The Top 10 Laws and Policies Needed in America

The Top 10 Laws and Policies Needed in America

1. Eliminate all 2,300 Federal Subsidies.

Growing at 100 new ones per year and costing hundreds of billions of dollars annually, subsides try to over ride market forces and are therefore a “slice of Communism” - the most failed economic system ever. Here is where you can find lists of the subsidies - https://www.cfda.gov/ Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance. However, they don't show the budgets and spending here. Instead the government deliberately hides the subsidies in many departmental budgets so that we the people cannot see their true annual costs. So when the government asks you what you want to cut to reduce spening – Military, Medicare, Social security, etc.? - tell them to just cut all the subsicies and restate all the departmental budgets for the last 20 years with the subsides out of them and instead in one Federal Subsidy Budget, namely the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance.

2. Kill and Replace Unaffordable Obamacare

Focus first on cost reduction measures. Government medical fraud is estimated to range between 10-25%. Private insurance is estimated to be less than 1%. So let private insurance companies instead of government workers manage government medical programs. Do real tort reform to cut down lawsuits that all of us pay for in our insurance and medical costs. Half of all Medicare costs occur for patients in their last year of life. Much of it are for procedures on terminally ill patients that don't really help the patient but are great for doctor and hospital revenues. Have cancer and only six months to live – well you also have blocked arteries, so let's do an expensive and painful quadruple bypass so that we can make sure that you suffer expensively and needlessly for the entire six months. The terminally ill patient may not even be capable of making such medical decisions. So in order to cover those situations without intrusive and unwanted government interference, everyone who signs up for Medicare (or is already on it) must also complete a thoroughly designed living medical will (which they can change at any time), available online to all medical providers, who are required to follow it and that no one, including family members, can over rule. Require all medical providers to charge the same price for their medical services to all patients. No more one price for the insured, and a price ten times higher for the uninsured. Get rid of all State insurance mandates so that national insurance policies can be competitively sold including "disaster" policy options for those that want medical insurance only for the large medical expenses.

3. Fix Social Security

Most of us only think of Social Security as a pension fund. However, it is three separate insurance programs – pension, disability, and widows with minor children. We currently fund them all with one Social Security tax. That tax is capped at a set dollar amount of $128,400 in 2018. Income above that limit does not get SS taxed. I agree with the reason not to tax all income in terms of the pension only. All of us in the pension plan should get back, when we retire, what we put into the program plus reasonable investment growth. So yes, we need to cap the income level for SS pension directed taxes to equate with the maximum limits set for Social Security benefits.

However, on the other two SS insurance funds (disability and widows with minor children), those are purely “welfare” programs. On welfare programs, a progressive tax on all income earned is typical and fair. So let's have two SS taxes – a capped tax for just the pension meant to equalize investment and return, and a SS welfare tax with no income cap on the rest. The tax percentage on the welfare part would likely need to be about 2%, with about 4% taxes to the cap for the SS pension. The exact numbers can be worked out by actuaries.

When your spouse dies, you receive the higher of the two SS checks and lose the other check. Depending on your spouses beneifts, that is a 33 to 50% loss of income. Your expenses (housing, property tax, insurance, car payment, energy bills, etc) don't go down 33 to 50% when a spouse dies. So offer upfront, at the beginning of collecting SS benefits, same as is done with private pensions, to collect slightly less SS benefits while both are alive and not lose the entire second SS check when one spouse dies.

One last recommended reform regards SS disability benefits. When unemployment benefits ran out after being extended to two years during the 2008 Recession, some unemployed applied for and received SS disability payments due to “stress”. Supposedly, they were too “distressed” to work. Close that ridiculous and expensive loophole by eliminating “stress” as a covered SS disability. That will help reduce total SS costs fairly so that we can keep SS taxes from rising to unacceptable levels.

4. Kill the Social Security "Torpedo Tax" on Earned Benefits:

This hits the middle class retirees hard. Once income is past $32,000 for singles and $44,000 for married couples, you may be subject to SS taxes that can be as high as 50%!! That is a much higher percentage than the wealthiest Americans pay on their income taxes. Eliminate the Torpedo tax. Better yet, eliminate all taxes on SS benefits which were originally promised never to be taxed.

5. Make all Decisions based on Race or Ethniticity illegal:

Only merit should be considered for college admissions, job offerings, and job promotions. Those with the most merit are admitted, hired, or promoted. No more reverse discrimination to achieve "diversity" goals.

6. Stop All Illegal Immigration with Real Tough Policies and Enforcement Measures:

No jobs, no schools, no housing for illegals and require strict checking and enforcement at businesses and schools. Anyone, including mayors, governors, and police who do not enforce these laws or does not report immediately to immigration authorities, or actively seeks to protect illegals go to jail for a long time. No asylum given at our borders. Illegals who want asylum must apply to the US Embassy in their own country and get approval or denial there. Anyone caught illegally in our nation is photographed, fingerprinted, and DNA taken, then stripped of all money and possessions except clothes, and immediately deported without trial. They are never allowed to come back to the US and if they do will be sentenced to jail first, then deported.

7. Re-define Citizenship to fit the Realities of our Modern World:

Only children born to American citizens anywhere in the world and those born in the USA to legal residents are citizens. The rest are “foreign nationals” born on US soil, not citizens. Neither they nor their parents are allowed to stay here. No more "anchor babies".

8. Stop all School "Social Promotions:

Much of the failure of public schools is a parental problem of some parents not working with their children to make them focus on their school work. Their kids are not trying, the parents are doing nothing about it, and expect the teachers to somehow do the teaching and the parenting job. Send kids to “study” detention daily who are failing, and if needed to summer school to learn the material. No more "social" promotions to the next grade. Leave them back in the same grade if they fail. If it happens a second time, bring the family to Family court. Those kids may be in a poisonous parental situation (for example drug addiction or alcoholism) and may need to be separated from the parents who have failed them.

9. Eliminate All taxes on Overseas Profits Invested in the US:

We want overseas profits to be invested in the US. That brings jobs and wealth to America. Though we have reduced the tax on overseas profits invested here, we remain the only nation on Earth who taxes these investments in our american economy. It is the height of stupidity to punish global companies who invest their overseas profits here. Let's end this immediately!!!

10. On Civil Lawsuits, Loser Pays All, including the attorney fees of their opponent:

We are a sue happy nation and ultimately all of us pay for those costs. Most other nations have much less lawsuits than America because they employ the loser pays all rule. If the loser used a lawyer(s) and did not lie nor withold important information to that lawyer(s), then the lawyer(s) pay all the opponent's cost plus refunds their fees to the loser. This should greatly reduce the number of frivolous lawsuits, plus encourage legitimate lawsuits to be settled out of court.