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.

A Time for …?

Today’s USA Today had a headline that read, “Now what?  Obama, Republicans face choices of compromise or conflict.”  That may be true for Obama but sadly, each time that Republicans have gotten any kind of power in recent times, they took another choice: Cave.

Mainline Republicans want so much to be loved by Democrats and the main stream media that they have been willing to sacrifice values and their political careers to get on their good side.

When will the learn that some people live to hate them?

This new crop of Republicans in congress seem to have heard the message that this election was not an embracing of Republicans but a repudiation of the Obama plan.  The Republicans seem to have heard this but I doubt the President has.

For once the people have had a chance to speak where Obama and Congress were forced to listen, and for many of them, the message was, “Good bye!”

President Obama in his address yesterday essentially said that he lost track of the voters but that we were not smart enough to understand his policies so he should have explained better.  Which pieces of his policies did the voters not understand?

Was it Cap and Trade, which promised to raise energy prices and put coal miners out of work?  This in a time when unemployment is still very high and most families don’t have a lot of extra money to spend on higher energy bills?

Was it treating the Christmas underwear bomber as a criminal which allowed him to “lawyer up” in place of treating him as the terrorist he is?

Was it the give away programs to the labor unions (Harry Reid owes them big time for his re-election)?

Was it the rising debt that will bankrupt our children and grandchildren as it races to $14 Trillion?

Was it the growing government?  During this time of unemployment, the federal payroll continued to grow.

Was it ObamaCare, the unprecedented takeover of the health system?  I don’t think it was just an unfortunate coincidence that the last big Republican take over of the House happened after HillaryCare was soundly rejected by society.

Every one of the problems that these “fixes” were designed to address have  fixes.  Many of the fixes don’t require rampant socialism.

It is doubtful that the new Congress can repeal ObamaCare outright.  Obama still has the veto pen.  They can, however, deny funding for the federal programs and enact legislation that address the real problems without sacrificing liberty and our futures.  If necessary, we can address some of the more rational fixes.

I sincerely hope the new Congress will follow the mandate given to them in this election.  Let’s break with tradition.  It will take some compromise and a lot of conflict.  Let’s not cave this time.  Maybe the Democrats and media won’t like them but “We the People” will.

Can Businesses Bailout the Government? – Part 3

In Part 1, I discussed the problem of overspending and how government cannot get us out of the mess it has gotten us into.  Part 2 discussed some of the signs that we may be at the point of no return and some of the consequences.  Here I’d like to discuss some of the solutions.

Follow the US Constitution.  If it’s not there, you can’t do it, even if you think it will “promote the general welfare”.  That phrase is a platitude, not a mandate.  The mandates are clearly spelled out.

Eliminate all programs not constitutionally mandated.  If the rationale is “it’s for the general good” without some justification from a Constitution’s specific Article and Section, it has to go.  Here are a few examples.

Welfare is not the responsibility of the government.  It is the responsibility of the Churches, Synagogues, Mosques, socially-conscious atheists and the states in which the people reside.

Bring our troops home.  Not necessarily right this instant from Iraq or Afghanistan since there is unfinished work there.  Rather bring them back from Germany, the UK, Korea, Japan, Iceland, and the dozens of other places that they are deployed.  Our troops exist to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States”, not the friends of the government.  They’re not there as the pawns of the UN when it doesn’t like something.  If some country wants our expertise and training, let them pay for it fully.

Cut the pay and the days that Congress is in session.  There was never an intent for professional politicians when the Constitution was created.  Make them work in the real world so they understand real world problems.  Congress onlyunderstands what it is spoon-fed through its taxpayer-provided boondoggles and junkets.  Let them see first hand in their own businesses what they’ve done to the American people.

Eliminate Congressional pensions.  They’re the servants of the people, not the employees.  They should serve and then get back to their outside jobs.  Entrenchment in government only brings contempt toward the people they are called to serve.

Make Congress subject to every law they impose on the rest of us.  This means that their private pension plan will be folded into Social Security and they’ll get the same benefits the rest of us get.

Dismantle Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.  This has to be done over time without pulling the rug out from under anyone but entitlements like this have got to stop.  I’ve not thought out how to do this completely yet, but when I do, I’ll write about it.  I’d like to hear your views.

Pass an Amendment to give the President line-item veto authority.  Congress passes the bills it sends to the President and the President getst the blame because he is forced to sign bad legislation to get one small good item.  Let him cut out programs that he feels are wrong.  Congress can always override his veto if they disagree.  Right now the President gets blamed for a lot of bad legislation that is really Congress’ fault.  Give him (or her) line item veto authority and then the blame will squarely fall on the Oval Office.

