Downsizing the Federal Government - It Can Be Done.

The Cato Institute has a blog called Downsizing the Federal Government which I just found via John Hood at National Review Online's The Corner blog. It has a department by department guide of federal agencies, what they spend and how they can be cut.

I think a lot of us look at the scale of federal spending and think, how can we ever get this under control? The answer is that you solve it the way you do any other problem. Break the task down into manageable pieces, as Cato has done here. The individual pieces may not look significant when you are comparing them to the overall problem, but they add up.

Also at the site, a comprehensive plan to balance the federal budget by 2020 without raising tax rates by reducing federal spending from its current (abnormally high) level of 25% of GDP to 18.5% of GDP, which is in much closer alignment with the historical average of tax revenues as a percent of GDP, as shown by economist Kurt Hauser.

Go and check the site out. I think you will see the task of getting the deficit under control a lot less daunting if you do.