Miscellaneous 159

1) Note to Obama and Boehner - According to the Cato Institute's, Dan Mitchell, and the Mercatus Center's, Veronique de Rugy,  if you folks in Washington simply restrained the growth of government spending to 2-2.5% a year, the deficit itself would all but disappear in 10-12 years. Yes, more would have to be done after that (2022-2024) due to those demographic issues pertaining to the baby-boomers retiring and all, but at least it shows that the problem isn't totally insurmountable. Please, fellows, get your act together.............2 The federal government currently spends more than $17,000 per year per capita (and, NO, this doesn't include our defense spending). That is more than England, Germany, Canada, Italy, Switzerland, Greece, Belgium, Australia, Japan, Spain, Finland, Portugal, Israel, and New Zealand. This whole mentality of those on progressive side that America's problems are somehow the result of insufficient government activity is a total head-scratcher to me.............3) Mr. Obama's proposal to change the cost of living increases for Social Security is a measure that supposedly reduces the deficit by $30 billion dollars a year. I would like to adopt it and add it to the list of my proposals and happily say that my new subtotal is $138 billion ($1.38 trillion over 10 years).