Promote the arts through public service broadcasts and strong copyrights, not failed giveaway programs.  The Constitution has limited authority here which does not include the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Endowment for the Arts, or National Endowment for the Humianities, among other give-away programs.  Make these organizations not-for-profit or non-profit entities and let “we the people” support the ones we feel are worthy of our dollars.

Promote the sciences by having strong patent laws that are vigorously enforced.  Let Science and Society decide what to work on through corporate and private funding.  If Branson wants to build a rocket ship to go to the Moon, we should let him and let him reap the benefits.  Our space program should be limited to national security.  Granted that includes some research but I don’t think “the breeding habits of Belgian endive” ranks as a national security issue.

Article 1, Section 8 is not a sand box for faceless bureaucrats who mandate social programs in our schools.  Federal grants must be limited only to programs that directly support the Constitutional mandates for the Federal government.  “Oh, I’m sure there is a military benefit there someplace” is not sufficient.

Freedom of religion is not freedom from religion.  Let everyone (not) practice as he or she sees fit.  Nobody says you have to look at my Nativity scene or his Menorah.  What’s the matter?  Got a guilty conscience?  Allowing something is not promoting it.  After all, isn’t that the argument these same people use to justify giving out condoms in schools?

Strip the courts of their “legislation from the bench” rulings.  If it’s a good, constitutional idea, put it into law.  If not, nullify it through the judicial oversight powers granted in the Constitution.  The same goes for extra-constitutional Executive Orders from the White House.  If it’s your jurisdiction, then by gosh and by golly, step up and do your job!

I believe Congress does not nullify these judicial legislators and executive orders because (a) they like what they mandate but the elected representatives don’t have the honesty to go on record to put it into law, or (b) they’re so busy doing their own unconstitutional activities that they don’t have time to do their constitutionally-mandated responsibility of being the check and balance over the Presidency and the Judiciary.

Eliminate Labor Union welfare.  Congress is getting read for yet another labor union bailout.  All this does is attempt to buy the votes of the labor unions at the expense of the American people.  What did the Chrysler buyout gain the US citizens?  They’re still losing money and Fiat is struggling to get them profitable.

Eliminate “corporate welfare” by ending subsidies to farmers, manufacturers and businesses.  If they can’t stand on their own, they should fail.  This will immediately encourage competition that will make goods and services better and cheaper.  Small, family-owned farms can get tax breaks if necessary but let’s let food be cheaper for all of us.  Farmers know the benefit of crop rotation and letting soil rest.  If necessary, encourage that through a tax break but let them assume a lot of the responsibility themselves.  In no way should we ever pay a farmer (corporate or “little guy”) not to plant crops.  Remove quotas for tobacco, sugar and other crops as well.  If they want to grow it, let them compete like the rest of us have to.

Eliminate import quotas. Soft drinks use corn syrup because sugar is too expensive.  It’s too expensive because we have import quotas.  This same explanation holds for other foods and goods as well.  Quotas limit supply which drives up prices.

Ethanol from corn is a horrible idea.  It takes corn away from the food supply for both people and animals, thus driving up prices for food.  Ethanol or methanol from farm waste or other crops that rest the land is a much better idea.

Man-up on unfair trade.  Don’t waste years of hand wringing over countries undercutting their prices and currency.  If they violate a trade agreement, call them on it with sanctions immediately.  That’s one Constitutional mandate Congress seems to forget about until some country has destroyed some segment of the US economy.

Promote manufacturing here at home.  Cut taxes of companies that build or renovate manufacturing facilities.  Technology is wonderful.  Use it to automate factories and train workers to be the technicians that run the technology.  You’ll save the environment, too, by not having to ship raw goods overseas and finished goods back.

Unravel the health care mess Congress created. Congress created the health care “crisis” with its over-regulation in the 1960s and its foisting HMOs on the unsuspecting public in the 1970s.  Real health reform is when the individual, not an “insurance” company or HMO bureaucrat, along with the doctor decide what is needed.  Put in real medical tort reform to bring down costs and make people pay for “scheduled maintenance”, just like they have to do for their cars.  I don’t put in an insurance claim every time I change my oil.  Why should I do it for a runny nose?  Expand the use of tax-free medical Health Savings Accounts for normal visits and allow all people to set up one.  Save insurance for the truly catastrophic and expensive events.  That’s what you do for your house, right?  What’s your home insurance deductible?

Abortion is a medical and moral decision, not a political one.  It should be handled like every other medical procedure with states allowing and limiting how and when they can be performed, just like they limit who can perform an appendectomy or write a prescription.  On the moral side, let the debate be handled at the state level.  In addition, parents or legal guardians must be involved when minor children have this procedure.  The political cop-out here is that the courts can appoint some hack to approve the abortion for a young girl even when the parents are still “fit” to be parents.  Politics have made a complete mess of this (and other) situation.

