A Small Government Budget

Originally posted in a LVRJ Forum

83% of the Gibbons budget was eaten up by K-12, NSHE, & HHS. The goal of small, constitutional government would have been served by cutting these items down to their constitutional mininima.

K-12 spending (37.1%) could have been reduced to less than $2M per year by abolishing every public school except one per district. Taxpayer support for NSHE (13.7%) could have reduced to $0.00 by eliminating all University activities except practical instruction in Agriculture, Mining, and Engineering.

HHS (32.6%) is a cesspool of waste. It's only constitutional duties are management of the state institutions for the mentally ill and disabled. The detailed budget is still opaque, but it counts ~4,000 in-patients, and budgets ~$130M (less than 20% of HHS's overall budget). The prison budget ($285M per year) is perhaps most opaque of all. How many inmates are victimless criminals? Release them and CLOSE most of the prisons. How many guards are women? Fire them. I would not want to throw the helpless out into the desert, or parole violent felons, but I think that we could save a bundle by attacking the waste within these legitimate functions. I conservatively estimate at least HALF.

Many folks are a lot more familiar with PERS than I. I think we should abolish the benefit. It's overly generous, especially for employees who perform now (or did before retirement) NEGATIVE work. Offer buyouts if need be. The rest of the budget is either small fry or unconstitutional bureaucracies deserving abolition.

At a glance, my freedom budget works out to less than $250M per year. More than my oft-cited $100M figure, but not bad for an hour's work.