Tag: spending

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Accountability national politics & policies

Up, Up and Away?

Space Force

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

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

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national politics & policies Popular too much government

Seriously Not Serious

Trump, deficit, spending, military, cuts, budget

While one segment of the voting public regards President Donald Trump as a heaven-​sent savior, a louder mob treats Trump as the Beast, a veritable Anti-Obama. 

I am in neither tribe.

To me, Mr. Trump must be judged on what he does. Nominating Neil Gorsuch? A‑plus. But The Donald has also reneged on a number of important campaign promises, not the least being his pledge to “eliminate the national debt in eight years.”

Sure, it was never quite believable. But is this administration even making progress?

If all goes according to the new plan, “the country would run a deficit of $631 billion in 2025,” writes Eric Boehm. That is not much of an improvement over Barack Obama’s final-​year deficit of $666 billion.

Boehm’s Reason article is titled “Trump’s Budget Would Add $7.9 Trillion to the National Debt Over the Next Decade,” which gives a serious picture of Trump’s under-performance.

Now, you could react to the news and just say “less than $8 trillion — could be worse!”

But by accepting such a high number, we set the bar awfully low. It just isn’t serious.

And speaking of frivolity, it is “hard to take the president’s calls for belt-​tightening seriously,” Boehm writes, “when the cuts only apply to some parts of the federal budget.”

You can guess which part of government is being given a free pass. Trump’s team is attempting to hide something: “spending increases for the Pentagon.”

Now, if American foreign policy were not the incoherent mess it is, we might make excuses.

But it is.

Serious Americans would exempt no part of the budget from intense scrutiny.

And real cuts.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Trump, deficit, spending, military, cuts, budget

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Fields of Schemes

stadium, pork, waste, spending

Hopes, wishes and cinematic sentiment are not a business plan.

A baseball stadium in Camden, New Jersey is being shut down three years after the team for which it was built has left town.

At the groundbreaking in 2000, then-​Governor Christine Todd Whitman said she’d “heard the message from the movie Field of Dreams: ‘If you build it, they will come.’ Well, soon we will see a field of dreams right here in Camden, and my prediction is ‘they will come.’”

So it’s the movie’s fault?

Officials had hoped that crowds would steadily come to see the Camden Riversharks play ball, boosting the local economy and enabling repayment of the taxpayers’ “investment” of $18 million.

Didn’t work out.

The minor-​league team threw in the towel in 2015 after missing several lease payments. The Camden government bought the property. They couldn’t find a successor team, so now the stadium is going. It will cost another million in taxpayer dollars just to tear it down.

Lesson learned? Er, no. Another taxpayer-​funded development will replace the stadium.

Of course, private investors can also err when spending their own money. But they’re less likely to throw millions at projects with little prospect of profit. When their investments do fail, companies tend to cut their losses much faster than government officials who are ladling out other people’s money.

Unlike many government planners, private investors of private capital are also not eager to keep repeating their worst blunders.

Meanwhile, perhaps best of all, when private investors misjudge a project, non-​investors lose nothing.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Accountability crime and punishment folly free trade & free markets general freedom local leaders nannyism national politics & policies responsibility too much government

Kick the Addiction, Save Money

marijuana, tax revenue, taxes, spending, war on drugs, opioid epidemic

The political case for the War on Drugs has always been intuitive. “Drugs are bad” has trumped practical concerns. But the actual, responsible case for the political crusade has depended upon some concept of “social cost.” 

Now that marijuana is being legalized state by state, the case against the greater War on Drugs is being taken seriously — enough to rethink all varieties of costs. Indeed, many now see the opioid epidemic as being driven, in part, by the War on Drugs, and not just as an excuse for a stronger crackdown.

Nevertheless, coming to some accounting — especially “social cost” accounting — remains difficult. This is especially true so long as its effects on freedom and the rule of law do not get figured in.

Somewhat surprisingly, even the budgetary effects of legalization have proven a bit tricky.

So it is welcome to read Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron’s study of marijuana legalization as it has occurred in the states of Washington, Oregon, and Colorado. He compares results of legalization with the predictions he had made eight years ago, in a previous Cato Institute study. It turns out that while tax revenues are far greater than expected, law enforcement costs have not gone down. 

“Early experience suggests that governments will reallocate rather than reduce those expenditures,” Miron writes. “That reallocation may be beneficial, but it does not have a direct effect on the budget deficit.”

On a federal level, though, we might expect greater savings. How? We could shut down whole bureaus.

Yet, achieving such savings would require progress on Washington’s biggest addiction: spending.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

Studies cited:

Jeffrey Miron, “The Budgetary Effects of Ending Drug Prohibition,” Cato Tax & Budget Bulletin, Number 83, July 23, 2018.

Jeffrey A. Miron and Katherine Waldock, “The Budgetary Impact of Ending Drug Prohibition,” Cato Institute white paper, September 27, 2010.

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