I have almost no new spending goals. My goals are a reduction in government via increased efficiency.
First, I support free public universities. The math is straight forward, excluding loans, the federal government pays ~$69 billion in college fees via grants, deductions, etc. The cost of funding said universities would be ~$63 billion. We could stop funding private universities and for profit colleges with our free money. It wouldn't eliminate private loans so people who wanted to go private because they couldn't get into public schools could still find funding.
Myy other liberal policy, it's the universal basic income. I admit up front that I'm not sure how to fund it but I'm also nt sure how much it should be. So, that's a policy proposal that's far more theoretical.
The cost issue however leads us to the GAO report on redundancy:
http://www.gao.gov/duplication/overview#t=0
There are literally billions of dollars wrapped up in redundant programs across the fed. If we can kill of those programs then between the savings on the programs, the reduced number of federal employees, the reduction in future pensions and benefits to those employees, etc. we might find that we have enough cash to pay some universal figure to adults making less than $40k or households making less than $75k (approximately 150% of current median individual or household incomes).
Other than that, I do think the fed should centralize k-12 education but that's just a reallocation of funds, not a creation of new costs. Moreover, if we centralized education, even at the cost of more overhead, we can offset it by reducing contributions that we spend on other state level programs. Shift those costs to the states to represent the increased federal controbution to education.
That's the extent of my liberal policy. People tend to misunderstand me when I say I'm socially liberal. Just because I'm socially liberal doesn't mean I think there's a role for government in the social space. Unlike many conservatives who claim they're socially conservative but want the government to enforce their ideas of socially acceptable behavior (the religious right for example), I expect society to work out it's problems without the government dictating right vs. wrong. So long as the government maintains the tenets of equality under the Constitution, everything else doesn't require government. And I apply that opinion to liberals and conservatives alike.
Although these days conservatives seem to have the biggest issue with it, probably because liberals can admit to themselves that they want government to enforce their opinions while conservatives want the same thing but don't want to admit it out loud.
