Kennedy: Does Trump's 'Nickel Plan' go far enough?

We all know Washington is full of cowards and blowhards who are hell bent on stealing your money as they beg for votes, and the easiest way to do that is throw a bunch of expensive programs at you and pretend they are free. That is fraud, and it's immoral and commonplace and it *has* to stop.

There is nothing more corrosive to liberty than taking your property by force, and that's exactly what the federal government is doing with ballooning non-discretionary programs that gobble up the federal budget like a fat kid at a cake buffet.

The President has good intentions with his new "nickel plan" that is challenging every federal agency to make a 5% budget cut, as spending cuts are a fantastic and necessary goal. The problem is that only applies to discretionary programs which account for just a third of the slop in the trough, and military spending, which might not even be trimmed, eats up half of *that*.

What would this wooden nickel plan save? About 70 billion dollars, which is nothing compared to the 779 billion dollar deficit we're running in 2018.

Tax cuts have helped turbo charge a booming economy, but even with low unemployment, high consumer confidence and a bootylicious stock market that can take a good spanking and still bounce back, revenues are only up by 1/2 a percent. You can't cut taxes and increase spending and expect the party to last, and you can't meaningfully cut spending unless you finally fuss with the non-discretionary monsters in the closet:

Entitlements. Medicaid, medicare and social security - which is an entitlement for those who draw from, but haven't paid into it - annihilate 70% of the total federal budget. Those beasts have to be tamed, but it will take brave, logical, and rare souls - who are routinely blocked from making meaningful moves - to pare down the sickening grab bag that's loaded with goodies that make politicians popular and countries very sick.