How to get by on less government

CATO offers these words of advice on how to cut the size of the federal government which, by their reckoning, is three times as big as it should be.

• Balance the budget without raising taxes;
• Reduce domestic discretionary spending by more than $350 billion, (from 7.9 percent of GDP to 5 percent)
• Reform Social Security by moving toward a system of individual savings accounts;
• Reform Medicare to cut costs, and freeze Medicaid spending at current levels and distribute the funds to states as unrestricted block grants;
• Establish a ‘‘sunset’’ commission to automatically review all federal programs
  
• Change the rules of the budget process to make it easier to keep spending under control; and
• Institute a strong spending growth cap equal to population growth plus inflation.