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[quote=Anonymous][quote][quote]Seems like "common defense" was only one of the things they had in mind. [/quote]

I said the MAIN job..... Unfortunately, our government has become a vehicle to "take care" of individuals instead of individuals learning to take care of themselves. [/quote]

Is your assertion that the "MAIN job" of our government is defense your personal opinion, or is it based on some research? If it's based on research, please provide a cite.

[quote]All you need to do is look through the newspapers for the past year and see the ridiculous spending and lack of accountability. Social Security being paid to dead people. Food stamp fraud. "Grants" being used to study online dating or the connection between cocaine and the mating habits of quail. [/quote]

It's easy to point to instances of fraud and programs that you consider wasteful. Others would point to things that might've benefitted you and your husband and argue that those are wasteful.

As they say, the plural of anecdote is not data. Just because there are stories of fraud, that doesn't mean that eliminating all fraud would make a significant difference.

In 2012, 22 percent of the budget, or $773 billion, paid for Social Security. http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=1258

I couldn't actually find any estimates of the SS fraud rate online through a quick search, so if you've got some reasonable data on the quantity of fraud, I'd love to see it.

But let's assume a fraud rate of 10%, which seems high to me, but I could be wrong. That's about 2% of Federal spending. To investigate fraud requires resources, so there's a cost to such investigation and recovery. It's also impossible to eliminate all fraud, because at some point you reach the level of diminishing returns.

Let's say it's cost effective to recovery half the estimated fraud. That's 1% of the Federal budget. Certainly nothing to sneeze at, but not the kind of thing that will balance the budget.

[quote]There are several departments that could be closed or greatly reduced. All of these things are using OUR tax funds.[/quote]

While I doubt "several," here I do agree with you to some extent - the creation of DHS was a huge waste of money and all of those functions could be performed by other agencies. But, the functions still need to be performed. So the savings from eliminating DHS will not be 100% of the DHS budget - it would actually only be the number of staff that could actually be eliminated rather than being folded into other agencies. And some of those people would end up seeking unemployment, so that cost is just being shifted within the government, rather than being eliminated.

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