{"id":4649,"date":"2010-12-08T11:34:58","date_gmt":"2010-12-08T18:34:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/?p=4649"},"modified":"2010-12-08T11:34:58","modified_gmt":"2010-12-08T18:34:58","slug":"balancing-the-budget-one-nsf-grant-at-a-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/2010\/12\/08\/balancing-the-budget-one-nsf-grant-at-a-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Balancing the Budget, One NSF Grant at a Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

Now THIS is the kind of idea we pay our Republican house representatives to come up with. A website where we can go through NSF grants and identify the ones we think should not be funded, balancing the budget, one NSF grant at a time.But clearly this is barking up the wrong tree! The NSF budget is only $7 billion-ish (and there is no WAY that this budget pays for itself by barely maintaining the most innovative economy in the world. Psah you say!) So…
\nAnyone want to help me build a website where we go around and identify senior citizens that are collecting social security but have not contributed enough in their life to merit this money? Grandpa can appear on youtube where he’ll describe what exact it is that he did in his life that merits his current social security check. Too young to fight in world war two, that no good lazy bum, cut his check! BAM, social security solved!
\nNext we can expand into hospitals where we will be able to identify tons of cost cutting measures. Does little Suzy really need that surgery? See little Suzy via a snazzy web interface. Ask her questions. Find out she is a very unproductive member of society, what with her 3rd grade reading skills and 4th grade math skills. No surgery for you little Suzy! BAM, Medicare problem solved!
\nMoving down the budget we get to the military. My first suggestion was that we take all members of the armed forces, count the number of people they have killed, sort the list, and start chopping from the bottom up. BAM, military spending cut! Okay that doesn’t use the web and well qualified internet surfers to help us solve this problem. We could have the surfers do the sorting (internet sort is a less well studied sorting algorithm taking 2N<\/sup> time to sort a list of length N, and usually results in the death of far too many neurons.) So instead we could put up videos of every member of the military and vote on whether they are dangerous enough looking to merit their pay. BAM, military spending cut! For a second time! And we’d win wars just by glancing menacingly at our enemies!
\nAnd what about income tax rates? Well I suggest we make a great tool where people can vote on what they’d like marginal tax rates to be. And then we can exactly INVERT the results. BAM, income distribution problem fixed!
\nOkay, enough with reason number 1231 why I am not a Republican.
\nP.S. If you go to the website for this spirited effort, http:\/\/republicanwhip.house.gov\/YouCut\/Review.htm, the web form doesn’t appear to verify that you’ve submitted a valid email address or a grant, and well, you know that those don’t have to be real anyway. Just saying. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now THIS is the kind of idea we pay our Republican house representatives to come up with. A website where we can go through NSF grants and identify the ones we think should not be funded, balancing the budget, one NSF grant at a time.But clearly this is barking up the wrong tree! The NSF … <\/p>\n

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