BANGOR, Maine — According to former mayor and longtime Bangor trial lawyer Lawrence Willey, there must be 50 ways to cut federal spending.
A member of Gov. John McKernan’s state restructuring commission in the 1990s, Willey’s interest in streamlining civic, state and federal government hasn’t waned over the years.
What the University of Maine alumnus admits is a hobby for him has resulted in his production of a 166-page tome titled “50 Recommendations to Cut Federal Spending.”
Willey opted to forego time spent playing golf — his other favorite hobby — last year to hasten completion of his research, which suggests if all 50 of his recommendations were enacted, the federal government would save approximately $3.65 trillion and generate another $3.8 trillion in new revenue.
“This is all something I did myself, so if a lawyer from Bangor can do this, it shouldn’t be hard for our government to be able to evaluate this and put some of these things into practice,” Willey said. “I read economic papers and journals, and study this kind of stuff, most of which is online and accessible to the public. That’s what irritates me is it’s all there and no one has tried to use the info to make some changes.
A member of The Maine Institute, he also issued a paper with recommendations for restructuring state government and making it more efficient.
“One of my recommendations was for the Departments of Agriculture and Conservation to be combined, and that’s happening,” he said.
Some of his suggestions include consolidation of federal departments and agencies, for instance, combining the U.S. Departments of Defense and Homeland Security. In his executive branch model, he consolidates 15 departments into seven and 56 government agencies, commissions and boards into 37.
“There are various ways to combine departments and eliminate multiplicity and duplication and combined oversight of the same areas by different government departments,” said Willey.
Other suggestions include repealing Obama’s health care legislation, which Willey said would save $800 billion in tax increases; instituting a flat tax of 15 to 25 percent for corporations and 15 to 18 percent for individuals; and privatizing the Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae and Ginnie Mae loan agencies.
While he is a registered Republican, Willey has no partisan design or goal for his work.
“I’m not copywriting this. I don’t care who uses it or what party may find it interesting. I’m just hoping it gets out there and leads to some positive changes,” he said.
How does history gets rewritten? Sometimes it comes from reporters who write news stories with incorrect data. Neff states Governor John McKernan had a state restructuring commission in the 1990’s.
Not true.
The governor appointed participants, along with the House Speaker and Senate President. The Governor did appoint Lawrence Willey, but restructuring was not the governor’s idea, nor did he propose it, nor did the governor support the idea.
The recommendations for the Departments of Agriculture and Conservation to be combined was in the original legislation. I’d suggest Neff check the BDN’s news files before he tries to rewrite history in his own version of events. Willey, may want to do the same before he takes too much credit for redrafting a report into a political document, as it was at the time, but I do give him credit for keeping the item before the public.
As to his recommendation of the merging the Department of Defense and Homeland Security is really very weird. I’ve seen military troops standing around at airports in a number of third world countries I’ve visited from my military service, my State and federal services, as well as personal trips. I have no desire to see our military patrolling our airports, harbors, or streets, nor checking out domestic groups like the Students for a Democratic Society, the Tea Parties, the NRA, or the NAACP, or even the AARP. I don’t think we’re a banana republic yet. I hope Mr. Willey was misquoted or misspoke on that recommendation.
I don’t believe Willey was misquoted and I think he will say that he didn’t misspeak (if that’s a word) on the recommendation to merge DoD and DHS.
I agree with you that it’s a strange recommendation when considering the missions of these Departments. I can’t even fathom to imagine who could oversee the operations of a merged Department. The two people responsible for these Departments in two administrations have had their hands full and there have been many, many things that have gone wrong.
WOW somebody with a head on his shoulders and using it. I recommend we combine all of our politicians into one department, THE LAWRENCE WILEY DEPARTMENT
Good for you, Mr Willey. Don’t buckle under the criticism here. I’ve written recommendations of my own, which of course are summarily laughed at. The fourth branch of government, the regulatory branch, which writes laws, executes them, and judges those who fail to prove compliance, has no constitutional basis and needs to be abolished, but you can see them laughing here already…
Willey wishes ! Consolidating DHS and DoD isin’t going to happen since there a little thing called the Possee Comtatus Act that prevents the DoD from enforcing civilian law. And his flat tax is pure simple Tea Party / GOP / Grover Norquist propoganda that does nothing but give huge tax break’s to the upper 1% and saddle the rest of us with the balance. So much for shared responsibility. Privatizing Freddie, Fanie and Ginne have been long overdue. What’s missing is what does Willey propose to deal with the mountain of student debt that’s going to sit on our kid’s for a VERY long time ? Willey wants to make a name for himself, fine. Put a working solution to this mess and then, maybe, he’s got something to blow his horn over.
