Mr. Bolos used the term "sacred cows" to describe the areas of government spending that are nearly impossible to reduce without receiving extensive criticism. These areas include Medicare, Social Security, and National Defense. This description helped me put a term to something that I had noticed while watching the State of the Union address. President Obama proposed that "annual domestic spending" be frozen for the next 5 years. This seemed to me like it may have been a move to reduce spending on one of the sacred cows, so I was intrigued. I did not fully understand what was meant by domestic spending, so I researched what the freeze entailed. It turns out the freeze really just meant that the salaries of government employees could not go up for 5 years, and the government could only use the currently available funds for domestic projects rather than increasing budgets. I also saw that the spending that this freeze affects makes up only of 13% of the U.S. budget, and therefore does not touch any of the aforementioned sacred cows. The fact that this spending freeze, although it may seem major, does not affect the sacred cows shows how powerful they really are. Although President Obama is making a great effort to show that he is making strides towards reducing spending, he still understands that the sacred cows cannot be touched.
I think that a politician should come along and do what is best for the country, and chop up the sacred cows. Take, say, a level 10% cut from the budgets of each of the cows, and then do the freeze in addition. Do it for four years, and the national debt might have a chance at decreasing. The politician may not get re-elected, but that may be the price for trying to help save the country. I think that nothing should be untouchable in the US budget.
ReplyDeleteDavid, please by all means, if you want to take a career you've spent multiple decades forming, and throw it out the window, then please do. But no one person can do that. I'm pretty sure it requires support from the House or the Senate (don't hold me to that, I'm not positive). But you have to realize as well, he's not only not going to be reelected to presidency, he's not going to be reelected anywhere. Chop up the cows, and your career is done.
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