Tuesday, November 09, 2010

How to change Washington's culture of spending

I just submitted the following idea to Republican Whip Eric Cantor, to assist Congress in identifying which program and spending cuts will help change Washington's culture of spending into a culture of savings.

Eric Cantor || Republican Whip || YouCut

Cut the defense budget. Get our per-capita spending on national defense in line with the rest of the world's developed nations. Close the overseas U.S. bases and bring our troops home and let them get to work in the private sector, providing goods and services that people are willing to pay for voluntarily.

Remember the wise counsel of John Quincy Adams:

"Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own."

"She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom."


John Quincy Adams on U.S. Foreign Policy (1821)