Mitt Romney won the New Hampshire primary handily as expected, but not before giving the Democrats, as well as his Republican rivals a gift: “I enjoy firing people,” he said in a speech just before the voting started.
An unfortunate choice of words, when what he was saying in context was, “I like being able to change health care providers if my current one isn’t giving me good service; something we won’t be able to do under Obamacare.”
Naturally the Democrats had a TV ad produced in about five minutes, with just “I enjoy firing people” as its sound bite and Romney depicted as a greedy capitalist who salivates over spreading misery. Romney’s disingenuous Republican primary rivals piled on as well.
But after I thought about it, maybe a president who enjoys firing people is exactly what we need. After all, the national debt is now north of $15 trillion, which is equal to our Gross Domestic Product. That means we owe as much as we produce annually. That can only point to disaster, threatening our national security and even our existence as a nation.
So, what needs to be done? Well, a great deal actually, but a start would be to take a look at the Federal government and see what expenses could be cut. As a businessman like Romney knows, payroll is always your largest expense in a business. Now that may not be true for the Federal government, since it simply gives money away by the boatload and no private business can do that and survive, but certainly staffing levels are something that should be examined.
For instance, I believe it was Newt Gingrich and the Republican Revolution of 1994 that asked why we need a Department of Education in the Federal Government. Makes sense, since the Federal Government doesn’t actually run any schools. Eliminating the department would cut about $100 billion from the annual budget. Not much, you say. Yes, but $100 billion here, $100 billion there and pretty soon you’re talking about real money (with apologies to Everett Dirksen).
Next, there needs to be a house-cleaning at the EPA. Maybe we shouldn’t eliminate the department, but the outrages that emanate from it make it high on my list of targets for reorganization. The latest insanity is hitting oil companies with fines for not using a bio-fuel that doesn’t exist! See this link for details.
I could go on (and on) but you get the idea.
Barak Obama claimed to be concerned about waste, fraud and abuse in the Health Care/Insurance industries as a basis for instituting Nationalized Health Care, but there is no greater locus of waste, fraud and abuse than the Federal Government and its bloated bureaucracy, plus the lobbyists, crony-capitalists, overpriced contractors and boondock boondoggles that cling to it like parasites.
So maybe the best thing in the world would be someone who knows how to turn a situation around, and can start by doing the painful work of cutting where cuts are needed.
