Head-to-head: Too much spending

When it comes to the national debt and deficit, it’s time to be concerned. Spending by the federal government has gotten out of control. It’s time to realize throwing money we don’t have at our problems is not going to lead to real solutions.

Now is the time to make those tough decisions and make cuts across the board. There are a wide array of entitlements and programs that could be run more efficiently with less government oversight.

The reason that cuts are not the easiest solution is any time a cut to a budget is proposed, someone is up in arms defending their right to that money. Congress needs to take an impartial look at the budgets and make a cut to all programs, rather than a few, in order to make all programs accountable.

Just one example of a broken program is Indian Health Service (IHS). I would argue that IHS has the ability to help people on paper, but the problem with IHS is in practice. The program does not give patients the help they need and they wait for long periods of time to get that unsatisfactory help. Congress needs to hold IHS accountable to the budget they propose to then prove that they are not following it.

Accountability is key, rather than continuing to fund and appropriate more money to an agency that mismanages funds.The issue with IHS goes as far as a report Victoria Kitcheyan, the niece of Debra Free who died in the Winnebago Hospital in northeastern Nebraska in 2011, gave to Senate Committee on Indian Affairs.

“Facility which employs emergency room nurses who do not know how to administer such basic drug…employees who did not know how to call a Code Blue; an emergency room where defibrillators could not be,” Kicheyan said. “And a facility which has a track record of sending patients home with aspirin and other over-the-counter drugs, only to have them airlifted out from our Reservation in a life threatening state.”

There also needs to be a change in mentality that programs and entitlements may not receive an increase each year. This creates the problem of having to borrow more because we do not have the ability to fund every single program in full- let alone with an increase. If a system of zero based budgeting was implemented many of these increases would be stopped.

All programs would start from the ground up each year and have to run the numbers rather than spending all they were given the previous year and just adding an increase to the next year’s budget. This will help to “trim the fat” of every budget in all departments.

If we want to see results in America, it’s time to realize that more government spending is not the answer. More taxes are also not the answer. The answer is that the government needs to take an unbiased look at entitlement spending, make cuts across the board, and implement zero based budgeting.