What about giving a lot of the Federal land back to the individual states (not the critical, historical, or security areas of course)? You might be able to pay off a large part of the national debt over ten years on a revenue sharing bond for natural resource income shared with the state. The environmentalists will monitor all this for free under the private sector so that it is done right. The government can respond to them.
Then, sell all excess empty buildings that the federal government owns small and big. Use the money to pay down the national debt. It could be a trillion or more dollars. This will show that we are trying. Pick three or four national real estate firms and they would do it in one year. You would help lower unemployment by redeveloping these and you would be putting the unused assets back on the tax roles, a win win situation for the States and the Feds. And we greatly lower the cost to the American taxpayer to maintain these buildings. The private sector will manage and develop these assets and pay the taxes on them. Smaller is better for management.
Think of the overhead the government could get rid of. We don’t have a revenue problem we have a management problem. Read, “The Problem Isn’t Lack of Revenue In D.C., It’s Lack of Management”. Give each state back a large portion of our renewable and non-renewable resources or just land and sell all of the excess empty federally owned buildings to get our budget balanced and a better managed government. Put all those resources back in service and collect taxes on them.
