Gross (The Government Racket
) ticks off how villainous politicians have transformed America into a “humiliated debtor nation” in a fiery A–Z compendium of government greed, chicanery and plain incompetence. Gross enjoys a good rant, but his criticisms are sound and well-supported. With next year's deficit estimated to be $1.4 trillion, he pleads for the urgent streamlining of Washington's bloated bureaucracies: there are dozens of overlapping agencies in charge of education, job training, and rural and farm programs; to consolidate some and eliminate others could save billions of dollars that could be put toward balancing the federal budget. Eliminating archaic and unfair taxes would make the tax code more uniform and boost the middle class; Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare are in trouble and merely cracking down on fraud would save big money. Reining in pork, lobbyists, immigration rates and extravagant federal-employee perks would save even more. The only dark cloud on the horizon is, as Gross admits, the implementation of these policies, given his conviction that the U.S. federal government is “the most dysfunctional central operation in the developed world.” (Sept.)
