Non Essential Government Services

If Congress doesn’t agree on last year’s spending and doesn’t pass a continuing resolution, the government will be forced to “shut down”.   I have to ask myself, “Is that such a bad thing?”

What is a shutdown?  Nobody really knows but we’re told that Social Security checks will still be sent and that the armed forces will still protect us (and about 90% of everyone else on the planet.)  The only thing that we’re told is that the “non essential government services will be closed and those people will be put on administrative leave.”

Since that’s all the information at hand, I’m going to make some observations and suggestions that may be all wet in light of the complete picture, but I think it’s a start when we think of what this might mean.

The first question that comes to mind is, “Will we get back the $105 Billion that Democrats inappropriately snuck into ObamaCare when they passed it?  It was an authorization bill but they made it into an appropriations bill with nobody but the sneaks who did it knowing about it.  I’m not sure in which of the 2,400 pages of the bill the appropriation is, but it’s there and we want the money back!  Pronto!

Am I surprised they did that?  No, not really.  A former pastor of mine said, “We should never be surprised when sinners act like sinners.”  Without trying to equivocate, I just want to paraphrase and say that we should never be surprised when free-spending liberals act like we have all the money in the world and act according to their true nature.

After recovering from the angst of Dems acting like Dems, I have to ask, “If we shut down non essential services, how will that affect our lives?”  If they’re not essential, I have to think that the answer is, “Not much.”

Next I ask, “If we shout down the non essential services, how much will that save?”  Again, I have to think the answer is, “Not much,” since the meaning of “essential” is left to the operating units themselves.  Some how every bureaucrat will deem himself or herself “essential”.

Let’s shut down the government until Democrats start acting like responsible adults and not like the spoiled rich kids that they are.  I don’t think we’ll see any real difference.  The roads will still have potholes and bridges will be crumbling because Congress raided the Highway Trust Fund in years past.

There are dozens of ways that Congress can get us back on the road to fiscal health, not the least of which is to let private people pay for Harry Reid’s Cowboy Poetry Festival.

Let’s take everyone’s ideas and do them all. Assuming, of course that they’re Constitutional.

Add Insult to Tax Injury

When Obama took office, one of the first things he did was to announce a pay freeze for all White House employees making more than $100,000 per year.  However we found out last fall that even with that pay freeze 74% of the over 300 White House staff got on-average a 9% pay raise and the number of federal employees making more than $150,000/year has doubled under this administration.  I’m not saying they aren’t worth it (OK, maybe I would say it if I knew just what these people did other than kiss butt and shine shoes) but how much disdain for the suffering of millions of American citizens does this show?

You do know, don’t you, that your unemployment payments are taxable as wages, so your unemployment benefits help pay these possibly overpaid folks.  Even with falling new unemployment claims, more than 9% of us (seasonably adjusted, of course) are out of work.  Another 20% are underemployed with cut hours or only holding temporary or part-time jobs, and untold numbers have simply given up looking.  Yet Obama has increased the number of federal workers making over $150,000 twenty-fold and gives his staff a 9% pay raise.  Even if you are employed, did you get a 9% pay raise last year?  Are you even making 9% more than you were two years ago?

In so many ways, Obama’s domestic policies are like vampires sucking the life out of the economy step by step.  These policies punish producers, make the business climate too uncertain so that potential employers are not sure what his policies will to to them.  They could hire people but then if ObamaCare slaps punitive expenses on their businesses, they’ll have to lay people off just to keep even.  And, by the way, when an employer lays people off, his unemployment insurance premiums rise, which punishes him even more for having tried to give some folks jobs.

I encourage the Republican-controlled House to implement sound policies that are economic-growth friendly.

I hope the Debt Commission and Congress are watching. Roll back federal pay to the 2008 level and eliminate automatic pay raises through the Cost of Living Adjustments.  Those of us who don’t suckle at the teat of the federal government don’t get those kind of automatic pay raises.  If federal employees don’t like it, they can do what the rest of us do.  They can quit and try to get a real job in the private sector.

