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End of an error? The State of the Union campaign event needs to go
End of an error? The State of the Union campaign event needs to go
The State of the Union address to Congress is really just a routine presidential duty defined in Article II, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1787-88: "He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient."
That simple requirement to update the Congress and recommend certain things the president thinks are important has evolved into the political orgy we now witness each year.
We have become accustomed to the spectacle of last week because that is the way the message has been delivered for a hundred years. However, there is no requirement for the president to actually appear before the Congress and orally deliver the message. And in fact, beginning with Thomas Jefferson's first State of the Union in 1801 and lasting until William Howard Taft's final message in 1912, the State of the Union was a written, often lengthy, report sent to Congress at the beginning of a new Session of Congress.
It’s time to return to the more sensible and less hype-driven process of Jefferson through Taft, because instead of a restrained message addressing the problems the country faces and perhaps some discussion of the successes that it has experienced, for years we’ve been treated to a campaign event all dolled up into a grandiose political revue that is little more than an exercise in political expedience.
It is a stage perfectly set for the delivery of propaganda with no real-time truth detector. The president says whatever he wants to say, and with the possible exception of a sour expression on the face of someone in the audience, or an unacceptable verbal complaint like the one back in 2009, there is no contrary opinion expressed until after the speech when the opposition party responds. By that time, many have tuned out, and given the setting and the pomp, and the fact that people still respect the office enough to often accept a president at his word, the damage is pretty much done.
Remaining true to form, at this year’s address President Barack Obama did not let the opportunity pass without making sure he got his points across, even if they were at odds with reality.
No less a dependable source for advocating liberal positions than The Washington Post identified six of Mr. Obama’s claims that attracted the attention of fact-checkers, presenting them in “a guide through some of President Obama’s more fact-challenged claims.”
In one of them the president noted, “the more than eight million new jobs our businesses have created over the past four years.”
Subtracting the jobs created not by businesses, but by government, that number is actually 7.6 million, and that number is correct, as far as the claim goes. The Post says the net new jobs created during the Obama administration is 3.2 million, and that there are 1.2 million fewer jobs today than when the recession began in December 2007.
Further, Newsmax reports that by last April, the number of Americans on food stamps had grown by 16 million since January 2009, which is more than twice as many people as got jobs.
“Our deficits — cut by more than half,” Mr. Obama bragged.
However, according to The Post, ”the federal budget deficit has declined in half since 2009, from $1.3 trillion to about $600 billion, but that’s not much to brag about. The 2009 figure was not just a deficit Obama inherited from his predecessor, since it also reflected the impact of decisions, such as the $800 billion stimulus bill, enacted early in the president’s term.
“Moreover, the deficit soared in the first place because of the recession, so as the economy has improved, the deficit naturally decreased. The United States still has a deficit higher than it was in nominal terms and as a percentage of gross domestic product than it was in 2008 and a debt much greater as a percentage of the overall economy than it was prior to the recession.”
The only beneficiaries of this sort of event are the president and his fellow party members. Those who take the president at his word – and that certainly includes the millions of Americans who do not investigate what they read and hear – are less well informed than before the address.
One thing the president was accurate about was his intention to continue using Executive Orders to enact measures the Congress won’t pass, or to change them to his liking. Apparently, the former constitutional law lecturer doesn’t remember the full text of the authorizing language for the State of the Union, with emphasis on the phrase “recommend to their Consideration.” It does not say, “tell them the edicts he will issue if the Congress does not act.”
President Obama needs a remedial class in what the Constitution means. The Executive and the Legislative Branches are co-equal, along with the Judicial Branch; the president cannot make law, dictate what laws Congress will pass, or alter laws he does not like.
Why won’t the Congress stand up and defend its Constitutional prerogatives and obligations and make the president behave constitutionally?
As the New Year begins, government’s policies are still failing us
Commentary by James Shott
As the economic non-recovery crawls into 2014, the “good news” on the jobs front – that the unemployment rate dropped .3 percent in December to 6.7 percent – is far less impressive when you look beneath the surface.
