Zbigniew Mazurak (iflynavy@interia.pl) is a former staff writer of the most widely-read political blog in New Jersey: "Conservatives with Attitude"(www.gopusanj.com).

By Zbigniew Mazurak

My blueprint for a small federal government

A small government is a goal dear to the hearts of all genuine conservatives. Yet few American politicians have ever presented plans that would achieve that goal. I’ve decided to present my own proposals for reducing the size of the federal establishment and its prerogatives, and for reforming the tax code. Because of the spending splurge that began on the day the 111th Congress was inaugurated, I cannot give exact numbers on how much would my plan save, but trust me, it would save a lot. My plan would also significantly shrink, if not entirely nix, the $1.85 trillion budget deficit penciled for FY2010. It would also reduce the number of Cabinet Departments from 15 to 8. And if my blueprint is enacted, all savings should be spent on balancing the budget and paying down America’s debt. In inflation-adjusted terms, the rate of the growth of federal (and state) spending as a whole should be 0%.

My proposals regarding the agencies of the Federal Government:

1)      The following agencies should be abolished altogether: The AmeriCorps, the Peace Corps, the Veterans’ Corps and the Seniors’ Corps; the Dept. of Housing and Urban Development; the Education Department; the CDC; the CIA (these days it’s a bureaucracy, not an intel agency); the Department of Agriculture; the DEA; the BATF at the DOJ; the National Endowment for the Arts; the National Endowment for the Humanities; USAID; the OSHA; the FAWS; the National Security Council; the Office of the Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security; the US Disarmament Agency (USDA); the FDA; the Presidential Advisory Council On HIV; the Federal Transit Administration; the Federal Communications Commission; the US Institute of Peace, and the Corporation for National and Community Service. The White House should also appoint a commission that will propose which other civilian agencies should be closed. The number of Congressional committees should be reduced. The number of Congressional staffers should be reduced by at least 50%. The number of White House staffers should be reduced by at least 50%, and the number of employees that a president takes on a foreign trip should be reduced by 50%.

2)      The budget of the DHHS (not including spending on DHHS bureaucrats) should be reduced by 75% (not counting Medicare and Medicaid, which programs are handled separately by this plan).

3)      If the 16th Amendment is repealed and the federal income tax is abolished, the IRS should be closed. It’s bigger than the CIA and the FBI combined.

4)      The Department of the Treasury, the Department of Commerce (which shall consist only of the NIST and the US Census Bureau) and the Department of Labor shall be merged into a Department of Economic Affairs.

5)      The EPA, the DOE, the Department of the Interior and the DOT should be merged into a Department of Natural Resources. Many of their civilian programs, however, and many of the associated responsibilites (including all transportation responsibilities excluding those related to aviation), should be transferred to the states. The DOT should be reduced to merely the FAA before it is merged with other departments.

6)      Only 50% of retiring civilian officials at all 15 departments and only 50% of retiring officials at all Cabinet agencies that are not Departments shall be replaced. Also, at least 270,000 federal civilian employees should be sacked immediately. The salaries of the remaining civilian officials should be reduced by up to 50%.

7)              The FEMA should be withdrawn from the DHS and elevated to the rank of a Cabinet agency. Its director shall be responsible directly to the White House.

8)              The office of the drug czar should be abolished. The number of WH czars should be reduced to 1 (the cyber czar); the post of the Chief of Staff of the First Lady shall be abolished; the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) should be abolished. The Office of the National Security Advisor should be abolished along with the post of the NSA (a President already has many people to advise him, including Cabinet Secretaries, agency executives, the employees of the WHMO, and the JCS.

9)              The Land Preservation and Restoration Program of the DOI should be closed. Most federal lands should be sold, and ANWR should be leased to a private corporation.

10)         On the whole, the budget of the US State Department should be reduced by 50%.

11)         The ICE should be merged with the CBP and the USCIS, thus re-constituting the INS. The budget of the DHS should be reduced by at least 25%.

Among federal-owned corporations:

1)      Amtrak, GM, Chrysler, the US Postal Service, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Lehman Brothers’ bank, AIG, all federal highways, and all banks owned by the FDIC should be privatized.

2)   Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should be closed.

My proposals regarding spending programs:

1)      The baseline budget of the Department of Defense shall never be reduced. Period. If you want to reduce its budget, or its weapons procurement budget, or its RDTE budget, you are my enemy. (Obama wants to reduce the DOD’s weapons procurement budget by $40 bn in FY2010, so he’s my enemy.) The DOD is not the cause of the US government’s fiscal woes.

