Debt Relief

            Seven of the eighteen members of the Debt Relief Commission voted against sending the commission's recommendations to Congress for an up or down vote on the full package. Dissenters had their reasons, although no two agreed exactly. I would have voted no, too, not because I oppose debt reduction, but because the recommendations didn't go far enough.

            For example, the absence of any recommendations on Obamacare was glaring, in my opinion, but I understand why the commission didn't want to tackle that turkey.

            The recommended reduction in the size of the federal government, on the other hand, was central to the report, but it was pusillanimous, in my view. Why, for instance, should we limit ourselves to an across-the-board reduction of 10% in the federal workforce of over 2,000,000 people by the year 2020? And only through attrition? Go back to the year 2,000 when the number was 1,778,000 and start cutting from there. Do it now.

            The commission recommended the elimination of only a handful of departments among a long list deserving abolition. Let's take just one, the Department of Education. It was made a cabinet-level department by Jimmy Carter in 1979 against the opposition of Republicans who said the involvement of the federal government in education was unconstitutional and an inappropriate intrusion into local, state, and family affairs. Ronald Reagan tried to eliminate the Department of Education, but a Democratic Congress wouldn't let him. Republicans since then have repeatedly made this part of their platform, but to no avail. It deserves to go.

            The Department of Education has over 4,000 staff members and over 6,000 contract employees. Its current budget is 63.7 billion dollars, not including an additional 96.8 billion in stimulus money at its disposal. To do what? To tell school children what they should have for lunch?

            What clause in our Constitution gives the federal government the authority to dictate to teachers what they should teach in their classrooms?

            What bureaucrat sitting on his glorified duff in Washington has a better understanding of the problems and challenges in Hertford Grammar than the administrators and classroom teachers in that school?

            In my younger days I served on a Board of Education for thirteen years, and I railed against the federal government every time it dangled a bag of money at us with long strings attached. Sadly, the government's intrusion into what should be a local matter is worse now than it ever was.

            Want some real debt reduction? Start with the Department of Education.