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What?! I agree with Huff-Po critique of “YouCut” project.
July 21, 2010
Originally posted at RazShafer.com
I’m all about giving props to liberals when they get something right…even if it’s a little thing. While I don’t agree with a lot of the article, the author raises a great point about the YouCut Project: even if every budget item that was given as an option in the YouCut project was eliminated from the federal budget, the total would barely be equivalent to a rounding error!
At it’s core, the idea of allowing another level of transparency to the spending/cutting process is good but in an effort to engage conservatives and build a contact database several Republicans showed their unwillingness to put much on the line when it comes to spending cuts.
The fact of the matter is that if we are going to attempt to stop the hemorrhage of spending out of Washington, DC, big cuts are going to be required. Yet no large or controversial programs were included on the list of possible cuts for constituents to vote on. Representatives steered well clear of cutting anything that might step on people’s toes.
We need conservatives in Congress to stand up against government waste and overspending in a substantive way, not just building their pre-election email list. Show some stones Congressmen!
The fruits of Eric Cantor’s new “YouCut” project made it to the House floor last week, with results entirely predictable: nothing passed, and it did so amid great partisan kerfluffle. But according to the House Minority Whip’s office, some 280,000 people voted online or via text on the particular measure they’d like to see deleted from the federal budget, in what Cantor’s new media guy described as “the most direct use of technology to establish a more direct democracy in the history of the federal legislature.” Mission accomplished? Not quite.
YouCut is dishonest on a second level, too: even if the programs on its list were to die tomorrow, they wouldn’t make the slightest difference in the federal budget or the federal deficit. In a budget in which a billion dollars is a rounding error, killing a program that costs a few million a year may be worse than useless, since it lets activists FEEL like something substantive has been accomplished when nothing has, other than to deprive the people who received benefits under the program in question. It’s like the classic promise to cut the budget by eliminating “waste, fraud and abuse” — if that were all it took, we’d have been out of the fiscal woods a long time ago.
Here’s my take on YouCut. It may not cut any money off the overall budget but, 1.1 billion dollars is more than I and the majority of people will ever make in 10 years and it is obvious that these cut’s need to be made. YouCut does get people involved and makes them aware of the duplicity and waste of our dollars paid in taxes. It makes people (me) think! Once people start thinking they understand our goverment has and is still running amuck. It has raised awareness that this has to stop, NOW! By voting every week we are making an difference in helping to reduce the deficit and waste. It makes some people (me) happy that the item I chose, won as the cut of the week. When most people (me) check to see how the reps in our country voted. It infuriates people (me) that the same Democrat morons vote against cutting the waste. So it may not be doing much to cut the waste but it damn sure does make people open their eyes that have been closed for to long. People not paying attention is what has got us in to this mess. I guess you could call this an exercise. It maybe working better than you think!
Jeff, Thanks for your comment!
I do like the idea of getting citizens more involved in the process. You’re also right that cutting the small budget items are part of the equation but when politicians aren’t willing to actually run a risk by standing for something it really galls me.
We’ve reached the point where we’ve got to either “fish or cut bait” and tinkering around the edges won’t accomplish anything substantive. If representatives want to include crowd-sourcing or propose cuts in smaller programs, that is fine, laudable even, however that can’t be the meat of the proposal.