Tag: spending

On Glissando Skids

As corrupting as political power may be, not everyone is corrupted by it, at least not to the same grievous extent.

Yet, even if one starts out with some measure of integrity and good intentions, the longer one is entrenched in power, the more likely one is to lose one’s way. Little by little, and then in leaps and bounds, one goes along to get along, learning to appreciate the perks of power and the advantages of cooperating with party bosses, forgetting one’s desire to buck the establishment and always do the right thing.

Within just five years, formerly fiscally conservative U.S. Senators Jim Risch and Mike Crapo, both Republicans “representing” Idaho, started swerving toward the abyss. Now they’re on glissando skids.

Bryan Smith, vice chair of the Bonneville County Republican Central Committee, observes the dispiriting trajectory in a recent commentary.

He cites New American’s Freedom Index, which assesses how well lawmakers work for “limited government, fiscal responsibility, national sovereignty, and avoiding foreign entanglements.”

Risch and Crapo slid from a rating of 95% and 95% in 2012 to 80% and 80% in 2015, 50% and 50% in 2018, and 35% and 30% in 2020. Both have so far gotten a score of 90% the first half of 2021, yet both also voted Yes to the recent $1.2 trillion “infrastructure” bill.

Smith remembers how both men once proudly opposed runaway government spending.

This is hardly new — or confined to Idaho. As a 1994 Cato Institute analysis concluded: “members of Congress become more pro-tax-and-spend the longer they serve in Washington.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags power, Senator Jim Risch, Senator Mike Crapo, spending, term limits

national politics & policies tax policy

The Six-Trillion Dollar Man

Post author By Editor
Post date May 4, 2021
No Comments on The Six-Trillion Dollar Man

“Mr. Biden is making a six-trillion dollar bet that promoting popular programs will be popular,” offered NBC Meet the Press host Chuck Todd on Sunday, “and that he’ll be rewarded for getting things done, long before the actual bill comes due.”

That “Six trillion dollars”? New splurging “on social spending, infrastructure, climate change, health care and more.”

The host intoned that this constitutes the “return of big government.”

“We have to prove democracy still works, that our government still works,” Joe Biden, the 47th president, implored Congress last week, “and we can deliver for our people.”

Spend = Deliver.
Deliver = Democracy.
Democracy = Spend!

So goes a federal “democracy” wherein voters never get a straight, democratic choice on how much government should spend and tax.* Instead, politicians opt for their beloved “deficits forever” method. Purchase votes today — “People like it when you give them money” — and leave for future generations of voters the tax burden needed to pay that bill. No pain, all gain.

Smart re-election strategy, some say.

“Democratic strategists are betting that the infighting in the Republican Party, the extremism on display during the Jan. 6 attack . . . and the sheer scale of the trillion dollar programs Democrats have pushed through this year,” reports The Washington Post, “leads to a reorienting of partisan divisions that can overcome historical patterns.” Meaning Democrats avoid the traditional loss of congressional seats for a president’s party.

“Will voters care about the scope of Mr. Biden’s plans?” Todd inquired. “. . . care about the price tag?”

Likely to the degree they notice paying that price.

“President Trump and the Republicans may have made it a bit easier for Mr. Biden by spending big themselves,” reminded Todd.

He’s not wrong there.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Colorado voters have such a choice: a vote on any tax increase and on government spending increases. It’s called the Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) and was passed by citizen initiative back in 1992. The politicians and lobbyists just hate it, as I detail here.

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Photo by Anno Málie

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national politics & policies responsibility

The Accelerators

“We can do $10 trillion,” declared Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) last week.

“I know that may be an eye-popping figure for some people,” explained the photogenic pop-eyed pol, “but we need to understand that we are in a devastating economic moment, millions of people in the Unites States are unemployed, we have a truly crippled health-care system and a planetary crisis on our hands, and we’re the wealthiest nation in the history of the world.”

In other words, the sky is falling . . . and we still have checks.

The Bronx congresswoman, described as “one of the most influential members” by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, trumpeted that tidy sum in response to last week’s “go big” proposal by President Joe Biden to spend a special new $2.2 trillion under the loose label of infrastructure, which AOC argued “is not nearly enough.”

This new two-tril spending bill is “a follow-up to the $1.9 trillion stimulus approved in March.” And just Part 1 of a two-package infrastructure and other stuff Biden plan.

“The White House is reportedly willing to spend $4 trillion across the two packages,” Business Insider reports, “a sum that would bring recovery spending under his term to nearly $6 trillion.”

Biden’s term has been only 76 days.

A couple trillion here, a couple trillion there and pretty soon you’re talking real money . . . except under Modern Monetary Theory, which Ocasio-Cortez embraces. The idea being: government can print as much money as politicians want to spend.