Nevertheless, let’s go back to the topic of this entry.  If there wasn’t a pay freeze, how much would these people have gotten?  Where can I apply for one of these jobs?  Sounds like “all animals are created equal.  It’s just that some are more equal than others,” to borrow from George Orwell.

I’m sick and tired of Health Care Reform

Health Care Reform is the one of the Obama agenda items that seems to be on the list of why so many Democrats were fired in the last election.  Republicans now want to take advantage of that now.  The question that people ask is, “Why do we need reform?”  The simple answer is, “Health care is too expensive.”  This then begs the question, “So, what’s wrong with ObamaCare?”  To which one reply is, “It rations health care with no guarantee of improvement.”  Simple questions with simple responses.

But the true answer is really more complex.  It’s too expensive partly because government has made it too expensive.  Let me explain with one of many examples.

Way back when, the people thought health care costs were getting out of  control.  The solution presented by the socialists was to create HMOs.  Everyone goes in the pool at the same (or relatively the same based on parameters) cost and HMOs decide what you need to stay alive and you get that treatment.  Costs were kept down but the (unintended?) consequence was that now health care became rationed.  A triage nurse or administrator decided if you could see a doctor and what kind of doctor (probably a nurse or physician’s assistant) you’d see.  The HMO determined what treatment options they’d make available and there could be a waiting list.  To lower costs, the government created a method of rationing run by the private sector.  It was reminiscent of ration coupons during World War II.

ObamaCare is HMO times infinity.  Like any government program, it would cost orders of magnitude more than the politicians say it will and, like social security, welfare, and other programs, will bankrupt the government as entitlements grow out of control.

Now, I won’t tackle the constitutionality of government-controlled health care with its mandates on what you must buy.  About 25 states are willing to do that better than I could.  I only want to address one issue, the cost of health care.

There are a whole host of reasons why health care is so expensive so I’ll just touch on a few of them.  Rather than forcing the citizenry to be shackled to the Federal yolk, these areas are places that government can address if it’s serious about reigning in health care costs.

The cost of medical school and specialized education is significant.  Four years of college, four of medical school, residency (where you’re paid enough just to keep you almost from starving), and further education for specialization can leave a doctor a half million dollars or more in debt before he or she can start a practice.  It, along with its interest, must be paid back one way or another and that is through the doctor’s salary.  It’s not uncommon for a doctor to have to pay tens of thousands per year to pay off education debt.  If we want reform, let’s at least make the interest tax deductible and lower what the doctor needs to be paid.

Forget the rent in New York City.  The cost of malpractice insurance is too darn high.  Why?  Because we are a litigious society.  If a patient dies because of the operation, that can be malpractice.  If the patient dies in spite of the operation, that is not.  It is proper to sue if the doctor has done something wrong.  It is not proper if you simply don’t like the outcome of a properly-performed procedure.  You, your parent or guardian, made an informed decision.  If it doesn’t come out as you hoped, that’s unfortunate and, sadly, too many judges don’t have the guts to throw out frivolous lawsuits.  We need to take a tighter look at who is suing for what.  There should also be caps on things like “pain and suffering” when your nose job doesn’t make you look like a superstar.  In short, we need massive tort reform.  Let’s hope that Congress has fewer trial lawyers this go-around and can do something here.

Because of the threat of malpractice, doctors are forced to perform CYA tests and procedures.  Everyone wants an MRI for a hangnail.  People go in to the doctor and demand that they prescribe that new medicine they saw on TV.

There are other reasons, too.  Costs to create new drugs, hospital expenses and medical equipment are all factors as well.  The net, however, is not to grab control of the industry.

Don’t get me wrong.  There are some good provisions buried somewhere deep in the ObamaCare bill.  Those should be culled out, debated and, if truly beneficial to the American people and not just to lawyers or other special interests, passed as separate bills once the overall bill is repealed.

There are reasonable things that we can do to get health costs under control.  Rationing and socialism are not among them, however.  Let’s get rid of this fiasco and debate features we can understand.

A Portend of Things to Come?

