Bob Has Solutions
Practical, workable ideas that solve problems. You won't hear them from Bob's status quo opponents.
- Break up the massive and entrenched DC bureaucracy by eliminating several federal departments, slashing spending in others, and relocating most of them away from Washington in a competitive process among relevant cities across the country. Benefits: will reduce government costs by hundreds of billions of dollars, allowing us to further reduce taxes coming out of your paycheck; will TRULY drain the DC swamp of an east coast ruling class telling us how to live our lives.
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Give tax credits (rather than deductions) for contributions to "safety net" charitable organizations. In so doing, get the federal government out of managing bureaucracy-heavy relief programs. Send that capital to the more innovative, more nimble, and more responsive private charitable sector, and watch it flourish! Benefits: encourages more charitable giving while also allowing us to massively reduce wasteful and corrupt government spending, and eliminate deficit spending. Also clears out huge swaths of federal government bureaucracy, while providing better dollar-for-dollar outcomes for beneficiaries of safety net programs.
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Link the implementation of expanded and simplified legal immigration to progress in reducing illegal border crossings and adjudicating asylum requests. Benefits: more immigration but better managed immigration means more economic growth with lower inflation. It allows more people to live free and achieve their dreams without creating an unbearable strain on social services. It allows Americans to experience the benefits of legal immigration without the national security threats, human and drug trafficking that we are currently experiencing.
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Propose a “Right to Privacy” amendment to the US Constitution that keeps government out of our bedrooms, limits its ability to interfere in procreation decisions, and gives parents primacy in educational and healthcare decisions affecting their minor children. Benefits: eliminates threats of government intrusion into your personal and family matters, more freedom to pursue happiness as you define it.
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Bring home our forward-deployed US ground troops and allow our contribution to the defense of allies be our nuclear umbrella and our unsurpassed Navy and Air Force. Ground troop deployments should require a congressional declaration. We should not unreasonably subsidize the defense of other nations, instigate regime change wars, ask the Army to occupy foreign lands, or deploy troops as "trip wires". Benefits: reduce defense spending without adversely impacting our safety, reduce our provocations that contribute to wars around the globe, and make military service be about national defense rather than interventionism.
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Stop the incarceration of drug users who commit no violent crimes. End the counterproductive "War on Drugs" that has failed since the Nixon Administration to reduce the addiction problem, and has instead created – just as during Prohibition – a massively profitable landscape for violent criminal enterprise. Attack drug abuse as a medical problem, not a criminal problem. Benefits: ends the counterproductive drug wars, reduces violent crime, reduces incarceration costs, puts more fathers back home in families where they canE stop the cycle of poverty and crime.
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Propose a "Re-Awaken Federalism" amendment to the US Constitution. Let's let California be California, and let Texas be Texas, and stop trying to force one solution on everyone. Not every issue needs to be settled in DC and jammed down everyone's throats. Benefits: more localized decision-making makes for better government, less incivility and reduces the threat of national civil instability. It will also result in far less federal spending, which means far less federal taxation. More money in your paycheck.
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Make public and private universities use their massive endowments to backstop student loans. Taxpayers should never be asked to guarantee student loans, particularly when major universities sit on massive endowments, often multiple billions of dollars. The universities are the beneficiaries of the student loan guarantee programs, it goes in their pockets, and has resulted in astronomical inflation of tuition at virtually every major university. Benefits: ending the public subsidy of educational privilege reduces our debt, reduces inflation, and better aligns incentives for students to pursue studies that give them the ability to compete economically.
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Convert the Social Security defined benefit program into a defined contribution plan to ensure its long term survival for younger generations. Social Security was poorly designed and shifts the risks of population demographics, actuarial changes and the government's own creditworthiness onto taxpayers. The fix is to create defined contributions plans, giving those over 50 the option (not the requirement) to convert their accrued pension benefit to a DC plan. Benefits: preserves a retirement plan benefit system for future generations instead of watching it collapse of its own weight in the next few years; also creates "ownership" in individually-owned plans.
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Refocus the regulatory state where it belongs: off the backs of small business, and increasing anti-trust enforcement to break up monopolies and to discourage anti-competitive behavior. Libertarians are the defenders of free and competitive markets, not of crony capitalism. Small businesses need to be unshackled from regulation so they can grow and flourish. Large businesses should be restrained by government from becoming monopolies or displaying anti-competitive behavior. Far too much of government's regulatory oversight is focused on small business, and far too little on preventing monopolies. Benefits: deregulation towards competitive businesses increases employment and economic wealth generation. The breakup of monopolies, and the prevention of monopolistic behavior by oligopolies, protects consumers from bad corporate behavior.
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Change the rules of how we elect congressmen and senators to replace career politicians with citizen legislators. Yes, we need term limits, but we also need gerrymandering reform, ranked-choice voting, and new thinking on how congressmen are compensated. Benefits: more open seats means more competitive elections, which also means congressmen who are focused more on solutions to problems than on self-perpetuation.
