To save our democracy–perhaps, to RECREATE our Republic as a representational democracy–these are the sorts of steps needed:
–Eradicate the Federal Reserve, and go back to a gold standard. What I believe would be best is if each State issued its own currency, based on physical gold reserves, but that part is still evolving.
–Eradicate Social Security completely, stop taking out taxes, and let people provide for their own retirements. I would anticipate this will mean in part locally funded, charitable homes for the elderly, for those who would otherwise go hungry.
–End Medicare. Let the States choose how to provide the elderly with medical care. My vote would be to create a tax incentive for private insurance companies to add a rider to all healthcare policies that if you, in effect, preinvest in your old age by paying some additional amount, that you will never be cancelled.
–Make Medicaid a fully State run program, and let the individual States decide how much they want to provide.
–Self evidently, reverse Obamacare, which will add to costs, increase the role of government, and do NOTHING–NOTHING–to improve our health as a nation. It will in fact DECREASE access to healthcare.
–Downsize our military considerably. We have now, and have had for many years, the ability to project force anywhere in the world within an hour, in the form of ballistic nuclear missiles. We need, simply, to announce that any nation from which terror attacks originate, will be help accountable. Period. No excuses. Then draw down our troops. Keep the Marines as a rapid response force, and limit the Navy to say a 1,000 mile perimeter of the US. Continue developing cutting edge technology, so that the Air Force always has the best stuff, and obviously keep the Coast Guard active. Most of the Army can be eliminated. We can leave Korea. If the North invades, it disappears in a pile of radioactive ash.
–Build a fence with Mexico. Increase the penalties for being here illegally considerably. Maybe we copy their policy of a two year jail term. Or we allow first time offenders to simply be deported, and second time offenders get FOUR years.
–Pay off our debt, then reduce Federal taxes considerably.
–We need to regain the proper balance of power between the States and the Federal Government. The principle means of disrupting that balance has been the Supreme Court. What we need is a Constitutional Amendment by means of which patently unConstitutional rulings by the Court, such as Roe v. Wade, can overturned.
To be clear, CONGRESS did not ban abortion. That was not a right granted to it by the Constitution. How much less, then, was that right granted to judges for life, who are appointed?
–We need to eradicate most other Federal departments as well, including Education, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development (including, obviously, both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who have done so much damage). We need a Treasury Department, a State Department, and a Department of Defense.
At some point, I will run the numbers. I suspect that if we do all of this that we can pay our bills off, restore our democracy, and better enjoy the intended fruits of liberty.
Until then, we need to accept that we will undergo a period of relative poverty. Our system, to some extent, is going to crash. Our bills are coming due. Elderly parents will live with their children; children will stay at home for long periods of time. Homes will be built no one lives in, and our assumption that we can have anything we want any time will come to an end. We will have to learn to satisfy ourselves with simpler things, and that is not such a bad outcome.
Net, net: there is no reason to believe we cannot survive and, in the end, prevail against the problems we face. Step one, though, is to stop digging the hole. That will quite literally take an act of Congress.