The reason the unemployment rate dropped was not that a strengthening economy produced a sharply higher number of new jobs, as should be expected in a true recovery. December showed only a puny 74,000 new payroll jobs were added. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) indicates that the drop resulted because five times that many people – 374,000 – became discouraged that they couldn’t find work and dropped out of the labor force.
Adding even a small number like 74,000 to a smaller labor force misleads us into thinking things have improved.
The BLS identifies June of 2009 as the official end of the recession, at which time the labor force participation rate was 65.7 percent (162 million workers). At the end of December, the rate stood at a pitiful 62.8 percent (155 million workers).
Using the size of the labor force in 2009 and the adding back into the equation the 7 million who have dropped out, the unemployment rate is just under 11 percent.
We should not celebrate a drop in the unemployment rate to 6.7 percent when 7 million Americans have given up looking for work because the economy still has not produced jobs for them.
Hopefully, the New Year will bring an infection of fiscal responsibility to our national leaders. It is interesting how liberals see global warming/climate change – a widely popular but unproven theory – as a true crisis, but don’t see years of budget deficits near and above a trillion dollars, and a national debt of nearly $17 trillion, as a problem.
President Barack Obama’s first year in office, 2009, saw a deficit of $1.4 trillion, which gets credited to George W. Bush, but contained the contribution of nearly $200 billion from the Obama stimulus. But over the next four years Mr. Obama racked up more than $4.2 trillion in deficits – FY 2010: $1,294 billion; FY 2011: $1,300 billion; FY 2012: $1,087 billion; FY 2013: $680 billion. This fiscal year the projection is a deficit of $744 billion, and the FY2015 deficit is projected at $577 billion.
To help put this in perspective, The Weekly Standard noted back in November of 2012 that, “According to the White House OMB, we ran up $1.8 trillion in real (inflation-adjusted) deficit spending during fiscal years 1942-45,” and that “we’ve now run up $3.4 trillion in real (inflation-adjusted) deficit spending under Obama — in less time than it took us to fight World War II.”
If there is good news in Obama deficit numbers it is that the deficits are coming down, but real good news would be Congress and the president taking concrete steps to get spending under control.
That seems unlikely, given Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) opinion that “The cupboard is bare. There’s no more cuts to make,” a position gleefully adopted by most, if not all, Congressional Democrats.
In her view there is no waste, fraud or abuse, despite more than ample evidence to the contrary, and there’s no unnecessary spending, either.
Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) issues an annual report on government waste, and in “Wastebook 2013,” he lists 100 examples totaling $30 billion. Heaven only knows the total of all the wasteful spending of the federal government.
* The military has destroyed more than 170 million pounds of useable vehicles and other military equipment, approximately 20 percent of the total U.S. war material in Afghanistan, totaling $7 billion, rather than sell it or ship it home.
* The SuperStop is a $1 million bus stop complete with heated benches and sidewalks, and wireless zones for personal computers. Yet its roof doesn’t protect from the rain, snow, wind or blazing sun.
* One of NASA’s next research missions won’t be exploring an alien planet or distant galaxy. Instead, it is spending $3 million to go to Washington, D.C. and study one of the greatest mysteries in the universe — how Congress works.
* When officials at the Manchester Boston Regional Airport in New Hampshire installed new solar panels costing $3.5 million, they did not anticipate one quarter of them would not be used 18 months later because the reflection from the panels blinds pilots and controllers.
* The Treasury Department’s Inspector General for Tax Administration discovered the IRS paid up to $13.6 billion in false Earned Income Tax Credits in 2012.
* While millions of Americans continue to pay taxes on their hard earned wages, many federal employees are tax cheats, to the tune of $3.6 billion.
* The feds keep the lights on in empty and little used federal buildings, costing $1.5 billion.
* Out of the $33.5 billion in Pell Grants the federal government doled out last year, individuals posing as students took off with $1.2 billion.
When an elected public servant believes there can be no spending cuts in the face of such wanton waste, it speaks volumes about the integrity and motivation of that individual.
