Senator Rand Paul Says Over $500 Billion Can Be Hacked From the Budget!

Newly elected Senator Rand Paul(R-Ky.) introduced on Jan.25 the Cut Federal Spending Act, which cuts a whopping $500 billion out of the federal government's budget for fiscal year 2011. That amounts to an unprecedented 25 percent of Washington's total spending for the year. In the Feb. 7 issue, AFP editors detailed a proposal by the Republican Study Committee, which proposed dumping some $100 billion from federal appropriations. AFP published the list of programs that the conservative caucus wants to terminate, but even that proposal pales in comparison to Paul's landmark measure. In announcing his new bill, Paul said: "The solution to the government's fiscal crisis needs to begin by cutting spending at the heart of the problem - right here, on Capitol Hill." In a nutshell, Paul plans on returning government spending to 2008 levels, cutting almost all federal programs down to the bone. He wants to completely defund the Government Printing Office, which will save taxpayers billions. He is also looking to significantly cut the budgets of the federal judiciary ($2.4 billion) the Environmental Protection Agency ($3.2 billion) and departments such as Agriculture ($42 billion), Commerce ($5.3 billion) Energy ($27 billion), Education ($16 billion), Health and Human Services ($26.5 billion), Interior ($11 billion), Labor ($2.8 billion) and Housing and Urban Development. Paul also wants to scale back US war spending by $70 billion and cut Homeland Security by $25 billion. Finally, he calls for collecting unpaid taxes from federal employees ($3 billion), freezing federal workers' pay ($2 billion), selling off unused federal property ($19 billion), and repealing the banker bailout known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program ($4.5 billion).