On the following proposed "economic stimulus" plan

I thank my opponent for offering this debate and after reviewing his economic plan, which requires a full scale government reconstruction, I conclude the plan would not benefit the US. My opponent offered this debate to me, and contrary to my other debates, I will not present an affirmative position. I will, as Con, only present the reasons my opponent's plan will not work. The plan as a whole: Examining aspects of Pro's plan in light of the current conditions of the US would be erroneous. The review must take place within the framework of his new government. My opponent's plan is indeed drastic as it requires elimination of regulatory agencies and progressive income tax at the federal and state level. (Please see comments concerning the state/federal question I asked prior to accepting.) Eliminate the minimum wage and regulatory agencies. Under his plan, the state and federal minimum wage is gone, as are the regulations dealing with overtime, work conditions, and child labor laws. Remember the regulatory agencies no longer exist. The, now eliminated, Department of Labor is the only agency that monitors child labor [1] and they monitor work place conditions [2]. The state and local governments would not be able to intercede as these areas are not "involved in defense, the enforcement of contracts, the compensation of damages, currency, law enforcement, or the protection of inalienable rights (life, liberty and rights to one's private property)". My opponent would recreate the very conditions that existed prior to the enactment of these laws. Here is a very brief history of union, state, and federal measures to enact child labor laws. [3] Other than unions, all these reforms are gone, along with the state and federal agencies that enforce them. Would this situation benefit the economy? No, times have changed since the industrial revolution and the workers would not accept the lack of safe conditions nor would we accept companies using child labor in the US, we would unionize in order to maintain some standards and give workers more bargaining power when dealing with employers, but without the regulations, of course, as the department of labor is gone.[4] Unions would have a new found power under my opponent's plan and the conditions would be present to allow unions to proliferate, as they would take the regulatory roll the government now possesses without the government to regulate them. The union fees would be passed on to consumers [5] and the only ones making money will be the unregulated unions. Unions are declining, as the heritage article correctly explains, because they can offer little outside the government regulations on labor. The difference here, of course, is people outside of the industry could not vote for the union, at least in respect to the DoL we can provide political pressure. Privatize public land: I fully concede the federal government has not done well in preserving some of our national treasures [7] I see value in allowing the states to run some of these areas and allowing private ownership where appropriate, but my opponent's plan goes much further in scope. His plan requires the privatization of most government land. The problem under his plan is that the national parks, monuments, and resources do not have to be preserved. The property would fall into private hands with no guarantees. They could charge for admission, or block public access, or simply scrap the national landmark altogether. Some of the land is set aside for Indian reservations, which do not seem to fit within this new Government, so I ask what land specifically my opponent wishes to keep public and which private? Personal Welfare and Education: Certainly a hot topic, I share the frustration felt when watching people abuse the very benefits we provide them and chastise us for not giving more. As much as I deplore such actions, I cannot accept that the system is unfixable. The most important benefit of the welfare system is the help given to children. Single parents make up a large portion of welfare recipients. [14] Under my opponents plan, children will no longer receive help from the government for healthcare, nor will foster parents receive state or federal money to help raise abused and unwanted children. We could revert to the abusive past of orphanages, as no regulatory committees will be present to monitor the institutions. As long as the welfare system encourages unwed mothers to have children we will continue to see a rise in the crime rate associated with poverty on single parent homes, but my opponents plan goes to the extreme by eliminating all resources from the government leaving these children with nothing. Such a circumstance would drive the crime rate up, not down, and the expense of dealing with it by hiring more police, building more jails, and the clogging of the legal system will not benefit the economy. In addition, the disbanding of the state and federal Depts. of Education will not allow these children to attend school and get, at least, a fighting chance to change their plight. With the government out of the education business, schools could not maintain without some serious fees. [8] Single parents on welfare in the current system would have to return to work and children would be unsupervised as the parent would not be able to afford to send the child to school. Public education is an easy target; our schools are not performing, but for most of us, it is all we have. My opponent's plan would eliminate the only source of formal education for most children in the US. Without an education, how will future generations obtain the skills necessary to succeed under my opponent's new US Government? I can find no benefit for the US here. The Gold Standard I have spent two days reading information on this topic from the Cato Institute and others. If I place the gold standard in my opponent's new plan and ignore the manner of implementation, it seems to work, but putting the standard in a hypothetical government and explaining it at all aspects of this new government is not feasible in this limited space. Other aspects of my opponent's plan render his proposal a poor policy move; I will not dispute this point. Tax elimination and a national sales tax My opponent's plan eliminates all government income except the national sales tax. The Cato institute supports a national sales tax along with a removal of many of the taxes my opponent lists; however, they do support an exemption, absent in Pro's plan, for those under poverty level. This is a form of welfare which my opponent's government must not provide. [9] [pro: rd 1] Even advocates of the fair tax support such welfare. [10] [11] The fair tax proposal recognized the poverty line, as presented by the now (under my opponent's plan) defunct department of Health and Human Services, and allowed rebates. [12] Under my opponent's new government the national sales tax does not allow for rebates for those below the poverty line, nor can the government recognize it, and his plan eliminates the very agencies needed to oversee such matters. The proposal my opponent offers is too hard line, does not allow for flexibility and does not address the regressive nature of such a tax, a point recognized by its most ardent supporters. [13] Conclusion: I have not addressed all points concerning the elimination of all the agencies my opponent provided, but I have addressed the affects of his proposal on a few of them. I do not have room to address all of them. Considering the above research, I would advise President wjmelements that his plan, virtually unattainable in the first place, would not benefit the United States and ask that he reconsider his proposal in respect to the state/federal Dept. of Labor, the Dept of Education, and the Dept of Health and Human Services and search out measures to reduce the size of these agencies instead of mandating their elimination.