Commentary by James Shott
Most Americans think that helping truly needy people, whether they live here or in some other country, is a worthy objective. Looking at charitable contributions as a benchmark, Americans are the most generous people in the world, giving $316.23 billion to charitable organizations in 2012, about 2 percent of GDP, according to Charity Navigator, and preliminary figures for 2013 indicate a significant increase to $328 billion.
Double those numbers and it still would not be good enough for the federal government, which believes that if private sources don’t relieve every semblance of suffering for every single suffering American, the government must step in and do the job better.
Except that government can’t do it better, never has, and never will.
Government’s failure to achieve better results than normal people doing what normal people do has never been a deterrent to wasting billions of taxpayers dollars in a futile effort to try one more time to do so.
The most notorious failure was Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty” which began 50 years ago in Mr. Johnson’s State of the Union message. From the beginning of the war on poverty until 2013, local, state, and federal spending on welfare programs totaled $16 trillion, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Currently, the United States spends nearly $1 trillion every year to fight poverty.
When the War on Poverty began, 33 million Americans were in poverty and the poverty rate was 19 percent. Today, approximately 46.5 million live in poverty and the poverty rate is 15 percent. Even though the poverty rate is lower than 50 years ago, because our population is much larger now than then, more people are poor today than in 1964. We have fought a long and expensive fight, and lost. Yet we still fight on.
President Barack Obama’s cause du jour is income inequality, and it’s significant other, the minimum wage. And now that “reforming” the best healthcare system in the world is well underway, he wants to declare war against income inequality.
In no free or relatively free economic system can there be income equality, for two reasons. First, inequality is a fundamental part of life. Some people sing better than others. Some are better athletes than others. And some people make more money than others, and that’s because some people are better at their job than others and deserve higher pay, and some jobs require more skill and training than others, and pay better.
So, like poverty, another area that will always exist, we will always have income inequality.
Far more important, however, is whether there is the opportunity to move up from the lower income levels, and that is an area that has been fairly stable, according to The New York Times, which reported last month that “the odds of moving up — or down — the income ladder in the United States have not changed appreciably in the last 20 years….”
That means that people in the lowest quintile are not condemned to stay there, and people in the top quintile are not guaranteed to stay there, and there is substantial movement in and out of all quintiles.
It’s a favored piece of envy politics that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. But the data tell a different story. From 1967 to 2009, the real mean household income increased for every quintile, which means the poor became richer, not poorer. Americans in poverty could afford more goods and services in 2009 than in 1967, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.
Other factors, like where people live, have an effect. Harvard University’s Raj Chetty reported “the probability that a child reaches the top quintile of the national income distribution starting from a family in the bottom quintile is 4.4 percent in Charlotte but 12.9 percent in San Jose,” and factors such as better primary schools and greater family stability also aid upward mobility, he wrote.
Larry Kaufmann, senior advisor at Pacific Economics Group, discussed findings of the Pew Charitable Trust, which showed that “Half of children born to parents with bottom-third income levels experience upward relative mobility when the parents remain continuously married; the figure falls to 26 percent when this is not the case,” he wrote.
The Pew study shows that the poverty rate among married couples is only 6 percent, and among married couples who both have full-time jobs the poverty rate is practically zero. The poverty rate among single dads and single moms, however, is much higher: 25 percent for single dads and 31percent for single moms.
Investor’s Business Daily Senior Writer John Merline notes that income inequality has increased faster since Mr. Obama took office than under any of the three previous presidents, and that inequality is now greater than at any time since the Census Bureau started recording it back in 1947.
The message from this is that to assist folks in moving up the income ladder, Mr. Obama should replace his administration’s policies that impede economic recovery, and seriously encourage the restoration of family values among Americans. That would accomplish far more than making people think they are victims, and fomenting division among Americans.
Cross-posted from Observations
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Forty years after Roe v. Wade, abortion is still a national disgrace
Commentary by James Shott
An abortion-related event occurred last week, and if you were paying close attention to the news, you might have been aware of that. Hundreds of thousands of abortion opponents gathered in Washington, DC for the “March for Life,” protesting the grisly process that has terminated about 55 million future Americans in the womb since the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973.
It wasn’t easy to find news accounts of this event. The Media Research Center reports, “the broadcast networks combined devoted a total of just 46 seconds to the March. ABC offered 24 seconds and NBC gave it 22 seconds, correctly noting the ‘huge turnout’ despite brutal weather conditions. CBS didn’t bother to cover it at all.”
This coverage totaled about 18 percent of the coverage the birth of a panda cub at National Zoo received a few days earlier. In the eyes of our dedicated network news people, one new panda is six times more important than 55 million aborted potential children, and the hundreds of thousands of Americans who braved the cold to make their position known.
