Tag: balanced budgets

Categories
Accountability government transparency national politics & policies responsibility

That Bright, Shining, Responsible Congress

congress, responsibility, budget, balanced, fiscal, debt, pay, paycheck, illustration

The latest Gallup public approval rating for our so-​called “representatives” on Capitol Hill stands at 11 percent — two whole percentage points higher than 2013’s worst-​ever 9 percent measure.

But what if Congress changed? What if our representatives did something dramatic? You know, to show Americans that they get it, that they’ll start representing us, that they’re about doing the job and not just riding the gravy train of power, high pay, lavish pensions, special exemption from Obamacare, etc.?

No, I don’t envision a majority of the 535 House and Senate members jumping into a phone booth and coming out with Super Solon capes. My fantasy actually has its roots in reality.

Neither Obama nor congressional Democrats dare stop Republicans in Congress from passing The Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2016, introduced by Rep. Rod Blum (R‑Iowa). The legislation presents a straightforward incentive: do your job, balance the budget or … your pay will be cut.

Okay, disincentive.

Until the deficit is closed, and budget balanced, Blum’s law would reduce each congressman’s salary by 5 percent the first year, then 10 percent each year thereafter. Once Congress balances the budget, their full pay will be restored.

“For the sake of our children and grandchildren who will be stuck paying off our $19 trillion debt,” Rep. Blum argues, “it’s time we make our politicians face the reality of our fiscal crisis by hitting them where it counts: their own pocketbook.”

If the Republican-​controlled Congress passed The Fiscal Responsibility Act, cutting their own pay until they get our country’s finances in order, the elections this November would be a rout.

Just a dream?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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congress, responsibility, fiscal, debt, pay, paycheck, illustration

 

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Categories
too much government

The Budget Math Deficit

The White House once promised to answer any petition posted at its .gov site that garnered at least 25,000 signatures. (It has since increased the minimum.) Facetious persons urged it to build a Death Star like the planet-​destroyer in Star Wars.

Well, the petition got the necessary signatures, and the Obama administration responded: No, we shan’t build a Death Star. One reason given? Paul Shawcross, a budget official, noted the prohibitive cost.

“We’re working hard to reduce the deficit, not expand it,” he says.

Really?

Now consider a widely reprinted lesson in accounting offered a little more than a year ago by Laurie Newsom of the Gainesville Tea Party. Newsom suggested that to better understand the government’s spending antics, drop eight zeros from the budget numbers. Newsom cited annual tax revenue of $2,170,000,000,000, a federal budget of $3,820,000,000,000, new debt of $1,650,000,000,000, national debt of $14,271,000,000,000. And “budget cuts” of $38,500,000,000.

Delete eight zeros and pretend that the national government is just one household. So instead of federal revenue of $2.17 trillion, we have one household bringing in $21,700. But in the same year, its residents are spending $38,200 and adding $16,500 to a credit card with an outstanding balance of $142,710. One the other hand, the family has “cut” $385 from its spending.

Sound like a very disciplined effort to get the fiscal house in order?

Things that can’t continue forever, don’t.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

Quick! Stop the Rescue!

If there’s anything worse than running a state into the ground, it’s turning that state around.

Such seems to be the attitude behind yet another “bailout” program being mulled over by our congressional overlords in Washington, DC.

Over at National Review Online, Daniel Foster calls the Democrats’ proposed $23 billion fund for preventing teacher layoffs a “putting off hard decisions” fund. Pitched in the direction of Foster’s own state, New Jersey, the giveaways would sabotage efforts by the new governor, Chris Christie, to close a looming budget deficit for fiscal year 2011 of more than $10 billion.

The Garden State’s budget for fiscal year 2010 was about $30 billion. Christie is trying to cut funding to school districts. He has pledged to restore the funds in districts where teachers agree to a one-​year pay freeze and to contribute a small bit of their salary (1.5 percent) to help pay for their own health insurance. Currently, most pay nothing.

But if the federal government flings borrowed largesse that makes the state’s budget cuts irrelevant, teachers will have much less incentive to cooperate with even marginally more responsible policies.

Perhaps that’s the goal for Washington’s big spenders. After all, if folks could get their fiscal houses in order without handouts from the spendaholics in DC, there’d be no need for such handouts. 

And then just how “important” would those politicians be?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall tax policy Tenth Amendment federalism

We Told You So

Say it with me: We told you so.

Over the years, I’ve tried to help citizens regain control over their prodigal representatives. Sometimes I got called a radical for these activities. An extremist. But I think of myself as a moderate, as someone promoting moderation. 

In government spending, for example.

Among the most moderate of these many statewide initiatives have been what are sometimes called the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, or TABOR, initiatives. These proposals are designed to limit spending increases to a formula of population growth-plus-inflation. 

Sometimes we succeeded. Too often we failed.

The consequence of our failures, of each defeat at the hands and promotional budgets of groups that called us, of all people, extremists?

Now, state after state has become what Reason magazine dubs “Failed States.” They did what politicians demanded, spent at rates far greater than moderation would allow. And now that we’ve hit hard times, and state revenues have drastically fallen, how the politicians whine! Indeed, they demand bailouts.

Say it with me, you who’ve voted for TABOR in the past: “We told you so. Lacking our measures, the states have become part of the out-​of-​control federal deficits and ballooning debt.” 

And remember, you who opposed our moderate measures to limit state spending: You are the radicals. You are the ones who helped set our country on its current, self-​destructive course.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies responsibility

A Deficit of Common Sense

Congress has just raised the federal debt “ceiling” to $14.3 trillion. 

Yes, it’s called a “ceiling,” though I cannot recall seeing any other ceiling so adjustable.

The Associated Press reassures us: The new ceiling means that congressmen won’t have to pass an even higher ceiling until after November. According to the AP, if Congress had to raise the debt limit too close to the election, this would “[feed] a sense among voters that the government is spending too much and putting future generations under a mountain of debt to do it.”

“Feed a sense”? Yes, committing fiscal crime in broad daylight might serve to “feed a sense” that the crime is in fact being committed.

Meanwhile, Moody’s, the Wall Street credit agency, warns that the U.S. is at risk of losing its triple‑A credit rating. The federal government must stop its fashionable trillion-​dollar annual deficits. But Moody’s also proclaims to understand why the government has run these trillion-​dollar deficits. Seeing as how we’re in a recession, it would be politically tough to trim budgets right now. 

Let me get this straight. If you’ve been taking on way too much debt, the best solution to the problem is to borrow money even faster and even more irresponsibly? But only for now? Then kick the habit later … when it’s suddenly real easy?

No, I don’t think so. Try again, Moody’s.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.