The budget battle is just starting to heat up. The rhetoric is going to get very hot and the charges will be very extreme. Let’s look at a typical area for cuts, education, and lay out what is likely to happen.

This is just an example and the same tactics will be used for each program facing a cut. We’ll show you the liberal tactics and the desired conservative response.

The first argument will be that we don’t need to cut the amount being sought – it always ought to be less.

The problem with this is that only 1.5% of the overall budget is being hit. Let’s assume that 1.5% is the requested rate in each area. Are we to assume that we cannot find that small of an amount which we can do without? Anything less would be like no cut at all.

The second tactic is the extreme, or the scare tactic. In education, we will be told that children will have no lunches (children will always be cited first), that teachers will be put out of work (employees always come second), that classrooms will have no air conditioning (dire conditions are always predicted).

Liberals always cite the worst case scenario. However, could we not reduce the number of administrators rather than fire teachers? In any business, costs are usually greatest in the area of payroll and our education system is top heavy with administrators. Could we not eliminate the “rubber room” system in which teachers who are not permitted to teach because of some infraction are paid annual salaries for decades at a time as they do nothing more than sit in a “rubber room” all day long doing nothing?

Reasonable cuts can easily be made without affecting the quality of education at all.

Reality tells us that cuts much greater than 1.5% are going to be needed if we are to return to fiscal stability. The meager amounts Republicans are seeking lead us to believe that even most of them don’t get it. Tinkering here and there isn’t going to work.

Conservatives do not envision a smaller government – we envision a small government – big difference!

With our example of education, our vision is to see the federal government completely out of education, as it was before President Carter, with the Department of Education being abolished. My, what did we do for education before President Carter? Were we all dunces? We want education issues to be resolved at the state and local levels, close to home. That doesn’t hurt education, it greatly improves it! Local education is less costly and much more cost effective, just what our budget mess needs.

The liberal agenda is to keep spending and to spend more. They accuse conservatives of wanting to hurt the programs put forth for cuts, which is so disingenuous. We are seeking to save them and improve them. Returning control to the local level accomplishes this. It is what conservatives want with almost every government program.

The smallest unit of government is the family. Scripture presents the family as a part of God’s order. Parents are taught to love and value their children and their spouse, to teach the children and train them. Children are taught to love and respect each other and their parents, and to learn from them. In the home, rules and parameters are set, and consequences for breaking the rules occurs, as well as blessings for honoring them. In other words, Scripture thoroughly teaches us that the most local level of control is the best situation. Our disastrous experience with a huge, bloated federal government has confirmed how valuable Scripture’s admonitions are. To violate Scriptural principles will continue to lead us down the road to ruin.

This article was written by Dave Shreve of AskTheConservative  03.09.2011. Please visit his site for more conservative common sense articles adn content.

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