Specific Ideas for Cutting the Federal Budget

With the dust now settled from the 2010 election, the time for balancing the budget and cutting spending is now. Thankfully, there are a lot of smart people out there with some good ideas — even those that can be agreed upon by the left and right — that can go a long way toward closing the federal budget deficit.

National Taxpayers Union and the lefties over at PIRG have come up with $600 million in specific spending cuts;

Brian Riedl at the Heritage Foundation has put together his own list of $343 billion in spending cuts;

Ben Friedman and Christopher Preble over at Cato have put a list together of $1.2 trillion in defense-related spending cuts (over the next ten years).

These are just a few of the specific spending cut proposals I’ve seen. If the new Republican majority in the House is serious about cutting spending, they need to start with a few items on these lists and add their own touches.