Federal spending is a giant problem that we had better address soon.
Cross-posted from Observations
As the economic non-recovery crawls into 2014, the “good news” on the jobs front – that the unemployment rate dropped .3 percent in December to 6.7 percent – is far less impressive when you look beneath the surface.
The reason the unemployment rate dropped was not that a strengthening economy produced a sharply higher number of new jobs, as should be expected in a true recovery. December showed only a puny 74,000 new payroll jobs were added. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) indicates that the drop resulted because five times that many people – 374,000 – became discouraged that they couldn’t find work and dropped out of the labor force.
Adding even a small number like 74,000 to a smaller labor force misleads us into thinking things have improved.
The BLS identifies June of 2009 as the official end of the recession, at which time the labor force participation rate was 65.7 percent (162 million workers). At the end of December, the rate stood at a pitiful 62.8 percent (155 million workers).
Using the size of the labor force in 2009 and the adding back into the equation the 7 million who have dropped out, the unemployment rate is just under 11 percent.
We should not celebrate a drop in the unemployment rate to 6.7 percent when 7 million Americans have given up looking for work because the economy still has not produced jobs for them.
Hopefully, the New Year will bring an infection of fiscal responsibility to our national leaders. It is interesting how liberals see global warming/climate change – a widely popular but unproven theory – as a true crisis, but don’t see years of budget deficits near and above a trillion dollars, and a national debt of nearly $17 trillion, as a problem.
President Barack Obama’s first year in office, 2009, saw a deficit of $1.4 trillion, which gets credited to George W. Bush, but contained the contribution of nearly $200 billion from the Obama stimulus. But over the next four years Mr. Obama racked up more than $4.2 trillion in deficits – FY 2010: $1,294 billion; FY 2011: $1,300 billion; FY 2012: $1,087 billion; FY 2013: $680 billion. This fiscal year the projection is a deficit of $744 billion, and the FY2015 deficit is projected at $577 billion.
To help put this in perspective, The Weekly Standard noted back in November of 2012 that, “According to the White House OMB, we ran up $1.8 trillion in real (inflation-adjusted) deficit spending during fiscal years 1942-45,” and that “we’ve now run up $3.4 trillion in real (inflation-adjusted) deficit spending under Obama — in less time than it took us to fight World War II.”
If there is good news in Obama deficit numbers it is that the deficits are coming down, but real good news would be Congress and the president taking concrete steps to get spending under control.
That seems unlikely, given Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) opinion that “The cupboard is bare. There’s no more cuts to make,” a position gleefully adopted by most, if not all, Congressional Democrats.
In her view there is no waste, fraud or abuse, despite more than ample evidence to the contrary, and there’s no unnecessary spending, either.
Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) issues an annual report on government waste, and in “Wastebook 2013,” he lists 100 examples totaling $30 billion. Heaven only knows the total of all the wasteful spending of the federal government.
* The military has destroyed more than 170 million pounds of useable vehicles and other military equipment, approximately 20 percent of the total U.S. war material in Afghanistan, totaling $7 billion, rather than sell it or ship it home.
* The SuperStop is a $1 million bus stop complete with heated benches and sidewalks, and wireless zones for personal computers. Yet its roof doesn’t protect from the rain, snow, wind or blazing sun.
* One of NASA’s next research missions won’t be exploring an alien planet or distant galaxy. Instead, it is spending $3 million to go to Washington, D.C. and study one of the greatest mysteries in the universe — how Congress works.
* When officials at the Manchester Boston Regional Airport in New Hampshire installed new solar panels costing $3.5 million, they did not anticipate one quarter of them would not be used 18 months later because the reflection from the panels blinds pilots and controllers.
* The Treasury Department’s Inspector General for Tax Administration discovered the IRS paid up to $13.6 billion in false Earned Income Tax Credits in 2012.
* While millions of Americans continue to pay taxes on their hard earned wages, many federal employees are tax cheats, to the tune of $3.6 billion.
* The feds keep the lights on in empty and little used federal buildings, costing $1.5 billion.
