DTD1

A few suggestions:

$ "Appraise The Lord" Why do churches go untaxed? They are run as a business, in many cases a very lucrative business. Not to single out a particular denomination, but the Roman Catholic Church is one of the largest property owners in the country. (Roughly 177 million acreas of various lands [are] owned by the Catholic Church throughout the globe, including the hundreds of Vatican embassies that are legally titled to The Holy See as an independent nation. Source ) (The Mormon Church, which does not disclose its finances, collects at least $4.3 billion a year from its members and $400 million more from its many enterprises. Source ) Churches in general enjoy all of the facilities offered by National, State and Local governments, everything from defense to fire fighting, and sewage.

$ Zero-based accounting for each and every government Department. (Link )That means let each Secretary announce every year what are the plans for the department for the coming year, what is their relative priorities, how much these plans will cost to implement, and where the money will come from. Let them stop taking last year's budget, adding a percentage and then finding ways to spend it. Quoted from the above link: "Zero based budgeting is especially encouraged for charity and government budgets because expenditures can easily run out of control if it is automatically assumed that what was spent last year must be spent this year". More details here.

$ Reform our overly-complex tax laws. Make taxation fair across the board. Tax every dollar earned above a minimum, say $12,000, at the same rate regardless of who is earning it and where the money comes from, earned and unearned: wages, interest, dividends, capital gains, fees. Eliminate all deductions except for the personal deduction mentioned above.

$ Encourage the creation and growth of small business. Small businesses have created 60% of the new jobs over the past 17 years. Re-vamp the Small Business Administration to empower it to assist people in starting a small, locally-owner business.

$ Re-build our domestic manufacturing base by levelling the playing field vis-a-vis foreign manufacturing. India has a 100% import duty on finished goods but not on 'parts'. This lead to, for example, Harley-Davidson building an assembly plant in India for "complete knock-down kits"in the USA. Link

$ Repeal the Minimum Wage laws. These inhibit the hiring of people for low-end jobs. Each job has its worth "the laborer is worthy of his hire" and all that.

$ The Military: President Reagan raise the bar so high during the Cold War that our main rivals, the Soviet Union, was unable to keep up financially and eventually collapsed. We appear to be doing the same thing to ourselves. Do we need a military that is larger than the next thirteen countries combined? Do we still need super-high tech items such as the F-22 fighter jet? Do we still need bases in 187 countries? Do we need a B-2 stealth bomber that costs $2.2 billion a pop? Not to mention the cost of each missile it fires. We have been fighting in the Middle East for ten years against an enemy equipped with 64-year old technology - the AK-47. Interesting link.

$ Medicare fraud is still costing $47 billion dollars each year. The Total Medicare spending is $528 billion. Link

$ Members of Congress should be entitled to a pension, based on the number of years served and starting at age 67 (or whatever the current Social Security age limit is).

$ Privatise as many service functions as possible. Important link

For example,
$$ NOAA and The National Weather Service: This group uses government revenues to gather data about the world weather and then gives them to anyone who wants it. Entities like The Weather Channel take this data and make a profit selling them to the public. If the NWS was run as an independent for-profit organization those needing weather data would pay for it.

$$ The National Parks Service:

$$ Amtrak:

$$ Federal Prisons

$$ NASA

$$ etc.