Budget Cuts

During an emergency session for the Utah’s Congress, the lawmakers were poised and forced to cut more than $270 million from the budget. They are instructed to keep all budget cuts away from education. Instead of any cuts to education, they are likely to eliminate many jobs and scale back on many programs. These cuts will likely be decided later today.

May I make a few suggestions?

1. Eliminate all vehicle privileges for state officials, including the Highway Patrol and administration. We will cut down on a lot of unnecessary cost by taking away their opportunity to drive their car on the state’s dime. Taxpayers do not want to pay for executive staff to drive to the movies, to the mall, and to Macey’s in state funded vehicles. If the majority of the citizens have to provide their own transportation to work then so can the rest of the State’s officials. (I’m also pointing at you, Provo City!)

2. Post a call for bids to privatize the Utah State Hospital immediately. Millions of dollars are wasted at the USH every year in unnecessary building costs and unproductive programs. True Republicans would advocate for smaller government and this is your chance to fulfill your platform of smaller government! There is also a lot of unnecessary and wasteful bureacracy within the State Hospital that is eating a lot of the budget up.

3. Immediately pull the plug on any funding to anything that should never have received funding including the REAL SOCCER STADIUM! Political party conventions also.

4. Cutting Executive Office staffers. You can do your own job Governor Huntsman.

5. Change the priorities in the prison system. If there is a violent/sexual offender then they are to remain in jail. If he/she commits victimless crimes (a crime that has hurt nobody except themselves) then the perpetrator is to go free. This will free up the prisons' budget and will open the prison system for more violent offenders ... which will free up the police on the streets because the violent ones are remaining in jail…and not being set free because of overcrowding.

6. Privatize the expensive FrontRunner Train system and TRAX light-rail.

7. Force UVU, WSU, UofU, SUU, Snow, CEU, etc. to be more profitable. Universities and colleges are capable of this (they are smart people, right?) I'm not advocating an overnight pullout of all funds, but I'd tell them they have 5 years to be self sufficient because their funds are being eliminated. They should be given the opportunity to sell to a private institution. The new Library in Utah Valley University is a waste of public funds.

8. Flat tax. (I would prefer no income tax). It's unconstitutional anyway, and it eats up potential sales tax revenue. Let the people earn their own money and keep it.

9. Spend money on a major internal audit so we can find unnecessary state institutions to weed out waste.

10. Promote industry to move to Utah by eliminating corporate tax and subsidies. Let them keep their earnings and pay their employees. Those employees will pay plenty of sales tax to run this monstro government.


These are just a few of the ideas I can think of. It’s going to be frustrating watching what budget cuts occur with these people running the show. I guarantee they make things worse. Help! Get me in there!