* Out of the $33.5 billion in Pell Grants the federal government doled out last year, individuals posing as students took off with $1.2 billion.
When an elected public servant believes there can be no spending cuts in the face of such wanton waste, it speaks volumes about the integrity and motivation of that individual.
Federal spending is a giant problem that we had better address soon.
Cross-posted from Observations
Another important American tradition is under attack by the left
A filibuster is a lengthy speech used in the U.S. Senate to delay or block legislative action, a mechanism with a long history.
The U.S. Senate Website explains that, “In the early years of Congress, representatives as well as senators could filibuster. As the House of Representatives grew in numbers, however, revisions to the House rules limited debate. In the smaller Senate, unlimited debate continued on the grounds that any senator should have the right to speak as long as necessary on any issue.”
Senate rules have permitted a senator, or a series of senators, to speak for as long as they wish and on any topic they choose, unless "three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn" brings debate to a close by invoking cloture under Senate Rule XXII.
The filibuster, thought by some to be an unconstitutional, unfair, historical relic, is thought by others to protect the rights of the minority against the tyranny of the majority. And only eight years ago prominent Democrats loudly defended the filibuster and lambasted the Republican majority for suggesting an end to it.
In 2005, then-Senator and now-President of the United States Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said, “What [the American people] don't expect is for one party, be it Republican or Democrat, to change the rules in the middle of the game so that they can make all the decisions while the other party is told to sit down and keep quiet. The American people want less partisanship in this town, but everyone in this chamber knows that if the majority chooses to end the filibuster, if they choose to change the rules and put an end to democratic debate, then the fighting and the bitterness and the gridlock will only get worse.”
During the same debate then-Minority Leader and current Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), said, “Mr. President, yesterday morning I spoke here about a statement the Majority Leader issued calling the filibuster a ‘procedural gimmick.’ … No Mr. President, the filibuster is not a scheme. And it is not new. The filibuster is far from a “procedural gimmick.” It is part of the fabric of this institution. It was well known in colonial legislatures, and it is an integral part of our country’s 217 years of history. … It encourages moderation and consensus. It gives voice to the minority, so that cooler heads may prevail. … And it is very much in keeping with the spirit of the government established by the Framers of our Constitution: Limited Government. Separation of Power. Checks and Balances. Mr. President, the filibuster is a critical tool in keeping the majority in check.”
Other notable Democrats also supported the filibuster, which is known as "The Soul of the Senate." Joe Biden, then-Senator and now Vice President of the United States, former Senator and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Senator Diane Feinstein were part of the opposition. In the end, the idea of changing the rules was abandoned.
But that was then. Last week the Senate Democrat majority changed the very rule it so strongly defended in 2005.
In their assault on this well respected legislative device they strongly defended in 2005, when the majority shoe was on the other foot, the majority party changed it for presidential appointments, which now require only a simple majority. Their excuse: Republicans did not agree with the president’s nominations for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, and administrative agency appointments.
The National Center for Policy Analysis opines that in addition to judicial positions “the change will almost certainly result in more confirmations of presidential nominees – for example, the 15-member Independent Payment Advisory Board tasked with controlling health care spending.” Which is interesting, given the potential for this issue to have been brought forth to distract the nation’s attention from the Obamacare debacle.
In 1975 the Democrat majority of the Senate reduced the majority vote needed to end a filibuster from two-thirds of the Senate (67 votes) to three-fifths (60 votes). Now it’s just 51 votes.
Senate Democrats decided that if they can’t get their way playing by decades-old rules, they could just change them. Yes we can!
It is important for the Senate to debate appointments so that people who are not qualified or whose agenda is narrow and ideological can be identified and defeated. That is precisely why the filibuster exists: to prevent the presidency from becoming a monarchy. Given the performance of the IRS, the NSA, the State Department’s gross failure in Benghazi, and the destructive actions of the EPA, there is more than enough evidence to warrant closely examining and perhaps blocking some of this president’s appointments.
Democrats like this new arrangement with a Democrat in the White House but, God willing, that won’t always be the case. The ability of a president to put questionable and even unqualified people on the federal bench and at the head of federal agencies just became much easier.
