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UPDATED: Sunday, November 2, 2014
FIRST SENT: Tuesday, July 26, 2011 through whitehouse.gov
To the President and Members of Congress:
This note was submitted at whitehouse.gov message site and on several Congressional websites. It has also beeen mailed as a physical letter. Of course, your Compromise Debt Ceiling Bill that passed on Tuesday, August 2, 2011, was weak. We all now recognize that it certainly did not spare us from the downgrade.
I propose for your 2015 (and retroactively, 2013 and 2014) budget that you negotiate "Cut-Cap-Balance" by amending it to "Cut-Cap-Tax-and-Balance" and be sure to add under "Cut" the following: Waste (duplication and non-essentials), Greed (over-payments), and Theft (double and triple payments and payments for nothing).
I believe that if you were to go back to IBM's Sam Palmisano (this link goes to an 11:30 minute video. Go to 8:01 or 9:20 to the end), you could get some free help.
If you were to implement their Business Intelligence software systems across the board throughout the government to catch those business ratios outside the means, “Cut” would take on new meaning. You will begin to catch the bad and the ugly abusers of the systems. Please, at the very least, let's engage something like Palmisano's healthcare oversight plan. It is a good idea and politically expedient.
Just on those moves alone you would abruptly slow down our bleeding.
Add "Tax" and introduce a simplified tax code. No exemptions. No exceptions. Everyone who makes a dollar participates. Here's a first pass at the numbers. Get the best financial wizards to work on these numbers until we all contribute our fair share.* The value of every entitlement also needs to be defined and even those who require government assistance participate.
Start at .1% for all those who receive a federal government entitlement,
.5% under $1K (no more than $50),
1% under $10,000 (no more than $100),
2% under $20,000 (no more than $400),
4% under $40,000 (no more than $1600),
6% under $60,000 (no more than $3,600),
8% under $80,000 (no more than $6,400),
10% under $100,000 (no more than $10,000),
12% under $200,000 (no more than $24,000),
14% up to $500,000 (no more than $70,000),
16% up to $1,000,000 (no more than $160,000), and
18% over $1,000,000 (at least $180,000).
No exemptions. None. It goes to the threshold of pain for everyone. No free rides.
For all of us, there is an option to make a contribution. Call it conscience, empathy, or guilt money. Each receives a personal thanks from the President. Anyone giving over a $1M contribution gets an invitation to a state dinner. There should be some quid pro quo for $1M. (Note: In this manner, to retire the debt will require 18 million people to contribute $1M. If we had state dinners 100 nights of every year where 100 people were to participate, we could retire the debt in 1800 years.)
We will have simplified the tax code and government people might gain some respect.
The citizens of the USA have proposals that would help get the USA back to work.
Here is one of my ideas from 2009. There was no response so I guess it was not good enough.
Here's an idea that should be right up the Green Movement's mountain and it'll create jobs:
Ecology Mountains: Garbage-to-Methane, Natural Bridges Over Highways
That is more on the web here: http://smallbusinessschool.org/page2131.html
At any time I'd be glad to talk with anybody about these pages or any of these points in this note.
Warmly,
Bruce
*We all need to profoundly understand the statement made by economists within universities throughout the USA and oft quoted by organizations like the National Taxpayers Union:
"Top 1% of Taxpayers Pay More in Federal Income Taxes Than the Entire Bottom 95%."
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