While this road to bankruptcy has been paved with the partisan political intentions of big spending politicians of both major parties, right now it is the Democrats hitting the gas.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability national politics & policies

Up, Up and Away?

The new U.S. Space Force wants “flexibility.” It has requested from Congress the ability to purchase and use satellites and other developing technology with agility.

That is, it wants permission to follow an “alternative acquisition system” — as explained in a “23-page report to Congress from the U.S. Air Force, the current parent of the Space Force,” according to Ed Adamczyk for United Press International. Adamczyk says that “Congress mandated a retooling of the Space Force acquisition system when it created the new branch of the military in December.”

What the new Space Force yearns for certainly looks like off-budget funding of technological assets.

The official wording speaks of a reduction in “space portfolio constraints via incremental funding,” which Adamczyk explains as an “expanded ability to pay for space systems without regular oversight or constant requests for congressional approval.”

That, he writes, “is a constant in the report.”

The point? To “rapidly leverage industry innovation to outpace space threats.”

While it is popular in ‘paranoid’ circles to warn of ‘one world government’ threats to form a ‘new world order,’ this is transparently a push to effect a breakaway above-world government that sure would change the balance of world power.

Scurrying further down a long and winding rabbit hole, it might also be a way to legitimize currently unconstitutional military-industrial complex programs, perhaps part of the black budget Pentagon/HUD double-digit unaccounted-for spending and income.

Space Force is ambitious. Good. But it craves scant constraint from Congress.

Not to mention the citizens of these earthbound United States.

Not good.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies too much government

Make Deficits Great Again?

money, case, window, floating, deficit, spending,

Is Donald Trump really “draining the swamp”?

It’s overflowing.

Stan Collender, writing last year in Forbes, noted just what a big spender the president really is. Now, an update: fiscal year 2019 sports a deficit of $1.09 trillion, up considerably from the $897 billion projected earlier this year; the next year is expected to nudge the deficit even higher, to $1.1 trillion.

The whys aren’t a mystery: it is politically difficult to cut an expected benefit to any constituency. It looks stingy — though it is the very opposite. Spending other people’s money — including taxpayers’ — is not generosity. For a politician, it is naked self-interest. Buying votes.

Worse than merely corrupt, it’s corrupting — since the People are increasingly tempted to look to government to supply special voting bloc advantages rather than the mutual, universal advantage of liberty and justice for all.

Collender speculated that a $2 trillion deficit is “definitely within view” because “Trump is demanding that federal spending and the government’s red ink be increased even further.”

Judd Gregg, writing yesterday for The Hill, summarizes current GOP fiscal policy as “now the most profligate and debt-driving party in the nation’s history.”

He’s not wrong, but I question his next line: “Fiscal restraint is no longer part of the cloth the Republican Party wears.”

Careful wording.

Republicans sometimes talk a good game, but are known to be big spenders when not opposing a Democratic president. The Class of 94 was effective against Bill Clinton. Under unified government in the aughts, though, under George W. Bush, they went on a spree.

Maybe Republicans just need a good enemy.

Bernie Sanders for President?

Perhaps any socialist Democrat will do.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags budget, case, debt, deficit, floating, money, spending, Trump, window

education and schooling ideological culture moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies Popular

Make Others Pay?

Betsy Devos, education, special olympics, funding, budget, debt, spending,

Special Olympics has found a way to get kids and young adults with disabilities to feel something important: Able.

Three decades ago, as part of a community service requirement, I spent one day each week working with physically and intellectually-challenged adults at Easter Seals in Little Rock, Arkansas. I loved it.

Most unforgettable were their beaming smiles of pride when they got a chance to show what they could do. I’ve always loved sports, but never as much as there and then. In the decades since, my family has given to the Special Olympics what financial support we could afford.

So, can you imagine how I must feel hearing Education Secretary Betsy DeVos testify in favor of cutting all $17.6 million in federal funding for the Special Olympics?

“It’s appalling,” declared Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.).

John Kasich, the former Republican governor of Ohio, called the cut “outrageous” and “ridiculous.”

“Cruel and reckless” were the words Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) used.

“The Special Olympics is . . . a private organization. I love its work, and I have personally supported its mission,” countered Sec. DeVos.* “But given our current budget realities, the federal government cannot fund every worthy program, particularly ones that enjoy robust support from private donations.”

Federal funding provides only 10 percent of Special Olympics revenue, with over $100 million raised annually in private donations.

So, how must I feel about DeVos’s suggested cuts?

Gratitude . . . for her generous contributions to Special Olympics — and for her fiscal responsibility. Let’s fund this wonderful program without the government forcing (taxing) support from others.

Check, cash or credit card is always preferable to virtue-signaling gum-flapping.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Special Olympics is one of four charities to which DeVos donated her entire 2017 federal salary.

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