The Founders saw the dangers of a tyrannical majority party and built in safeguards to insure that Congress’ activities would be slow and difficult. Senate Democrats substantially gutted those safeguards a second time.
Is Congress finally getting serious about spending and the debt?
The Congressional Fiscal 2014 Budget Conference Committee met for the first time last week. It is a bipartisan, bicameral committee that includes all members of the Senate Budget Committee, and the Chairman and Ranking Members on the House side, is about even politically, with 15 Democrats and 14 Republicans, but is heavily weighted towards the Senate, with 22 senators and seven representatives.
The budget reform panel was mandated in the bill that raised the debt ceiling and ended the government shutdown, and has until December 13 to find a budget compromise or face the likelihood of another government shutdown in mid-January when funding for the government runs out.
The group is reportedly focused on finding ways to replace across the board spending cuts, known as sequestration, with more sensible reductions in federal largess.
Representative Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) is chair of the joint committee, and in opening remarks said that the debt held by the public has doubled in just the last 5 years and is only getting worse. It’s a drag on the economy, he said. With 10,000 Baby Boomers retiring every day, Medicare and Social Security are going broke.
The debt, he said, hurts economic growth and job creation, and noted the message from the Congressional Budget Office, which warned that if something isn’t done soon, there will be a debt crisis. “We’ve got to get a handle on our debt, and we have got to get a handle on it now,” he stated, and the way he believes we must work our way out of this is through tax reform, including getting rid of carve-outs and kickbacks, and through a growing economy, and not by raising taxes.
The federal budget is a huge mess. In FY2013 the federal government took in revenue of $2.8 trillion, but spent $3.5 trillion, and owes $17 trillion to debt holders.
This compares to a family of four that earns $36,000 annually, but spends $45,000 each year and has accumulated debt totaling $219,000. This family clearly needs to cut down on its spending.
But the federal government cannot do that. At least not if we believe House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Cal.), who said in an interview in September on CNN’s “State of the Union” that “The cupboard is bare. There’s (sic) no more cuts to make. It’s really important that people understand that.”
Ms. Pelosi is apparently unaware that the federal government spent your tax dollars on such important things as exotic dancers, robotic squirrels, studying pig poop, and a reality TV show in India. And she also doesn’t know about the Government Accountability Office estimate of roughly $17 billion of improper Medicare payments each year, or the billions of dollars of mismanagement, corruption, and wasteful spending in federal housing subsidies, and the fraud and abuse in the food stamp program, school lunch, and child care programs, and in Veteran’s Affairs.
Maybe she’s forgotten that we pay people with our tax dollars at the NSA to record terabytes of information about us, and IRS employees to harass Republican/conservative organizations applying for non-profit status, and federal SWAT teams to kick down the doors of people whose student loans are in arrears and besiege a mine operation in Alaska to check for compliance with the Clean Water Act.
And then there are the 31 areas of spending on duplicative federal programs, spelled out in a report by the Government Accountability Office that waste billions annually, such as at least 23 different federal agencies running hundreds of programs to support renewable energy, and the 29 Department of Homeland Security contracts that partly or completely overlapped with research being done by another part of the same department.
Despite these examples of waste, fraud and abuse, and also despite the record $2.8 trillion in revenue the federal treasury collected in FY2013 – which provided President Barack Obama the opportunity to claim credit for a sizeable reduction in the annual budget deficit – Nancy Pelosi thinks that in negotiations about debt reduction “revenue needs to be on the table.”
But, no, Ms. Pelosi. You and your big spending comrades don’t get another dime.
Before the middle class or even the wealthiest Americans are further burdened with additional taxes, the federal government needs to get its act together and start operating efficiently. It must eliminate the billions of dollars in waste, fraud and abuse, and eliminate duplication.
Taxes should be evenly applied and high enough to support only essential government services. And, the most important word in that concept is “essential.”
Congress must get rid of carve-outs and kickbacks, eliminate pork barrel projects, stop the unconstitutional passing of Congressional responsibility to Executive Branch agencies, and restrict legislative activity to necessary and useful laws.
