I very much enjoyed the Texas Tea Party in Ft. Worth to protest the stimulus and wasteful spending. It was wonderful to see people desirous of returning to responsible fiscal policies. Unfortunately, what we need to realize is that there are a million small abuses every day in Washington and we cannot protest them all. Recently I watched a Democratic Congressman defend the earmarks in this latest bill as being acceptable because they are “transparent.” Let me be clear: There is no such thing as transparency in a bill with thousands of pages. Shall we simply quit our jobs and spend day and night reading through the 9,000 earmarks in this bill? The earmarks being one place, incidentally, where bipartisanship really shines. We cannot possibly stop all government abuses by coming at them on a case by case basis. This is like trying to plug a sieve with your fingers. We must take away the very ability of these abuses to arise in the first place, and confiscatory taxation by the federal government is the root of the problem.

So the first front we must attack is the taxation system as it currently stands within the United States. Thirty-nine states have already petitioned for redress of this grievance in the form of overturning the 16th Amendment, which allows for the progressive income tax policy that enslaves us today. I suggest several reforms which could be bound into an amendment to be presented to our sister states outside the control of Congress and without their approval or oversight.

Article V of the Constitution allows States to elect a convention to craft amendments and present them to the other states for ratification. This is specifically designed for the situation at hand: A congress drunk on its own power and unwilling to relent. Only thirty-eight states are needed to amend the Constitution and we are in a situation where thirty-nine agree with us on this most important point.

Secondly, abuse and inefficiency is exacerbated and enabled by the method in which bills are drawn up, including multiple unrelated issues in a single bill. This practice must end. These bills have thousands of office budgets in one document receiving millions, often billions of dollars each and there is not a speck of direction or explanation on how this money is to be spent. For example, among many, many other offices listed in the Agriculture portion of the latest spending bill, I was struck by an appropriation for “The Office of the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights.” The Office of the Assistant Secretary will receive $871,000.00 for “necessary expenses.” That is just the Assistant Secretary’s Office. The actual Office of Civil Rights will receive $21,551,000.00. And this was not something I cherry-picked. I use it because it was on one of the very first pages of the bill.

Well I have some questions. Why does the Agriculture Department need TWENTY-TWO MILLION DOLLARS in an Office of the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights? Who is this Assistant Secretary? What necessary expenses does he have that total nearly a million dollars for the office in addition to the twenty-one million the department under him is getting? Do we not have an entire Civil Rights Department in the budget already? What civil rights are we protecting specifically in the field of Agriculture to the tune of twenty-two million dollars every year?

As it stands I will never get an answer. My Congressmen likely do not have an answer. It seems the majority of Washington bureaucrats collude with one another to pass these ludicrous appropriations en masse, having no clue what they are for and not caring, so long as no one gets in the way when it is their turn at the trough.

We can end this waste and unaccountability by requiring the following:

1. Let each office prepare a budget listing exactly how much they need and for what purposes. All expenditures should be clear, including number of employees to be compensated, at what salary, and what purpose they serve.

2. Let each budget be presented to Congress individually. Require Congress to vote up or down on these individual bills. Will this take more time than the old way? Yes. Congress may have to come and vote more than eight hours a week. Might this inspire Congress to cut some useless projects to save time on the floor? We can only hope so. It would also stop our representatives from being able to dodge tough questions about an appropriation they voted for by pointing to a more popular portion of the legislation.

3. Let the bill and the budget be posted online for all to see. Expenditures such as a lump sum given for office supplies should be left online throughout the fiscal year, in the format of a checkbook register. Every time expenditure is made out of that budget the receipt or invoice should be scanned and available online for all to see.

4. At the close of the fiscal year money still available in the budget should be rolled over into the following year's budget. If that money cannot be accounted for the office in question will find it or find a way to live without it.

These alterations in the method of Washington business would effectively castrate the Washington power base. We would see unemployment lines filled with lobbyists. The next greatest accomplishment would be to see unemployment lines filled with IRS agents, and I have a formula for that as well.

No longer should Washington dictate what the ‘General Welfare’ of our citizens is to be. Every Sovereign State should be empowered to determine the extent of involvement she will have with the Federal bureaucracy. Our states have failed us by jumping at the chance to let Uncle Sam feed our hungry and clothe our poor in exchange for our independence. Are there states who will wish to continue feeding at the public trough? Certainly, but no longer should we be forced to provide the slop.

I recommend an Amendment that would allow States to opt out of federal programs they find undesirable, harmful or wasteful. The citizens of those states that opt out of certain programs should not be burdened with taxation for proportion of the federal budget that supports those programs. When the federal budget is proposed, states should be responsible proportionally to both their population and the percentage of federal involvement they desire, in their tax contribution. There are certain very limited areas a state could not opt out of, for example defense spending.

In keeping with state sovereignty, the individual states should collect these taxes in a manner acceptable to their people and turn them over to Uncle Sam, cutting off his ability to reach into the pockets of any one of us.

More importantly, this would rob Washington of its power to damage our prosperity as they are currently doing. We are watching the collapse of our economy exacerbated by fools in D.C. who haven’t the first notion of market forces, or simply do not care. While several states have been flourishing by providing friendly business climates, Washington will undo all of that by imposing nationwide destructive tax policies that will chase capital completely out of the country no matter what the individual states do to make their markets attractive to investors.