Consolidating Agriculture and Conservation here in Maine was nothing but pure political manipulation since the Conservation Commissioner was, by definition, responsible for the regulation and enforcement of the State’s land use law’s. LePage has shown repeatedly that he has absolute and total disrespect for any type of land protection or conservation if that protection inteferes with any type of land use that he or his campaign contributor’s or supporter’s don’t like. His recent comment’s regarding the proposed E-W Highway, and the literral severing Maine in 2, is beyond anyone’s ability to reason a prime example of just what LePage’s position is regarding land protection’s and conservation when his political supporter’s, and their checkbook’s, decide they either want something that they know is adverse to Maine’s well-being or, want to use Maine for their own purposes that isin’t going to benefit anyone but themselves. Willey needs to get off his pile of Midas and start looking around and see just what shape he’s leaving Maine in for his kid’s.
Actually, Possee Comitatus Act of 1878, would not preclude the DoD and DHS being combined. All it prevents is the Army from enforcing civilian law in the continental US. In fact, the US Army did provide that service in the western part of the US for years after the act was passed and even served as the first national park rangers in Yellowstone.
Overzealous interpretations of the act by DoD secretaries during the Cold War (they would rather have the Army build nuclear cannons than watch our own borders) is what has restricted the use of military in domestic law enforcement. In fact nothing in the act prohibits the US Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, or Coast Guard from enforcing domestic laws other than self regulation by DoD.
Isn’t the Coast Guard under HS now?
Edit, never mind, I misread it…I just remember being near a base, and saw a Homeland Security sign.
Yes Big, the Coastie’s are under DHS. And they are one of the very few DHS Agencies, that have a link to the military, that have the authority to enforce civilian law since their jurisdiction extends to vessels both inside of the 2 mile out limit but also any US Flagged vessel that they encounter anywhere, since a US Flagged vessel is, by maritime law, considered US territory. Thats why the Navy has a Coast Guard Officer on every vessel so they can enforce US maritime law, legally, whenever they run into one the the drug runner boat’s. They also have the authority to board to conduct both health and safety inspection’s on any vessel entering US water’s in order to insure compliance with the various immagration, health and marine vessel safety provision’s as called for under establsished Federal Statute.
Yes you are correc the US Coast Guard is part of the Department of Homeland Security. Prior to that they were part of the Deparment of Transportation, and prior to that part of the US Treasury Department. However, in all cases, in time of war they fall under the Department of the Navy which now part of the Department of Defense.
Transferring them to the Department of Defense would not change their constitutional status to enforce federal law and code (just as transferring them to the Navy Department during WWII did not). However, it would save the US taxpayers a huge sum by reducing costs associated with, in effect, running two separate navies, and two navies that two separate air forces, and that do actually have significant mission overlap.
As I was fond of telling my counterparts in the other services, the US Navy has everything: It has its own Army (US Marines), its own Air Force (Naval Aviation and Submarine Launched Ballistic Missiles), and its own Army (USMC) even has its own Air Force (USMC aviation). Furthermore the US Navy during War has its own police force (the US Coast Guard), and, by the way, its own police force has its own air force as well ( USCG Aviation).
Then Sir I suggest you re-read both The Constitution and US Code and ask yourselves do you really want to have the military enforcing civilian law under that type of system ? The UCMJ is what the military is under and for good reason. You go put the rest of the Country under the UCMJ and now you have MARTIAL LAW. Trust me, since I’ve been under, and enforced, both. You do not want UCMJ to be the Law of the Land. If you do then please let us all know when you are leaving for Russia on the next Aeroflot flight from NYC so we can wave bye bye to you so you can have your wish. And make sure you have your will in order, just in case ……..
Does not the National Defense Authorization Act (signed by Pres. Obama on New Year’s Eve 2011) instruct the military to arrest and detain indefinitely any American citizen the president wants arrested? How does that fit in with the Posse Comitatus?