USA Today reported in an article that “hospital care [is] fatal for some patients.”  Apparently about 15,000 Medicare patients die each month partly from shoddy hospital care.  On a regular basis we hear of abuses in VA Hospitals or, as in this case, with Medicare recipients.

Medicare, Medicaid and VA Hospitals are all run by the government.  So will ObamaCare.  Government-controlled health care will have all the problems, regardless of what it is called.  Is that the kind of care you want?

Any time you read “VA Hospital” or “Medicare” or “Medicare”, you can substitute “ObamaCare” with little chance of misrepresentation.

There is a commercial on television where a man is bitten by an animal and goes into the emergency room.  The receptionist tells him that someone will be with him in 28 days.  Michael Moore to the contrary, this is typical of poorly run, over-extended socialized health plans.  Scarce resources will be rationed and unless you are well connected, they won’t be rationed to you.

I applaud the lame duck Congress in not funding ObamaCare in the last session.  I hope the new Congress will take a very close look at the bill and be very careful in what they do fund.  True, there are some good provisions.  Those should be funded and promoted.  It’s good politics and it’s good public policy.  However, the rest should be allowed to die.

It may require that the rest of the government be cut back to a shoestring budget to prevent diverting other money to ObamaCare, but would cutting back everything else really be a bad thing?

Cap and Trade away our Way of Life

Most rational people who are not Socialist Democrats feel that last Tuesday’s election was a repudiation of the Obama agenda, an agenda and set of policies that the majority of Congress embraced over the past two years.  One of those agenda items is called “Cap and Trade”.  Cap the amount of pollution you can create and trade credits if you produce less.

Like most liberal ideas, on the surface it sounds good.  Lower your pollution and you can make money.  Those that don’t have to buy someone else’s unused pollution permits.  The free market will set the price.  Sounds good but we have to dig deeper.  Where can I, the small investor, find credits to “buy low and sell high”?  Sadly, you can’t unless you’re rich or have set up a dummy company to qualify for credits that you’ll never use.

What’s wrong with cutting down on pollution?  Absolutely nothing. I’ve written before on how little I believe that humans are responsible for Global Warming so I won’t cover it here.  (Check the links below for the topic that amuses or intrigues you.)

The problem with Cap and Trade is that you can’t win.  There won’t be enough credits to sustain a recovery let alone fuel one, assuming, of course, that there would be enough Cap and Trade credits to begin with.  After all, isn’t the US the chief cause of man-made global warming?  Regardless of how much we lower our pollution, it will never satisfy the jealous xenophobes around the world until we become like the socialist countries who have tried to manage their societies: bankrupt.

This so-called solution to this assumed problem is totally backward.  Instead of punishing energy users who fuel our economy and improve the quality of life, the push should be toward providing alternative sources of energy.

Where are the nuclear plants?  France generates about 70% of its electricity with nuclear energy.  We don’t.

Where is the conversion to use methane (an even more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide) rather than release it into the atmosphere?

Where are the windmill farms?  Now that Ted Kennedy is out of the picture, we can build them off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard where there’s plenty of wind.  Yes, there are arguments that a bird or two might fly into one but if it does, it probably was sick anyway.  They won’t destroy habitats.  They, like the Alaska pipeline, may even improve the habitat for some wildlife by providing a man-made reef in the water and shade on desert lands.

Where are the tidal generators?  Put undersea watermills in the Gulf Stream, Hudson River, and other swift moving waters.  We don’t need to dam them up to tap their energy.  The East River pilot project seems to have been a success.  Why not expand this use?

Where are the geothermal generators?  Lord knows we have enough hot rocks around Yellowstone, Mount St. Helens and other volcanically active places in our western regions.

Why are we using ethanol?  Studies show that its production produces more CO2 than it saves.  Has anyone looked at methanol?  It works great in the Indy cars and won’t take corn out of the food supply (which also raises food prices, of course).

Where is the Hydrogen for fuel cells?  Where are the fuel cells to use it?

Electric cars are an interesting concept.  Unfortunately the current technology generally available makes it infeasible for long trips due to recharge times.  We need work there.

There are several ways to solve energy crises without bankrupting industry by limiting what they produce.