With all the focus on government budgets for education and the need for reducing government spending overall, I found one particular article from S. Fred Singer interesting, it was published on March 11, 2011, at the American Thinker website, and it’s titled Adventures in Federal Budget Cutting.

Singer’s closing point:

there is need to take slow steps in cutting the federal budget; withdrawal symptoms can be painful, politically damaging, and could kill the whole enterprise.  Remember that “pulling pigs out of the trough causes a lot of squealing.”

The bulk of the article is fascinating – it addresses the amazing career of Singer, who has been in and out of political appointments throughout Republican and Democrat administrations for decades, and how various efforts at his position to cut budgets came back “to haunt him” at later points in his career.

His insight into the process by which government spending has run out of control is excellent.

So how is this beneficial to the educator?  Bloated budgets push cash all over, education is only part of the story.  The more the government overall is streamlined and efficient, the more it can safely and effectively support more critical functions, education being one of them.

We need more people like Singer to help eliminate wasteful spending on irrelevant projects and boondoggles, rather than undercutting crucial programs for which government structures were originally set up to begin with.