2)      But many civilian programs should be eliminated altogether, namely: Medicare; Medicaid; tax credits; agricultural subsidies (which European protectionists use to justify their protectionist trade policies and their trade wars against America); funding for embryonic stem cell research; funding for cloning; funding for abortion; foreign aid; the porkulus; subsidies for Amtrak and all other corporations; the Affordable Housing Program, the ESTA, the Visa Waiver Program, the Community Service for Older Americans Program, the Healthy Communities and Ecosystems Program of the EPA; the Climate Change Program of the EPA; the Cash-for-Clunkers program (which is a fraud paid for with money of which the DOD was deprived); bailouts; funds for UN peacekeepers; funding for the UN; Foreign Military Financing aid; foreign aid to fight HIV (and all other forms of foreign aid); and the war on drugs (it costs over $100 bn per year). The Congress should provide no subsidies for logging in the National Forests. It should also abolish all “economic development programs” and privatize all unused federal property like buildings and land. Also, the federal government should organize a garage sale of all of its exquisite equipment (e.g. furniture and lamps).

3)      Social Security should be privatized (and the federal government should not spend even one dollar on it).

4)      The salaries of the members of Congress should be radically reduced.

5)      No Secret Service guards for ex-presidents and former first ladies.

6)      No air taxi fleet for members of the Congress; no SUVs for them. The number of federal-owned limousines should be reduced by at least 50%.

7)      American embassies in Vientiane, Minsk, Managua, Rangoon, and Lusaka should be closed.

8)      The federal road program should be defederalized, that is, transferred to the states. The states should be exclusively responsible for building and maintaining roads. Existing federal toll roads should be leased to private corporations. DC’s transit network (and all other transit networks) should be privatized and demonopolized. No subsidies for any modes of transport should be paid. The construction, maintenance and rebuilding of transport networks should be the responsibility of states and cities. Federal highways without tolls should be leased to the private sector or privatized, and all federal fuel taxes should be abolished even if the Fair Tax is not implemented.

9)      America should abrogate the financial commitments she made in London during the G20 summit; that is, she should not commit even one dollar to the $5 trillion “stimulus” that G20 agreed to in London. She should also withdraw from the IMF and get back the American gold reserves donated to the IMF, and demand that the IMF repay all money ever given by America to the IMF.

10)  America should withdraw from the UN, and the UN should be evicted from America. UN buildings in NYC should be sold by the US Treasury.

11)  Restoration of the above-mentioned programs should be prohibited. In addition, the White House should appoint a commission that will recommend which other civilian programs should be repealed. All savings mentioned by this blueprint must be dedicated to a) balancing the budget; and b) paying the debt of the federal government.

12)  The Congress should reduce welfare dependency by promoting marriage (because marriage, not the Federal Government, is the best welfare-providing institution ever invented), and that should be done by 1) passing a Federal Marriage Amendment 2) passing a resolution acknowledging the importance of marriage 3) passing a resolution praising those people who have remained loyal to their spouses and those who have long-lived marriages 4) setting the age of consent at 18 for the entire country. The Congress should also enact a second welfare reform, since the first one has been nixed by Obama. The cost of welfare rolls ($888 bn in FY2010) must be reduced by no less than 75%.

My tax policies:

1)      In the short term, a flat income tax at a 15% rate (and a generous tax-free allowance freeing those who now pay a 10% income tax from the income tax altogether) should be instituted. In the long term, the Fair Tax should be instituted IF 75% of American states repeal the 16th Amendment. This is a proposal that should unite flat tax fans and Fair Tax advocates. I’m personally a Fair Tax proponent, but I’d like to say to flat tax advocates: “We need each other”. Note that the so-called “Taxpayer Choice Act” offered by the members of the RSC (or rather by their lobbyist pals) is a gimmick which would add a second complex tax code on top of the existing one.

2)      The flat income tax (or the Fair Tax, whichever of them is implemented) shall replace ALL income and payroll taxes (payroll taxes would not have a justification anyway, given that entitlement programs would be abolished according to my plan). At a 15% rate, it should apply to individuals and corporations alike (for corporations, this would be a tax reduction by 20 percentage points).

3)      If the Fair Tax is ever instituted, it should be the only domestic federal tax besides fuel taxes.

4)     100% of revenues from fuel taxes should be devoted to road transport (aid for states to build freeways) – as long as fuel taxes exist.

5)      As long as there is any income tax, a tax return should be no longer than 1 page of A4 paper (a flat tax would, and should, reduce the size of a tax return to the size of a postcard).

6) Raising any taxes should require the approval of a 60% supermajority of both houses of the Congress.

7) Free trade agreements – which abolish tariffs – should be signed with as many countries as possible, and enforced. These should include the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, Ukraine, Georgia, Singapore, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Latin American countries. Tariffs on Brazilian ethanol should be abolished subject to reciprocal action by Brazil. The Congress should ratify the Bush-signed FTAs with South Korea (a crucial ally), Colombia (an important ally) and Panama. At the WTO, the US trade representative should propose a global total abolition of all tariffs by all WTO members towards each other, and a total abolition of all agricultural subsidies by the US and the EU on the condition that unindustrialized countries open their markets. The Mexico Truck program should be reinstated to convince the Mexicans to abolish their tariffs on the US. The US government should also work to create a Free Trade Area of the Americas.

