Five Federal Policy Changes to Save $500 Billion.

Change Policy and Save Money

After the Fiscal Cliff negotiations are over and politicians move on to the next great crisis they have created, Americans should consider Five Strategic Policy Changes to impact and reduce America’s expensive Federal Investments.

Lobbyists Oppose Five Specific Policy Changes Americans could adopt to reduce the Fiscal Cliff impacts but lobbyist oppose.  If Americans truly wanted to end deficit spending and big government, they might want to inform their representatives of these specific changes in government policy:

End the Drug War: The federal government spends more than $15 billion a year investigating and prosecuting the War on Drugs. This does not include the far higher costs of incarcerating millions of people for doing drugs. Ending the Drug War offers the government two separate strategic budget benefits. In addition to saving all the money spending investigating, prosecuting and incarcerating drug offenders, Uncle Sam could actually regulate and tax drugs like marijuana, generating new revenue. Studies by pot legalization advocates indicate that fully legalizing weed in California would yield up to $18 billion annually for that state's government alone. For the feds, the benefits are even sweeter.

Prison Reform:  America incarcerates 5 percent of the world population but 25 percent of the prison population.  The federal portion alone on this well supported lobbying consortium costs $68 billion a year.  Why not consider releasing elderly convicts unlikely to commit crimes, offering treatment or counseling as an alternative to prison for non-violent offenders, slightly shortening the sentences of well-behaved inmates, and substituting probation for more jail-time?  Stop buying into “tough on crime” measures.  The measures tend to target minority populations rather than address crime.

Let Medicare Negotiate With Big Pharma:  The U.S. has higher health care costs than any other country. We spend over 15 percent of our total economic output each year on health care -- roughly 50 percent more than Canada, and double what the U.K. spends.

The American private health care system, even with the new health law overhaul remains inefficient, and the intellectual property rules involving medication in the U.S. keep prescription drugs much more expensive than in other countries.  For instance, Atripla costs an patient $1300/month.  Under the Clinton AIDS initiative, patients receive the same treatment for $1/day. 

Medicare currently spends about $50 billion a year on prescription drugs. According to economist Dean Baker, Americans spend roughly 10 times more than they need to on prescription drugs as a result of our unique intellectual property standards.

These savings for the government, of course, would come from the pockets of major pharmaceutical companies, currently among the most profitable corporations the world has ever known. They also exercise tremendous clout inside the Beltway. President Barack Obama even guaranteed drug companies more restrictive -- and lucrative -- intellectual property standards in order to garner their support for the Affordable Care Act.

Off-Shore Tax Havens - The U.S. Treasury Department estimates that it loses about $100 billion a year in revenue due to offshore tax haven abuses. Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) has been pushing legislation for years to rein in this absurd tax maneuvering, but corporate lobbying on Capitol Hill has prevented the bill from becoming law. 

Deprivatize Government Contract Work:  In recent years, the federal government has privatized an enormous portion of public projects to government contractors. Over the past decade, the federal government's staffing has held steady, while the number of federal contractors has increased by millions. This outsourcing has resulted in much higher costs for the government than would be incurred by simply doing the work in-house. On average, contractors are paid nearly double what a comparable federal employee would receive for the same job, according to the Project On Government Oversight.

 

Immigration: Less Detention, More Ankle Bracelets:  The government spends $122 per person, per day detaining immigrants who are considered safe and unlikely to commit crimes.  The government has plenty of other options available to monitor such people, at a cost of as little as $15 per person.

For the first 205 years of America's existence, there was no federal system for detaining immigrants. The process began in 1981.

Do the math.  It is time Americans stop talking and whining about their taxes.  They need to start asking what these taxes are for, challenge the policy in place and, for the first time in American history, eliminate part of the structure.  Republicans are as unsuccessful in the elimination of any program as Democrats.  While this last year, there was Republican debates about eliminating the EPA, there was not one rational discussion of the specific suggestions on this list.  Yet, rational consideration ultimately finds nearly everyone agreeing these changes would positively impact future federal budgets.