Well actually the US Military has a long history of enforcing civil law in this country. Remember the Whiskey Rebellion, was put down by troops. The US Military ensured the security of the pioneers on their way west and well into the 1890s in the American Southwest. It was racist Democrats that enacted the Posse Comitatus Act so that federal troops would leave the South. If I were a just freed slave, I would probably rather have the US Military running the justice system than ex-confederates and the KKK as was the case in the south. Also, remember it was federal troops that paved the way for the desegregation of schools in Little Rock, AR, and the University of Alabama.
As for being under the UCMJ, I served under for twenty plus years. I would also note that William Kuntsler, as radical an attorney as there ever was, and a hero to the left noted that the rules in the UCMJ were much fairer than in state courts and the federal courts and that preferred to represent clients in military tribunals because of their fairness.
While I don’t proffer that US troops should be stationed on every street corner, I do recognize that they bring an unique set of tools to the law enforcement table. And those tools should not be arbitrarily shunned due to an ill founded act by a racist Congress.
So you so smart what is your proposal? If you don’t have one. Shut up, sit down, buckle up and hang on.
Where would one obtain a copy of “50 Recommendations to Cut Federal Spending”? The posters here have obviously read this tome and are able to make salient remarks. Curiously, I would read into these comments that Mr. Willey wrote about State budgeting issues in his Federal spending paper. I’m interested to interpret this paper into the “propaganda” you suggest it is. Can I read this at the library? Buy it on Amazon? Where did you obtain your copies? Please, I am begging, tell me where you read it! Thanks for the help.
50 ways to cut your spending
Just baffle with talk, Jock
Make the tax flat, Matt
Drink up the tea , Lee
and set your budget free
Is he running? I’d vote for him.
He is running from the truth.
An incredible waste of time and energy. Does Mr. Willey really think anyone is going to act on his tome? Really, give me a BREAK! Talk about EGO.
” Other suggestions include repealing Obama’s health care legislation”, This is not a good idea. Why should private insurance companies make millions of dollars in quartly earnings? I am tired of fighting with my insurance company over payments and denied claims and have to fight when I do need a procedure done. When I am paying them a lot if money each month to have insurance. And also. instituting a flat tax of 15 to 25 percent for corporations and 15 to 18 percent for individuals; I am a middle class citizen close to poor. why should I pay 15-18 % of a flat tax when I can barly pay my bills now. and you want corporatiions to pay 15-25%? This is the reason why all college graduates need to leave Maine. The state doesn’t care about the middle class. , the goverment keeps pinching the middle class to the EXTREME , While coporations are not getting squeezed and I don’t see a lot of corporations hiring or treating their employees very well. Sorry you missed playing golf last year. You need to come up with a better plan than this.
And you forgot to mention in your plan, how to eliminate all the greed in Augusta and how to abolish all the lobbiest.
I agree with you all the programs that have been around a long time and their greed for taxpayer dollars need to be streamlined or abolished altogether
The notion that lowering tax rates to the levels Willey proposes increases revenues has been proven wrong at least four times: Reagan’s 1981 and 1987 tax cuts and Bush’s 2001 and 2003 tax cuts all triggered a drop in revenue. Under Willey’s logic, if we dropped the tax rates to 1% the money would just roll in!
Experience in other countries shows that there is a level for the highest rate of marginal taxation above which tax revenues begin declining: somewhere between 50 and 70 %. Talk of lowering the rates even more is utter foolishness.
Mr. Willey, we had a budget surplus after Clinton’s 1993 tax increases for which no Republican Senator or Congressman voted. Yet, you supported both of Bush’s tax cuts and the funding of both of his wars with borrowed money. As a result we have a gaping budget deficit and no economic growth to show for those tax cuts. Given your track record for urging us to fiscal disaster why would we take anything you write seriously?
I think you should tell the whole story. Revenues under Reagan did fall initially (during the recession) but increased by 50% by the end of his term which was a huge increase. Same with Bush, initially it fell during the recession and 9-11 and then went on to increase by about 25%.
Reagan raised taxes eleven times, principally in 1982, 1983, and 1985. The 1983 tax increases were for FICA taxes which generated the huge Social Security surplus that we still have. Your percentage increase in revenues (if correct) ignores those tax increases and looks at the increase from the disastrous first year after the tax cuts. Finally, the only way to measure revenue independently of cyclical swings in the economy is as a percentage of GDP. Revenues went down as a percentage of GDP under Reagan.