This helps confirm the long-held idea that we do not have a news media that furnishes the public with what it needs, but instead provides what it wants the public to know.
A fact sheet published by the Guttmacher Institute tells us that at least half of American women will experience an unintended pregnancy by age 45. Given that the cause of pregnancy is not a medical mystery, that is a shocking statistic.
Web4Health explains that sex without contraceptives carries an 85 percent likelihood of pregnancy, and if the most effective contraceptive methods are used properly, the chance of pregnancy drops to eight percent or less, but abstaining from sexual intercourse has a zero percent pregnancy rate, except for in vitro fertilization.
According to Guttmacher, fifty-four percent of women who have abortions had used a contraceptive method (usually the condom or the pill) during the month they became pregnant. Among those women, 76 percent of pill users and 49 percent of condom users report having used their method inconsistently. Forty-six percent of women who had abortions used no contraceptive method during the month they became pregnant.
Other factors contribute to unwanted pregnancy. Some men and women are uneducated about how to have responsible sex, and contraceptives can be expensive for some.
Abortion was, in fact, the solution for more than a million women who got pregnant unintentionally last year. But as long as abortions are an easy corrective for bad luck, carelessness or bad judgment, it seems unlikely that more responsible use of contraceptives will occur.
The problem with abortion is that at some point in the pregnancy the fetus will have developed enough to be justifiably considered a human being. That point may or may not be the same point as when the fetus can survive outside the womb, but whenever that point occurs and afterward, abortion is murder. The debate goes on over just when the fetus reaches that point.
It is commonly accepted that at 20 weeks the fetus can feel pain during an abortion, and at least one researcher believes that as early as eight weeks after conception the neural structures needed to detect certain stimuli are in place. As science progresses more and more becomes known about fetal development, pushing backward toward conception the point at which the fetus is a person.
Be that as it may, it is absolutely scandalous that in America in the 21st century so many women get pregnant who don’t want to, and that so many of them choose to abort the developing life inside them.
It ought to be a point of humiliation that the great majority of unwanted pregnancies result from carelessness or negligence in the use of contraceptives, or not using contraceptives at all.
A major provider of abortions is Planned Parenthood for America, and it receives more than $500 million each year in taxpayer funds to deliver “vital reproductive health care, sex education, and information to millions of women, men, and young people worldwide,” according to its Website, “the key program [of which] provides essential health care to women, the Title X Family Planning Program.”
Planned Parenthood provided 360,000 abortions in 2013. Providing abortions to women who are pregnant and don’t want to be is not planning for parenthood.
There are couples all across this nation who cannot conceive a child and would gladly adopt an unwanted child given up for adoption. Perhaps Planned Parenthood could shift its focus from abortion to adoption, and nurture women through their unwanted pregnancy to an end that both honors life and helps those who want children, but can’t have their own.
How many great writers, scientists, artists, inventers, athletes, etc., have been summarily snuffed out before they got started?
A young pregnant wife was hospitalized for a simple attack of appendicitis and had ice applied tfso her stomach. Afterward, doctors suggested that she abort the child, because the baby would be born with disabilities. The young wife decided not to abort, and the child was born. That woman was the mother of Andrea Bocelli.
Cross-posted from Observations
An abortion-related event occurred last week, and if you were paying close attention to the news, you might have been aware of that. Hundreds of thousands of abortion opponents gathered in Washington, DC for the “March for Life,” protesting the grisly process that has terminated about 55 million future Americans in the womb since the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973.
It wasn’t easy to find news accounts of this event. The Media Research Center reports, “the broadcast networks combined devoted a total of just 46 seconds to the March. ABC offered 24 seconds and NBC gave it 22 seconds, correctly noting the ‘huge turnout’ despite brutal weather conditions. CBS didn’t bother to cover it at all.”
This coverage totaled about 18 percent of the coverage the birth of a panda cub at National Zoo received a few days earlier. In the eyes of our dedicated network news people, one new panda is six times more important than 55 million aborted potential children, and the hundreds of thousands of Americans who braved the cold to make their position known.
This helps confirm the long-held idea that we do not have a news media that furnishes the public with what it needs, but instead provides what it wants the public to know.
A fact sheet published by the Guttmacher Institute tells us that at least half of American women will experience an unintended pregnancy by age 45. Given that the cause of pregnancy is not a medical mystery, that is a shocking statistic.
Web4Health explains that sex without contraceptives carries an 85 percent likelihood of pregnancy, and if the most effective contraceptive methods are used properly, the chance of pregnancy drops to eight percent or less, but abstaining from sexual intercourse has a zero percent pregnancy rate, except for in vitro fertilization.
