It's not a simple as some would have us all believe.

We've reached the end of another year. Congress has packed up and gone home for the holidays, not to be seen again until next year. After a year of passing another onslaught of laws and regulations, the rest will be a welcome one for our hard working political bureaucrats. There's only one problem; they still have not finished their budget. You know, the one that is supposed to be completed each year by September 30. Of course I have my own views on how this should be addressed, but let's look at another alternative first.

The editors of the Dallas Morning News have a grand idea; instead of having to go through all the trouble of finishing the budget every year, why not make a 2 year budget? Of course this makes complete sense given the current climate in DC. With all those laws they are always passing they just don't have time to budget the money for their innumerable programs, entitlements, and other allocations every year. Heck, they'd probably even have time to pass even more laws and regulations, which would result in more money to manage (our tax dollars). The 2 year budget may eventually become a 3 or 4 year budget.

I have a different solution altogether. If Congress didn't have so many of our dollars to budget, the budget would not be so complicated. Expensive and inefficient programs and entitlements that rarely (if ever) fullfill their intended obligations are fat to be cut. We need to phase out all this garbage that is cluttering up our system and seek more practical alternatives than the bureaucratic red tape government version.

Then, we can get to work chopping down the size of agencies that either should be working in a smaller capacity or should not be in existence at all. If this nation, for example, insists on prosecuting victimless crime, it should not be a federal issue (see the Constitution for those laws that are to be enforced by the federal government). Send it back to the states, let them deal with it. Once that is done, the DEA can be dissolved altogether. The ATF can be greatly reduced as well. And what is the point of the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency? Doesn't the government obtain intelligence purely for security reasons, and doesn't national security require intelligence gathering? It's like having one restaurant that sells hamburger patties and another one to sell the buns. Fat to be cut.

There's one aspect of our budget that can be eliminated altogether without any effort at all; dues paid to the United Nations. Not only do most of the countries in that organization despise the US, but the bureaucracy created by this attempt at global governance serves only to waste money. Of course, by not paying the dues, we would no longer be eligible to reap the benefits of membership. What benefits? We get to fight in other countries' wars without that pesky necessity of approval from Congress. We get the benefit of not having to bother with deciding which countries we should help and how that help should be provided since the UN does that for us. We also get the benefit of being on equal terms with the likes of communist China. Don't forget those helpful attempts by the UN to regulate our society (environment, firearms, health care reform, etc) regardless of our views on the matter or the mandates of our Constitution. Can we live without these benefits? It'll be tough, but somehow I think we'll manage.

Once we remove ourselves from the UN, we can get our troops out of all of the countries that did not ask for our help, and decide (through our legislative body) where and when to deploy troops.

The largest expenditure our government has is payment to all of the federal programs and entitlements that have passed through by the truckload over the years. Our bloated government seems to have no end in sight for growth. While phasing out programs that would be better implimented in the private sector or state legislatures would take years, we can stop much of the ongoing passage of the ridiculous by putting the job of voting in Senators back into the hands of the state legislatures. This would result in a House of Representatives voted in by the people (as now), which represents the will of the people, and a Senate of people that are (generally speaking) more educated in the intricacies of government laws and the original intentions behind our Constitution. The result would be that laws are only passed that conform to our form of government. This would make for a vast decrease in the volume of legislation that passes, further simplifying the budget while reducing the amount of expenditure in the future.

The idea behind this whole setup is amazingly simple; give the powers to the states. The citizenry then has the ability to first vote for the majority of laws and and all of the representatives in their state. Then, if the citizen feels that his or her vote is not being heard, or the laws in place are not satisfactory, he or she can "vote with their feet" and go to a different state with laws more conducive to his or her needs and desires. This competition between states would have what could be called the "free market effect", which would ensure that the states maintain a level of integrity and liberty that can be maintained in no other way. The opposite scenario is that of a centralized governmental structure that regulates everything for everyone from one location (the current "modified" America).

Some centralization is necessary. If not, our founders would not have elected to unite the states in the first place. Common defense and other issues require that a central governing body combine the collective strengths of the states to produce effective results. The Constitution outlines those things the federal government can do and the authorities that is can assume. This is a very important, though seemingly ignored aspect of this document. If the Constitution does not state that a thing can be done by the federal government, then that thing must be done by either the state government or the citizen. Like any legal document, the Constitution has "loopholes"; no law is iron clad. We have allowed the Constitution to be "interpreted" in innumerable (and often contradictory) ways that our founders never intended. Every time the federal government institutes another program, entitlement, or acquires a responsibility, it is doing so by taking that responsibility (and any associated rights) from the state or the citizen, further centralizing our government. This ongoing trend toward centralization has the natural effect of enlarging the size (and scope) of the federal government, as witnessed by the ever increasing rate it hires employees, purchases land, establishes regulatory agencies, and, perhaps worst of all, federal crime bureaus. This gravitation toward centralization is slowly robbing the states of their individuality, and by extension, robbing from individuals the right to control their government. How the American public can stand such a course of events will forever be an unanswered question in my mind. Do we really, as a majority, wish to see our government centralize our rights away? Do we want a beaurocracy that ensures liberty only when it accomodates regulatory compliance? Do we really want a government to tell us what is best for us to think and do? Should we rejoice that the government regulates even those things in our lives that affect no one other than ourselves in the privacy of our own homes and consciences? Well, "we" may want this, but I don't.

After we successfully decentralize and downsize, we can attack what may be the scariest monster in our government; the IRS. Without all those reglations and programs, there will be far less money to manage. The tax code (that no one alive or dead ever understood) can be simplified into a comprehensible document. The size of the bureau can be drastically reduced and the former government workers can get back into the private sector (which would actually resemble a free market by this time) to contribute to the well being of the economy. We could finally remove the teeth from the nastiest monster in the United States government.

I will grant that the idea of a 2 year budget is a much easier "solution" to the problem, but the path of least resistance is not always the correct one. If we continue to make it easier for the government to legislate more control for itself (and by doing so less for you and me, and the states we live in), the inevitable end result will be control by the government of the people. I would argue that this is the case already to a certain degree. Once the government gets a high enough percentage of control, we can no longer consider ourselves a free society. We'd still be a democracy, but all democracies are not free. So let's fix it right. Make Congress finish that budget.