I know that as we dismantle the unconstitutional programs that there will be a lot of bureaucrats and hard working people who will have to get real jobs in the real world.  Nevertheless, with all of the extra money people and companies will save through reduced taxes and reduced regulation, new opportunities will open up.  Many can become entrepreneurs and small business owners in their own right.  They can do it, that is, if they haven’t forgotten how to do an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay. 

OK, maybe they can’t do it.  However, we should not eliminate Corporate Welfare only to replace it with Bureaucratic Welfare.  Oh, right, we already have Bureaucratic Welfare.  It’s called “Government Jobs”.

Can Businesses Bailout the Government? – Part 2

In Part 1 I discussed what I saw to be why the government cannot get itself out of the economic mess we are all in.  Here I would like to explore some of the warning signs that we are in a you-know-what-load of trouble.  I’ll examine solutions in Part 3.  The solutions are not new.How would your family get out of its debt problems short of declaring bankruptcy?    We talk about “the family of man”.  How will/should our national “family” solve this problem?

There is no way the government can tax its way out of this mess without destroying the very lives and liberties it is supposed to be securing.

The only way to overcome debt is first to stop overspending and then, second, to pay it off.  That having been said, no gutless politician has the you-know-whats to propose cutting spending to the point where we have real surpluses as measured by real revenues and not vaccuous projections.  Historically a surplus has been seen by the politicians simply as more money to spend.  This policy is not only inane but is a sure milestone on the road to national bankruptcy.

How will we as a nation know we are bankrupt?  You personally know when the bank won’t lend you money and your credit cards are suspended.  The Treasury will know it when countries like China stop buying our debt.

Just as you have to show the bank that you are a responsible borrower, government, too, must prove that it is responsible.  Other countries will continue to buy a country’s debt as long as they feel that it will honor its commitments to service that debt and not devalue the currency to wipe out that debt.  When those who buy government debt don’t buy it, regardless of the interest rate, governments have two choices.  They can either go into default or they can print more money.  The first leads to massive tax increases and the second leads to massive inflation.  The only question that remains is: Do you want the rock or the hard place?

The only real solution that won’t make matters worse in the long run is for our government to cut spending down to just the Constitutionally-mandated programs and create a climate where individuals and businesses can produce to grow the economy.  Growth alone won’t get us out of this financial mess.  We must also radically cut spending down to only the programs that the Constitution allows.

Government has stepped way out of bounds.  It’s time to call off-sides and bring it back in.

Fool me twice, Shame on You

Albert Einstein once said that insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”  We often rephrase that idea in the old maxim, “fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”  We may laugh at people who violate these proverbial rules but for some reason, the American people are willing, if not eager to be fooled time and time and time again, always hoping for a better outcome, when promises are given to us by Congress and its utopian programs.

Congress has yet to correctly estimate the cost or benefit of any one of their initiatives and, worse, they don’t even properly fund it according to their own shoddy estimates.  History is filled with examples of fiscal mismanagement by both the Administration and by Congress, often in collusion and sometimes even vying for which one can make the dumbest estimate.  So much for the “checks and balances” envisioned by the writers of the US Constitution.  I will not take the time here to argue whether or not this mismanagement has been an oversight by those responsible for the oversight of the finances.  I won’t even address whether these problems arose because someone “lied to” others who had at hand the same information before the alleged liar “lied”.  From the War against Terror, to medical spending, to alternative energy programs, to even the digital TV converter box program, our government has yet to get a sane handle on either the costs, the benefits, or even the results caused by their actions and bills.

A case in point is the set of CAFE standards that require US auto manufacturers to build unsafe cars that nobody really wants just to lower their fleet MPG averages.  It is true that these more efficient autos save some gas.  I can trade in my 24MPG Ford Taurus for a 28MPG something else.  Big deal.  What we fail to even notice is that increased gas mileage means that less gas is needed for the same number of miles driven, but that’s a good thing.  However, reduced fuel purchases mean reduced federal and state highway gas taxes collected (which aren’t spent on highways anyway but that’s another story).  As a result, lowered gas tax revenues mean having to raise the gas tax just to stay “revenue neutral”.  Higher gas tax means higher fuel costs so in the long run the cost per mile to drive probably does not change at all, even with a more efficient car.  Yes, we use less oil but we exchange oil purchases for increased taxes.  I might say that that’s the goal of the CAFE standards in the first place but I’m not a conspiracy theorist.  I just look at the consequences of these federal and state actions.

With an extreme flourish for magnanimity something as simple as the digital TV converter box program was grossly under funded and required a bailout of its own.  Now the “clunkers for cash” program that helps subsidize the purchase of a new car if your current car is old enough and gets poor gas mileage is in trouble and just got more money.

