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Originally Posted by RIROCKHOUND

I actually asked for personal opinions, not John Stossel... Can you find out what Hugh Downs thought as well?

Sorry. I didn't know you were "actually" asking for personal opinions. Actually, I thought you were adressing Basswipe with your question, and I was just being a smart-ass by conveniently linking a Stossel report on Obama's adress. My "actual" personal opinion would have been similar to Basswipe's.

As far as things Stossel mentioned... , Amtrak, sure. Medicare? Changes needed, not removing it entirely.

Stossel didn't suggest removing it entirely--just cutting it. My actual personal opinion would be to phase it out entirely and let the market handle it with the States being the regulators.

SS. half of what I read suggests it isn't as insolvent as made to be seen.

I probably read the other half which says it is not sustainable as is. Stossel doesn't say to eliminate SS, but to cut it. My actual personal opinion would be to phase it out of government's hands and privatize it with various State and Federal regulations.

Military? Isn't that what was just proposed (cuts w/o losing national security?)

I'm not a fan of deep cuts in military. The military is one of the few constitutionally legitimate agencies the Federal Gvt. operates. Certainly we shouldn't being paying as much for contracts and goods as the military does, but that is true of all government spending. Government tends to pay more for the same services and commodities than private companies do.

Commerce dept... : From Wikipedia... take it for what it's worth.... On January 13, 2012, President Obama announced his intentions to ask the United States Congress power to close the department and replace it with a new cabinet-level agency focused on trade and exports. The new agency would include the Office of the United States Trade Representative, currently part of the Executive Office of the President, as well as the Export-Import Bank of the United States, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, the United States Trade and Development Agency, and the Small Business Administration, which are all currently independent agencies. T The Obama administration projects that the reorganization would save $3 billion and will help the administration's goal of doubling U.S. exports in five years.[4] The new agency would be organized around four "pillars": a technology and innovation office including the United States Patent and Trademark Office and the National Institute of Standards and Technology; a statistical division including the United States Census Bureau and other data-collection agencies currently in the Commerce Department, and also the Bureau of Labor Statistics which would be transferred from the Department of Labor; a trade and investment policy office; and a small business development office. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) would be transferred from the Department of Commerce into the Department of the Interior.[5] The reorganization was part of a larger proposal which would grant the President the authority to propose mergers of federal agencies, which would then be subject to an up-or-down Congressional vote. This ability had existed from the Great Depression until the Reagan presidency, when Congress rescinded the authority.[6]

The Great Depression was one of those "Crises" that the Federal Gvt. took advantage of to expand its power. One of the means to expand that power was to create agencies that were mandated to do things which the Constitution did not grant the Central Govt. to do. Since then the number of these agencies has grown into the hundreds, some being quite large and powerful. The Federal Government rules to a great degree through these unelected administrative agencies. This has been the growth of the Administrative State at the expense of representative government. The EU has taken the administrative method to an even more expansive and dictatorial level. And it is in danger of collapse. That Obama wants to combine some agencies rather than eliminate them, does not diminish the growth of our Administrative State, it only centralizes that unelected administrative power even more than already exists. It doesn't diminish the power of such administration, it just puts more power in the hands of fewer people.