Doug Ross's Best. Idea. Ever.

Send this to your Senators (I'm serious):

Cap and Trade for Congress!

... what if we slapped a similar cap-and-trade on Congress, only it would be their spending they'd have to reduce?

Let's take the defense and intelligence communities out of the mix. They seem to be good stewards of our money and, hell, they're protecting our country from harm, which is more than we can say for Congress.

No, the truly outrageous offenders are the government bureaucracies that endlessly grow, never improving taxpayers' lives while formulating new regulations and rules to further empower themselves.

So here's how my Cap-and-Trade plan works.

We start with the most useless government agencies we can find. The Department of Education, the Department of Agriculture, The Department of Health and Human Services, The Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Labor, the Environmental Protection Agency, the FCC and Amtrak. For the sake of argument, let's say that together, they consume $250 billion a year.

Congress' job? They would be required to cut spending for these ridiculous bureaucracies according to the following schedule (which I had a lot of fun creating -- all numbers in billions).
 

2012      250
2013      210
2014      190
2015      160
2016      140
2017      120
2018      110
2019      100
2020       90
2021       75
2022       60
2023       50

Pay-cuts? Layoffs? Closing unnecessary facilities? Who gives a crap? That's for them to figure out.

How do you like Cap-and-trade now, Democrats?