With Bush your increase in revenue (if correct) is likely from the worst year post tax cuts and is not expressed as a percentage of GDP.
I have never seen a CBO report (they are non-partisan) which claims that tax cuts led to revenue increases under Bush II or Reagan. Unquestionably, the tax increases Clinton enacted led to revenue gains and a balanced budget.
Wake up, put the toxic tea down, and smell the coffee.
Which is it?
You said: “The notion that lowering tax rates to the levels Willey proposes increases revenues has been proven wrong at least four times: Reagan’s 1981 and 1987 tax cuts and Bush’s 2001 and 2003 tax cuts all triggered a drop in revenue.”
I said tax revenues increased by 50% during Reagan’s tenure.
You said: “Reagan raised taxes eleven times, principally in 1982, 1983, and 1985. The 1983 tax increases were for FICA taxes which generated the huge Social Security surplus that we still have. Your percentage increase in revenues (if correct) ignores those tax increases”
Well which is it? Since revenues did increase substantially was it because of tax reductions or tax increases?
You said: looks at the increase from the disastrous first year after the tax cuts.
I looked at revenues in Carter’s disastrous last year in office.
You said: Under Willey’s logic, if we dropped the tax rates to 1% the money would just roll in!
Please study Laffer curve.
We had a budget surplus well after Clinton’s tax increases i.e. once the Republicans got spending under control, the dot.com bubble brought in huge revenues from capital gains taxes which by the way were reduced by about 25% in 1998.
No– measuring changes in tax revenues as a percentage of gdp is not good analysis. Since you apparently like hyperbole lets consider Cuba or North Korea—I’d say tax revenues are fairly close to 100% of their gdp.
Compare Mississippi and Connecticut if you wish to see the effect of minimal taxation versus intelligent taxation.
Reagan’s tax increases are responsible for the growth in tax revenues. It sure wasn’t the 1981 tax cuts, as revenues plunged in 1982 and unemployment topped 10 % by late 1982.
The Laffer curve has never been peer-reviewed or proven correct in the real world. It began as a sketch on the back of a cocktail napkin and has had a colorful history since then. Stockman admitted that the Laffer curve was wrong.
Tax revenues increased substantially during the first full year of Clinton’s tax increases. Don’t confuse surpluses with tax revenues.
I am all for getting rid of needless government spending. One of the largest obstacles about cutting X trillion dollars from a budget and combining departments at once is the fact that unemployment will spike to new highs in the short term. Most people that work for the government are paid much higher then those in the private sector. They also have better benefits. If you send a few million of those people to the unemplyment line the system might not break but it might crack.
If we want to start cutting Government, let’s start with the Internal Revneue Service.
“Most people that work for the government are paid much higher then those in the private sector”
Simply not true. Take two people with similar education backgrounds and the difference between public and private salaries is almost nil, expecally consitering the cost of living in the D.C area.
Maybe in East Willywag or somehting like that… but I can tell you that in the cities, trained, well-educated professionals make a lot more than their counterparts at City Hall.
This isn’t a serious proposal whatsoever.
Without health care reform, there is 50 million without insurance and growing. A flat tax would discourage consumer spending and raise taxes immensely on the middle and working classes. This would slow our economy down.
We are all polishing the brass on the Titanic, its going down hard, and one egocentric balding lawyer is not going to lead us to the fiscal promise land with farcical plans as such.
I wonder if any of his suggestions would include elimination of a bunch of unfunded mandates that end up on the doorstep of property owners. Trickle down in reality.
Slip out the back, Jack. Make a new plan, Stan. Hop on the bus, Gus. Set yourself free, Lee.
Anybody remember the Laffer Curve? An economist named Arthur Laffer said that if the government took everything in taxes, it would have no revenue because people wouldn’t work for nothing. And if the government took nothing in taxes, it would have no revenue either. Somewhere between was the best level of taxation to maximize government revenue. Of course, neither he nor anyone else knew what that level was. Republicans have been pushing lower taxes with this argument of increasing government revenues for years now with ill effects. Humorist Garrison Keillor said that the Republicans’ belief in this theory of economics was like the belief held by ancient people that if they threw virgins off a cliff it would increase the corn crop.
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MA-NE.net: There must be fifty ways to
leave your loversave federal funds…You never hire either an attorney nor an accountant to solve problems, their sole job is to find problems…Ironically a vast majority in congress has a doctorate in Jurisprudence…