Brilliant Tactic!!!!!

[CaptainHaplo]

Republican Whip Eric Cantor has launched "YouCut" - a public voting process on the net and thru texting that will enable the Public to speak on what should be targetted as wasteful spending.

While it is not what it should be yet - you get 5 offerings and their expected savings - you can only vote for one. Alot of comments go toward "Why can't we vote for all 5?", but its a start. Every week, the Republican leadership will put forth the matter for an up or down vote in Congress, though you can expect that such a vote will never come. Still, pushing everything into administrative limbo and subcommittees is a dangerous action for a democratic led congress that already is facing significant ire from the American public, especially approaching an election.

Find the site here:
http://republicanwhip.house.gov/YouCut

Edit - looks successful - been up about 48 hours and already has over 150k votes.

[krashkart]

Wonder what they will have next week. :up:

[CaptainHaplo]

I dunno - but they do have a "suggestion" area...

Mine was to deny welfare/medicaid/food stamps to anyone in the country illegally.:yeah:

[Oberon]

That's not a shabby idea, they should try something like that in the UK, find out what people really think.
It's open to lobbying from internet groups I'm sure, but it's not tied wholly into the political system but is more a...weather-vane, so to speak.

[krashkart]

Makes good sense to me. The only suggestion of my own that I can come up with ATM would be to bring American manufacturing back to our soil, instead of allowing those jobs and dollars to be doled out in a foreign country. Not so much of a cost-cutting measure for government spending, but I certainly don't think it would hurt our economy one bit. There was quite an uproar here in town when Firestone announced its intentions to move operations from the local plant to a different country. The plant is still open and things have quieted down, but man it had to have been pretty scary for a lot of families around here. I don't like them companies one bit.

[CaptainHaplo]

I know where your coming from krashkart - but those kinds of things can't be "legislated". The companies move for lots of reasons - reduced tax burden, cheaper labor, less regulation etc. Part of that the government can influence - other parts it can't. The one thing they COULD do is put an import tariff on any company that moves out of the country - making the sale of their products more expensive in the US - but that would just mean the consumer would end up paying it - or going to another supplier.

[Tribesman]

So this is the publicity gimmick of which the Cato institute says even if all of Cantors proposals were to go through it would save over 5 years 0.017% of the money that needs to be saved now.

[mookiemookie]

Where do I vote to cut out the Bush tax cuts or the Iraq war? Where do I vote to cut the corporate welfare for the oil industry, or corn subsidies? Or banning earmarks?

[Platapus]

Why would you want to ban earmarks?

Do you really want discretionary spending to be controlled by one elected politician? I sure don't :nope:

[CaptainHaplo]

Mookie - had you actually investigated it - they have a suggestion section where you can in fact make such suggestions. It would be funny if they had enough suggestions to do stuff like that - and then it won in the voting - they would be forced to put it up for a vote.

Get involved.

[krashkart]

Where do I vote to cut out the Bush tax cuts or the Iraq war? Where do I vote to cut the corporate welfare for the oil industry, or corn subsidies? Or banning earmarks?

The two in bold: :up:

Like Hap said, mookie, get involved. I doubt you'd be the only one to offer up those suggestions. :)

[CaptainHaplo]

Of course - for some people, its being done by the evil republicans - so why bother. :damn:

[mookiemookie]

Of course - for some people, its being done by the evil republicans - so why bother. :damn:

No, it's a good idea in theory. But this just stinks to high heaven of some election year gimmick.

[Tribesman]

Of course - for some people, its being done by the evil republicans - so why bother.
While for others like the notoriously anti republican Cato Institute they describe the gimmick as like having the Empire State building in flames and giving a small child a squirt gun to quell the inferno.