According to Guttmacher, fifty-four percent of women who have abortions had used a contraceptive method (usually the condom or the pill) during the month they became pregnant. Among those women, 76 percent of pill users and 49 percent of condom users report having used their method inconsistently. Forty-six percent of women who had abortions used no contraceptive method during the month they became pregnant.
Other factors contribute to unwanted pregnancy. Some men and women are uneducated about how to have responsible sex, and contraceptives can be expensive for some.
Abortion was, in fact, the solution for more than a million women who got pregnant unintentionally last year. But as long as abortions are an easy corrective for bad luck, carelessness or bad judgment, it seems unlikely that more responsible use of contraceptives will occur.
The problem with abortion is that at some point in the pregnancy the fetus will have developed enough to be justifiably considered a human being. That point may or may not be the same point as when the fetus can survive outside the womb, but whenever that point occurs and afterward, abortion is murder. The debate goes on over just when the fetus reaches that point.
It is commonly accepted that at 20 weeks the fetus can feel pain during an abortion, and at least one researcher believes that as early as eight weeks after conception the neural structures needed to detect certain stimuli are in place. As science progresses more and more becomes known about fetal development, pushing backward toward conception the point at which the fetus is a person.
Be that as it may, it is absolutely scandalous that in America in the 21st century so many women get pregnant who don’t want to, and that so many of them choose to abort the developing life inside them.
It ought to be a point of humiliation that the great majority of unwanted pregnancies result from carelessness or negligence in the use of contraceptives, or not using contraceptives at all.
A major provider of abortions is Planned Parenthood for America, and it receives more than $500 million each year in taxpayer funds to deliver “vital reproductive health care, sex education, and information to millions of women, men, and young people worldwide,” according to its Website, “the key program [of which] provides essential health care to women, the Title X Family Planning Program.”
Planned Parenthood provided 360,000 abortions in 2013. Providing abortions to women who are pregnant and don’t want to be is not planning for parenthood.
There are couples all across this nation who cannot conceive a child and would gladly adopt an unwanted child given up for adoption. Perhaps Planned Parenthood could shift its focus from abortion to adoption, and nurture women through their unwanted pregnancy to an end that both honors life and helps those who want children, but can’t have their own.
How many great writers, scientists, artists, inventers, athletes, etc., have been summarily snuffed out before they got started?
A young pregnant wife was hospitalized for a simple attack of appendicitis and had ice applied tfso her stomach. Afterward, doctors suggested that she abort the child, because the baby would be born with disabilities. The young wife decided not to abort, and the child was born. That woman was the mother of Andrea Bocelli.
Cross-posted from Observations
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
How many of America’s “poor” are like this lady and her husband?
The way that many welfare recipients think was revealed in a call to a radio talk show on KLBJ-AM in Austin, Texas. Lucy, a 32 year-old married mother of three, whose parents also had been on welfare, said this about her situation:
“I just wanted to say while workers out there and people like you that are preaching morality at people like me that are living on welfare, can you really blame us? I mean, I get to sit home, I get to go visit my friends all day, I even get to smoke weed, and people that I know that are illegal immigrants, that don’t contribute to society, we still going to get paid. Our check’s going to come in the mail every month and it’s going to be on time. And we get subsidized housing, we even get presents delivered for our kids at Christmas. Why should I work?”
“So you know what? You all get the benefit of saying, ‘Oh, look at me. I’m a better person,’ because you all are going to work. We’re the ones getting paid. So can you really blame us?”
Asked if her husband works, she said he does sometimes, but “he doesn’t really see the need for it.” Has she ever worked? “A couple of times.” Does she ever feel guilty about gaming the system and taking money other people have earned? “But you know, if someone offers you a million dollars, would you walk away from it? It’s easy to preach morality, and that’s the only reason why I called. It’s easy to say, ‘Well, yeah, you know, you’re making your living off of other people’s backs.’ But, you know, if somebody gave you a million dollars, and said that, here, you don’t got to work for it, no strings attached. Here, just take it, you can do whatever you want to do with it. You would take it, too.”
The host asked if she was calling in on an “Obamaphone” (a cell phone provided by the federal government) and she answered that she was. Then, when asked how much she received each month, she said she only pays $50 a month for rent that should be $600, so that’s $550, $425 in food stamps, $150 for her electric bill, and $100 on her water bill from the City of Austin. That comes to $1,225 a month, $14,700 a year, just less than the current federal minimum wage. Plus the cell phone.
She also said that when you are in government programs, “they are always coming to you and offering more programs,” and will even pay you to go to find out about where you can get more money. “They encourage you to stay on the programs.”
