Even though Charlie Crist appointed him (to a seat Crist had hoped to take in 2011), outgoing U.S. Sen. George LeMieux offers some sensible ideas in George Will?s latest Newsweek column:
If LeMieux does run, his slogan might be: ?On to 2007!? That was, he says, ?the last good year,? and he asks: Would it result in grinding austerity for government to live for a while as it did then? He says that if federal spending were held at the 2007 level for 10 years, the budget would be balanced in 2013 and the national debt, currently $13.7 trillion, would be less than $7 trillion in 2020, with annual savings of hundreds of billions in debt-service costs. Absent action, he says, interest payments in 2020 on a debt of $26 trillion will be $900 billion.
Today, he says, the government?s gross receipts are sufficient only to cover entitlement programs: ?For every other function, we?re borrowing.? Among the conclusions LeMieux has come to during 15 months on Capitol Hill is this: ?In perhaps no other place in the world is money spent by an organization without any reference to how much money is taken in.? And: ?I don?t think anyone in Washington knows what we are spending money on.? And: ?There is no mechanism to know what the 100,000 people in the Agriculture Department are doing, or whether they are doing it effectively.?
He is not singling out Agriculture for special blame; his point is that this department is not singular, that the absence of meaningful metrics afflicts almost all aspects of government. And he thinks such pervasive unreality in government requires bolder reforms than are being discussed.
