REDUCE GOVERNMENT SPENDING – PART I

2 PARAGRAPHS 4 LIBERTY: #384

The inflation that is upon us – and possibly a recession – is flat-out caused by government borrowing money to pay for its overspending.  So the next few 2 Paragraphs editions will set forth doable ways to reduce that spending.  The first is transparent: We should abolish the so-called Bureau of Indian Affairs and its two affiliated agencies!  It is long since time to recognize that people, certainly including our Native Americans, will do best by governing themselves and, hence, being responsible for their own decisions and actions.  Let’s put it this way: We don’t have special parental government bureaus for any other groups of people, why are the Native Americans still thought of as not being able to take care of themselves?  If there ever was a need for such a bureau, that need unmistakably has long since retired.  But under today’s regime, Native Americans mostly cannot own their own homes on the reservations, which means that they have no incentives to fix them up or maintain them well.  That also means that they are not able to take out a mortgage on their homes to provide some seed money for them to start a business or pursue higher education.  And all of this is so “our government will protect them from themselves!”  Nonsense.

Taken from US Government websites, I found the following: “Indian Affairs is a unique organization within the Federal Government.  It’s made up of three distinct parts: the Office of the Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and the Bureau of Indian Education (BIE).  Taken separately, they administer or directly fund federally recognized tribal governments to operate programs that benefit their communities.  Taken together, all three work in tandem to support tribal nations through Indian Affairs’ headquarters, regional offices, and agency locations.  The Bureau of Indian Affairs’ mission is to enhance the quality of life, to promote economic opportunity, and to carry out the responsibility to protect and improve the trust assets of American Indians, Indian tribes and Alaska Natives.”  In other words, this is a huge “benevolent” bureaucracy to watch over and protect these particular races of people!  The results?  In virtually every report about socio-economic levels, Native Americans are almost always in the lowest segment.  But the BIA alone employs about  4,500 people, costs American taxpayers about $2.159 billion each year, tells its “protected people” what to do (including how to educate their children) and keeps them well below medians in virtually every category.  Ronald Reagan once famously said way back in 1964 that “governments’ programs, once launched, never disappear,” and then added that those programs are “the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth.”  Well, this is a perfect example of where some eternal lives should be ended, or at least quickly phased out.  Let’s abolish the BIA!  (More suggestions to come.)

Thought for the week: “If all the world’s a stage, where is the audience sitting?”