It astounds me how a set of political wonks such as we have who are driven by polls and focus groups can’t even find out how popular these relatively simple programs would be.  I mean, what can be simpler?  You fill out an Internet web page (thank you, Al Gore for giving us that technology), put in your name and address and within weeks receive a card in the mail.  Why they couldn’t use paper coupons like Proctor and Gamble or Kellogg’s and have you print it off at your computer is beyond me, but maybe because I cannot understand this is why I’m not a politician.  Use the coupon when you buy a box. How many coupons will you need?  Our Constitutionally mandated census bureau had to have good numbers.  Every 10 years they ask each household how many TVs we own.  CBO pencil pushers must have all been educated in public schools not to have been able to do simple 5^th grade arithmetic with those numbers.  I might be too harsh here, though.  Maybe they did use census numbers and if that’s the case, maybe the census bureau needs to be overhauled before they mess up something like estimates on how many will need how much health care.

Even with the Medicare and Medicaid programs themselves the numbers are funky.  Original estimates by Congress and the Administration ended up far below the actual spending, which then required the bills to “fix” the programs.  Even within the government, the CBO bean counters can’t agree with the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Administration, the people who actually dish out the money spent on the programs.  Their estimates just for the drug plan spending back in 2005 differed from each other by over 20% to almost 40%.

Spending on the entire Great Society program was a shambles from the beginning.  The initial health program price tag was about $3 billion in 1965 with estimates for spending to increase with inflation to $12 billion in 1990.  In reality 1990 spending was just over $110 billion, just a “mere” 10 times too low.  Oops!  Did someone simply drop a decimal point?  It gives new meaning to the phrase “close enough for government work.”  Even with 40 years of trial and error estimating, the planned vs. real gap only seems to widen each year.

But I’m not surprised.  The process Congress uses to plan and fund its programs is the same as that for boiling a frog: put the frog in comfortable water and then turn up the temperature until it’s too late and he can’t get out.  I believe the process is simply to put out an uncomfortable but still semi-reasonable number that the voters can swallow without too much complaint.  Then, treat the new “entitlement” like any drug.  Once the people are “hooked” on the program with an appropriate amount of manufactured guilt should it go away (“but we can’t take away your grandma’s health plan can we?  She’ll have to choose between health care and eating dog food!”), then the real costs start to come in.  Before we realize it, we’re spending not less than 1% as in the beginning but over 5% of GDP on the program (the estimate for 2020), and that’s even without the ObamaCare plan numbers thrown in.

I could go on but seeing as I will be one of the seniors soaking, I mean benefiting, from the system soon enough, maybe I selfishly shouldn’t call for its dismantling.  Using the logic of many of my fellow Baby Boomers, I’ve paid into the system, it’s about time I benefited from it.  Ignore for a moment the 15% or more payroll tax that our children and grandchildren will have to pay just for Medicare along with the ObamaCare payroll deductions and the ever-escalating income tax needed just to pay interest on the skyrocketing national debt.  It’s an entitlement and people should be willing to pay for it, regardless of the cost, right?  After all, if we get rid of the program now, it won’t be around for the younger ones when they need it and who will take care of them when it’s their turn?  Maybe the Baby Boomers have enough votes to keep soaking the younger generations but once they die off and the Baby Busters start getting up in age, the pyramid will still not be right-side up.  Who will protect them from the Soylent Green advocates trying to “save” the system?

All this Congressional gross under estimating and rampant over spending do, however, is give one pause to reflect on the current Administration’s health care proposal, hopefully before it’s too late.  I plan to write more on some specifics in this debacle but for now, let me reflect what WTOP reported: taxes on the ‘highest income earners’ will start in 2011 but benefits will not begin to be seen by people until 2013.  We know that that money will not be invested or even set aside in another mythical ‘trust fund’ to spend on its proper use.  This newly found money like everything else will be squandered away in other programs.  I’m not even sure what defines the “highest income” people but if we use Clintonian economics, that will probably be anyone earning over $25,000 per year.  I can guarantee, however, that taxes will have to rise drastically to cover the ill-conceived realities of the true program costs.

If some health care plan is needed to help those who can’t get it otherwise, so be it.  I’ll sit back in that fight over whether or not it’s needed right now.  All I am saying is that if we want to do something then let’s truly count the cost and weigh them against the realistic benefits so we don’t find ourselves playing catch up in the typical knee jerk panic mode that results in some solution that is worse than the problem.  If we find out that the cost is not worth the benefit, only an ideologically blinded foolish person would still pursue the program, regardless.

You know?  I think I just discovered the Congressional Method.  I have often said that computer programmers and politicians are the only people paid to create problems that only they can solve.  Congress proves me right every day.  Each time the “cure” is worse than the problem that they created in the first place and each step tightens the noose of dependency one more notch.