And the federal government must begin to operate with an attitude that demonstrates the obligation every federal worker – from the President of the United States, to Cabinet Secretaries, to Members of Congress, to the lowest paid employee – owes to the people they work for, the taxpayers. Perhaps then each of them will earn through job performance the high status some of them assume they are due “just because” they hold a high elective or appointed position.
The scare mongering continues on the debt ceiling and default
There is great wailing and gnashing of teeth over the potential for catastrophe if the debt ceiling is not raised, but whether the ceiling is raised or not, the underlying problem will remain to be reckoned with yet again.
We are warned against defaulting on the national debt, which President Barack Obama tells us will have the most dire consequences. However, default really isn’t an issue, as economist and former long-time Federal Reserve System Chairman Alan Greenspan explained: “The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that. So there is zero probability of default.”
While Mr. Greenspan’s statement is technically true, printing even more money to pay the nation’s debts has its own set of economic problems, and heaven knows we have enough of those already.
Another reason paying our debt service isn’t a problem is that even if the debt ceiling isn’t raised so that the government can borrow more money, there is more than enough money coming into the treasury each month to pay the interest on the debt multiple times over, although that has its problems, too.
But the best reason is contained in Section Four of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which directs, in no uncertain terms, that "the validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned." The Constitution commands the president to make good the debts of the United States, and that includes both what our nation owes to bondholders, and the sums promised in legislation to those receiving pensions set by law, according to legal scholar Garrett Epps.
What that means is that if the debt ceiling isn’t raised President Obama will be forced to make some tough decisions on what won’t receive funding so those mandated payments can be made, and since much of Mr. Obama’s popularity comes from spending money, there could be some uncomfortable and long days in the White House.
However, the scare mongering about the catastrophe facing the nation and the resulting public outrage will likely force an increase in the debt ceiling for the 80th time since 1940.
President Obama tells us this won’t increase spending, but since it does increase the limit on spending, does anyone really doubt that spending will soon increase, and before long the politicians will want yet another debt ceiling increase.
Sometimes there are compelling reasons for deficit spending, like WWII, the 9-11 attacks, and the banking crisis that threw the country’s economic system into crisis, but most times it is just a bail out from fiscal irresponsibility. Sometimes the ceiling has been raised by a small amount, other times by a large amount, and sometimes it’s been raised temporarily with provisions for a "snap-back" to a lower level.
“Weighing benefits against costs is the way most people make decisions – and the way most businesses make decisions if they want to stay in business,” says the eminent economist Dr. Thomas Sowell. “Only in government is any benefit, however small, considered to be worth any cost, however large.”
And that is the crux of the problem. People who are elected to represent the interests of the citizenry do not use common sense and basic economics when making decisions we pay them to make.
Trying to obtain benefits without considering either the cost or the likelihood of success not infrequently produces bad programs, and bad programs breed and multiply in Washington, DC, and live forever.
The federal government is simply too big, too powerful, too intrusive, too expensive, and too undisciplined, and as a result there are dozens of duplicate programs, and more than a few programs that do not, and never have, achieved success, but are still being funded. And there are billions going to fraud and abuse.
Attempts to reign in waste, fraud and abuse have mostly lacked serious action, and efforts to cut spending to match income likewise have accomplished little.
And atop that lackluster record we have the biggest deficit producer in history in the White House.
At the end of FY2000, four months before George W. Bush took office, the national debt totaled $5.67 trillion. At the end of the fiscal year that Barack Obama took office it had risen to $11.91 trillion. That number is skewed higher due to the $151 billion TARP program President Bush implemented, $147 billion of which was repaid after Mr. Obama took office.
At the end of FY2013 the debt stood just short of $17 trillion. Excluding FY2009, when both Mr. Bush and Mr. Obama held the White House, the president and the mostly-Democrat-controlled Congress added more than $5 trillion to the national debt, with average deficits of $1.163 trillion from FY2010 – FY2013.
