. You should feel free to keep waiting. Pryor was commenting, not advocating.
He said we need to fix this darned tax code. I would call that a euphemism except that I cannot say for what. Changing the tax code is a thousand contradictory and complex things. Pryor delved into only one of these specifics, saying he would not want to do away with the mortgage interest deduction.
“If you think you can solve this with bumper-sticker slogans, you’re wasting all of our time,” Pryor said.
He ought to know, wasting as he was about an hour that an assembly of political animals could never get back.
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I certainly do not think we have wasted our time taking time out of our busy schedules to give a US Senator suggestions concerning possible spending cuts when he personally asked for them. I have now emailed Senator Pryor on 32 occasions concerning spending cuts that should be made out of our wasteful federal spending.
In my past posts I could have been accused of giving just general ideas of where to cut. Now I am starting in with specifics that are taken from the article “Federal Spending by the numbers, Heritage Foundation, June 1, 2010 by Brian Riedl. He notes:
- Lawmakers diverted $13 million from Hurricane Katrina relief spending to build a museum celebrating the Army Corps of Engineers—the agency partially responsible for the failed levees that flooded New Orleans.
- Medicare officials recently mailed $50 million in erroneous refunds to 230,000 Medicare recipients.
- Audits showed $34 billion worth of Department of Homeland Security contracts contained significant waste, fraud, and abuse.
- The Advanced Technology Program spends $150 million annually subsidizing private businesses; 40 percent of this funding goes to Fortune 500 companies.
- The Conservation Reserve program pays farmers $2 billion annually not to farm their land.
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In: Elton John
Sir Elton John received an invitation to Prince William’s wedding. Elton John was a close friend of William’s mother, Princess Diana, and the singer-songwriter performed “Candle in the Wind” at her funeral. When asked by BBC Radio 2 whether he would be performing at the royal wedding, John joked, “I probably will. I’ll probably be busking outside.”
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The Daily Hatch 
