Quigley offers plan to cut $2 trillion in 10 years

Quigley released his first budget report in November, which outlined 15 recommendations to reform the budget and make it more transparent.

The second and most recent report makes several suggestions to make cuts and changes to healthcare, defense, non-defense discretionary spending and Social Security. The report is designed for incorporation into a larger plan to solve the nation’s budget problems, he said. 

On healthcare, rather than shifting costs to the private sector or ending entitlement programs, Quigley is proposing to overhaul the way healthcare is delivered and paid for, “emphasizing value over volume.”

Outdated defense programs should be cut and duplicates consolidated, he said. 

Quigley also recommends cutting hundreds of billions of dollars in tax expenditures “that hurt the environment and subsidize unproductive behavior.”

The basic benefit structure for Social Security should be kept in place while making changes to strengthen the program. 

“These are not arbitrary recommendations — our goal is not to cut spending simply for the sake of cutting it,” Quigley said.  

“We need to think about how we would design government if we were designing it from scratch,” he said.