Your Opinion: Refuting Pelosi's claim on spending cuts

Dear Editor:  

Have you heard Nancy (we have to pass the bill to see what is in the bill) Pelosi telling a reporter that there is just no place that the federal budget can be cut?

Even Obama is not so ignorant as to believe that there is no place to cut federal spending. Check out his site at http://www.whitehouse.gov/21stcenturygov  

The federal government has 14,000 empty buildings that could be sold for $900 billion to $1.2 trillion. Pork barrel spending for things like musicals about climate change still totals $65 billion/year.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan once cost us as much as $150-200 billion a year.

According to the Census Bureau, over 80 percent of the people in the U.S. who are classified as being in poverty can now afford recording devices for their cable/satellite TV (poverty just ain't what it used to be.) Every Chevy Volt that comes off the assembly line costs taxpayers over $50,000, because of 18 government deals, handouts (according to GM, even with the handouts they still lose $49,000 on every one sold).

By now everyone has heard the liberals crying about the proposed 5 percent cut to the food stamp program. The program has grown by 300 percent in less than 10 years and we are being told that a 5 percent cut is going to cause children to starve.  

The federal government is spending more than it has ever spent in the past. Remember Obama and the Democrats crying "The sky will fall," if sequestration occurred? Are any of you in dire straits because of sequestration cuts? 

The average unemployment rate in 1992 was 7.5 percent. The federal government spent about $1.4 trillion per year (about $2.4 trillion in today's dollars), 21 percent of which was spent on defense. The feds are going to spend $3.5 trillion this year, of which only 18 percent is for defense.

Federal spending has increased 46 percent in the past 20 years. I'm perfectly willing to go back to the level of service I received from the federal government in 1992.

By the way, projected income for this year is $2.7 trillion. If we went back to Clinton presidency spending levels not only would there be no need for ever higher taxes, we could even pay down the national debt by $300 billion this year.