It is way past time that government face up to reality and live within its means. The president and Congress must get rid of unproductive programs; eliminate, or at least significantly reduce, fraud, waste and abuse; shut down or downsize federal departments; and implement business-like fiscal standards. In short: do their job.
Happy “Deficit Day,“ America! The fiscal precipice grows closer
Each year the US Treasury Department collects trillions of dollars in taxes. Last year that amount was $2.449 trillion, and this year it is projected to bring in $2.902 trillion.
If we look at federal spending on the conventional Gregorian calendar instead of the fiscal calendar, as of last Wednesday the federal government had already spent all of this year’s income, and every dollar spent after Wednesday is money it doesn’t have and has to be borrowed. That is called deficit spending and Wednesday was Deficit Day, the day after which every government action is performed on borrowed money.
Since there was at the time more than three months left in the year, between last Wednesday and December 31 the federal government will spend about $10 billion each day that it doesn’t have, adding $900 billion more to the national debt. This is another year of profligate spending that bloats our already bloated national debt still further, pushing the total near the $17 trillion mark.
The Heritage Foundation created an example that puts our federal government’s fiscal irresponsibility in perspective: The median family income in the US is $52,000 this year. If the median family spent money the way the government does, it will spend $64,000 this year, meaning it would put $12,000 on a credit card, without any regard for the $312,000 in existing debt the family already has accumulated. Other than many politicians and bureaucrats, who thinks this makes any sense at all?
Our government has so much debt that it breaks down to just slightly less per American citizen than the aforementioned median family’s annual income.
President Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress demand yet another increase in the debt ceiling, opening the way for even more debt, although they want you to believe it’s only for paying existing bills.
A recent Bloomberg poll shows that 60 percent of the participants believe Congress should require spending cuts before raising the debt ceiling, even if that puts the nation at risk of default, while only 28 percent think the increase should be granted without conditions.
But Congressional Democrats want no restrictions on spending, either now or in the future. That is the source of their influence with voters, hence their power to impose asinine laws like the Affordable Care Act on the American people, despite the people’s dislike for that law.
However, if spending limits do come about, projects like the $27 million to teach Moroccans to make pottery would have to go. And the highly important half-million dollar project to create a video game called “Prom Week” to enable Americans the relive their high school prom would be sacrificed. Maybe we don’t really need a $376 million renovation of the White House, and we will no longer be able to pay unemployment benefits to those 1,000 prisoners who collected weekly benefits over a four-month period, costing taxpayers $7 million.
You may argue that those examples of foolish spending and waste amount to pocket change, but the complete list contains many more examples, and we must remember that pennies here and there add up to dollars, and millions of dollars here and there add up to billions of dollars. More importantly: The government has no business doing any of these things, at any cost, ever.
And, with the end of the fiscal year upon them, federal departments, agencies and offices have been busy spending whatever is left in their budgets, fearing that if they don’t spend it all, they will get less next time.
Some examples from The Washington Post: “the Veterans Affairs Department spent more than a half million dollars for artwork, the Coast Guard spent nearly $200,000 on ‘cubicle furniture rehab,’ and the Agriculture Department spent $140,000 on toner cartridges in just one day.”
And, according to Fox News, “federal agencies last week spent money on junkets for Chinese wine connoisseurs, Christmas tree initiatives, radio ads promoting New Jersey blueberries, a maple syrup recipe contest and produced a YouTube video to instruct on the proper handling of watermelons.”
So much for putting the interests of the taxpayers first.
Raising the debt ceiling is tied to a government shut down: raise the debt ceiling and everything is fine. Don’t raise it and the government shuts down. By the time you read this, government either will or won’t have been shut down. Either way, the term “shut down” is so far from accurate that it’s dishonest to use it. The government will “slow down,” not shut down. Sure, it will be hard on some, and the longer it lasts the harder it will be, but it’s not the crisis the Democrats and the media want us to think it is.