My proposals pertaining to federal regulations:

1)      90% of the regulations currently on the Federal Register should be repealed. Among that 90%, all regulations related to “global warming”, all regulations prohibiting the mining of any resources, all anti-coal and anti nuclear regulations, the ban on recycling spent nuclear fuel, all anti-refinery regulations and all anti-mercury regulations should be repealed.

2)      Several pro-trade-union provisions of the Wagner Act should be repealed.

3)      Federal minimum wage laws, regulations protecting fish populations (e.g. those imposed on California), regulations restricting water supplies (e.g. those imposed on California), the Community Reinvestment Act (which caused the current economic crisis), the ban on DDT, the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, the EMTAL Act, ethanol production requirement laws, the McCain-Feingold Act, the No Child Left Behind Act, the ITAR, the ban on drilling in the ANWR, the ban on drilling in the Rockies, the ban on drilling in the OCS and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act should be repealed. Laws requiring the federal government to do any work on high-speed rail should be repealed, as should be regulations which exempt the USPS from antitrust laws and taxation, and the regulations which made the USPS a monopolist. The USPS’s privileges and its exemption from the legal requirement to file financial reports to the SEC should also be abolished.

4)      CAFÉ standards (federal and state standards alike) for all vehicles should be banned.

5)      Americans should be allowed to buy healthcare insurance policies across state lines, and all obligations on the healthcare sector (such as the duty to heal every hospital patient) should be repealed. This, coupled with the deportation of 20 million illegal immigrants, would radically reduce healthcare costs.

6)      Strict product safety and product quality standards should be imposed on

imported products to level the playing field.

7)      The Line Item Veto Act of 2009 should become law of the land and so should the Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution.

8)      Affirmative action should be banned by a statute and by a Constitutional Amendment.

9)      Columbus Day and Labor Day should be abolished as federal holidays.

10) No-bid federal contracts should be banned. Fixed-price contracts should become the norm for the entire government.

11) HR 450 (http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=95297), which aims to ban laws that do not cite their Constitutional justification(s), should become the law of the land.

12) The Federal Government should be legally prohibited to involve itself in the following industries: railway transport, transit, carmaking, oil production, natural gas production, banking, housing, healthcare, agriculture. A legal principle of the separation of the economy and the state is needed.

Regarding tort law:

Tort law (but not the RICO Act) should be radically reformed to curb the number and the cost of lawsuits. Also, the “Loser pays” English rule should be implemented.

To solve the problem of forced unionization (a problem of 28 states and the federal government), the Congress should approve the “National Right-To-Work Act” as written by Sen. Jim Demint (R-S.C.).

Some of the results of my plan would be that:

1)      It would reduce the number of Cabinet Departments by almost 50%, from 15 to 8. 3 Departments would be abolished and 4 others would be merged with other departments.

2)      It would reduce the number of Cabinet officials by 50%, from 20 to 10. (All 8 Department Secretaries plus the FEMA Director and the Vice President.)

3)      It would reduce the number of Executive Branch civilian employees by more than 50%.

4)      It would safeguard the DOD’s baseline budget and its weapons procurement.

5)      It would eliminate entitlement programs (because you are not entitled to someone else’s money).

6)      It would force the Federal Government to spend money on its constitutionally-ordained duty of properly funding the military rather instead of providing millions of jobs to bureaucrats and welfare to all Americans, and reduce the civilian part of the Federal Government to its smallest size since 1928.

7)      It would make America the most business-friendly country in the world.

8)      It would guarantee that America would advance to the first place in the Heritage Foundation’s Economic Freedom Index (http://www.heritage.org/index/Ranking.aspx). Currently, America is ranked sixth. It’s utterly unacceptable that America is 6th in anything good. Since when is it acceptable for America to be the sixth-freest country in the world? America should be a beacon of freedom. The EFI is widely considered to be an accurate rating of a country’s economy, economic policies, and degree of economic freedom.

9)      There would be only one domestic federal tax (other than road tolls). It would be a non-progressive tax. People who currently pay a 10% federal income tax would be liberated from that tax with a high tax allowance. There would be no tax revenue shortfall, though.

10)  It would eliminate the need for tax havens along with the 66,000-page Internal Revenue Code. The 2008 Global Competitiveness Report of the World Economic Forum said that the two biggest American obstacles for businesses are tax regulations (i.e. complex tax codes) and tax rates (i.e. how high taxes are).

11)  It would eliminate the need to sell American T-bonds to Communist China - a sworn enemy of America.

12) It would stop the Federal Government’s management of state affairs (education, healthcare, transportation, etc.) and return many rights to American states, in line with the 10th Amendment to the Constitution.