But in order to make everyone think it will be the end of the world, they have sacrificed their elitist façade of “tolerance” in favor of name-calling. The same people who cringe at calling terrorists and jihadists “terrorists” and “jihadists” have no problem calling Republicans and conservatives terrorists and jihadists, as well as hostage-takers, extremists, anarchists, arsonists and racists.
It should be no surprise that yet again politics has elbowed out integrity and service.
Progressivism transforms “welfare to work” to “welfare to not work”
The widely reported number of Americans in poverty is 46.2 million, about 15 percent of the population. July’s Household Survey revealed that 11.5 million were unemployed; 2.4 million will work but aren’t actively looking; and 8.2 million wanted full-time work but could only a find part-time job. And the Civilian Labor Force Participation rate was a very low 63.4 percent.
Yet CBS News reported that a survey of 2,000 employers showed one-third of them said lots of jobs go unfilled for three months or more. Many of the roughly three million unfilled jobs are in skilled trades and pay good wages, making one wonder about the current “everybody needs a college education” mania that now grips the country.
Another reason that good jobs go unfilled is that the federal government’s assistance programs make it easy to not work, and frequently pay more than some jobs.
The Cato Institute’s Michael Tanner, writing in the Los Angeles Times (Online) notes that, “Contrary to stereotypes, there is no evidence that people on welfare are lazy. Indeed, surveys of welfare recipients consistently show their desire for a job.” Yet the “U.S. Department of Health and Human Services says less than 42 percent of adult welfare recipients participate in work activities nationwide,” he continued. “Why the contradiction?”
“Perhaps it’s because, while poor people are not lazy, they are not stupid either,” he writes. “If you pay people more not to work than they can earn at a job, many won’t work.”
In looking at federal assistance programs, Mr. Tanner noted that most reports on welfare focus on only a single program, the cash benefit program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. But he explained that “focusing on this single program leaves the impression that welfare benefits are quite low, providing a bare, subsistence-level income.” However, most get assistance from more than one of the federal government’s 126 separate programs for low-income people, 72 of which provide either cash or in-kind benefits to individuals.
In order to analyze how the federal assistance programs affect recipients, the Cato Institute created a hypothetical family consisting of a mother with two children, ages 1 and 4, and then calculated the combined total of seven of the most common benefits that the family could receive in all 50 states.
In Washington, D.C., and Hawaii, Vermont, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Maryland, New Hampshire and California, that group of seven programs provide benefits worth more than $35,000 a year. The value of the package in a medium-level welfare state is $28,500.
Since welfare benefits are not taxed, to put the benefits issue in perspective the Cato study calculated how much pretax income the family would need to earn in order to provide the same amount as a 40-hour-per-week job. This calculation took federal and state income taxes, earned income tax credits and the child tax credit into account.
The study found that welfare pays more than an $8-an-hour job in 33 states and the District of Columbia, and that in 12 states and the District of Columbia welfare pays more than a $15-an-hour job. And, in Hawaii, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington, D.C., welfare pays more than a $20-an-hour job.
Comparing the results with specific jobs, the Cato study found that in California and 38 other states, it pays more than the starting wage for a secretary and in the three most generous states, welfare benefits exceed the entry-level salary for a computer programmer.
While not every welfare recipient gets these seven benefits, many do, and some receive even more than the package used by the Cato study. “Still,” Mr. Tanner concludes, “what is undeniable is that for many recipients in the most generous states — particularly those classified as long-term recipients — welfare pays substantially more than an entry-level job.”
Welfare is supposed to be a temporary thing for most recipients, not a career. Yet in many cases able-bodied men and women do not look for work because they can do better on welfare.
Such a system discourages people from taking responsibility for themselves and their families. It creates a large faction of government dependents; a status that deprives people of self-respect and the pride of accomplishment that results when one succeeds in life because of their own efforts.
Even a low wage job is better than welfare, as it often is only a first step to better jobs. U.S. Census figures show that only 2.6 percent of full-time workers are poor, while 23.9 percent of adults who do not work are poor.
This country became what it once was not by millions depending upon government to feed and clothe them, but by Americans making themselves successful through determination and hard work. That is the goal our welfare system must have.
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