Asked if her money was cut off, would she get up every day and go to work, she said, “yes, I’d have to.”
This situation makes perfect sense to people like Lucy and her husband, who never learned the lesson that mature, responsible human beings make their own way in life, and who now live a relatively comfortable life without having to do anything to help themselves. They are a product of the failed War on Poverty for which we can thank President Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ), the namesake of the radio station Lucy called. They are among a large and growing number of Americans being taught that the government will take care of them, and they don’t have to do well in school, or learn a trade, or look for a job, or do much more than draw breath.
Last year the Census Bureau reported that 46 million Americans were in “poverty.” But how many of those are really poor and need some help, and how many are like Lucy and her hubby; playing a system that allows those eager for a free ride to get one?
Census Bureau data reveals the following about people classified as “poor”: eighty percent of poor households enjoy air conditioning; nearly three-fourths own a car or truck, and 31 percent own two or more cars or trucks, nearly two-thirds subscribe to cable or satellite television, 50 percent own a personal computer, and one in seven owns two or more computers; 43 percent subscribe to Internet access; one-third own a wide-screen plasma or LCD television; one-fourth own a digital video recorder system, such as a TiVo; more than half of poor families with children own a video game system, such as an Xbox or PlayStation.
Poverty ain’t what it used to be.
It isn’t government’s job to help individuals who are down on their luck, and as the War on Poverty has demonstrated, it does a lousy job of it. And it surely isn’t government’s job to give taxpayer’s money to people who don’t really need it, or to actively recruit people who don’t need welfare onto welfare roles. That is the epitome of government disservice, and elected official’s self-service.
George Bernard Shaw’s famous quote has been used a lot recently, but it has never been truer than today: “A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.”
Do Social Security and Medicare show that Obamacare can be successful?
The loyal defenders of President Barack Obama and the Affordable Care Act (ACA) keep pointing to Social Security and Medicare as examples of successful government programs whenever someone points out that government doesn’t do anything very well. The nearly perfect record of dismal performance in federal programs is a key reason that critics doubt that the massively flawed rollout of health insurance reform lovingly referred to as “Obamacare” will eventually turn into a success.
Liberal commentator Juan Williams proudly notes how “popular” both Social Security and Medicare are, citing them as having received 70 percent support among those asked whether they like the programs or not. But just because lots of people like a given federal program doesn’t mean it is a beneficial or successful program.
It is certainly true that Social Security and Medicare are very popular and proponents vigorously oppose balancing the budgets of the two programs by reducing benefits. But, again, by the “popularity” standard, programs that create dependency like welfare, food stamps, and free cell phones are successes, too.
However, reality paints a far different, and much less rosy picture of Social Security and Medicare.
These programs are not giveaways funded by taxpayers, they are funded primarily by payroll taxes on employers and the employees who benefit from them. Even so, because of mismanagement and a failure to adapt to changes in demographics, both programs are broken and broke, running annual deficits.
This is the typical sort of success we find in “successful” government programs, and we have to wonder if there isn’t a better solution to most problems the government thinks it can solve. And the answer is, “yes, there is.” The private sector can do it better, as evidenced by multitudes of successes over our 230-plus-year history.
What too often happens is that when government sees the private sector not completely solving a problem, it thinks it can do better, and a new federal program is born. But the ultimate result is that the federal government does no better at trying to solve the problem than the private sector, and often does much worse.
In contrast to the self-funding process involving the beneficiaries of Social Security and Medicare, other programs give handouts to both those who need help and to those who really don’t need it, and these recipients pay little or nothing in taxes to support the giveaways.
These programs are rife with waste, fraud, and abuse, because government does not manage them efficiently. You can make a very good argument that government is inherently unable to manage these expansive programs competently.
Giving people money is one of the first priorities of politicians; it’s how they buy popularity, which translates to votes.
But as examples go, Social Security and Medicare, while intended to be self-sustaining without support from general tax revenue, are not examples of good government programs because they have been mismanaged and neglected.
Social Security began running a deficit in 2010, will run a deficit near $75 billion this year and the projected deficit will reach $344 billion in 2035 if something isn’t done. Social Security is beginning to fail in its ability to take care of seniors because government has failed to properly operate the program.
A panel determines Medicare reimbursements, a panel that meets in secret and relies heavily on the recommendations of the American Medical Association. Many doctors already do not treat Medicare patients because the low reimbursements don’t cover costs. Medicare providers have to balance low Medicare payments by shifting lost dollars to insured patients.
So that’s a brief glimpse into Juan Williams’ idea of successful government programs. Is this what the ACA also promises, or will it somehow be different?
Even if we believe the ACA is a good idea, even if it had been competently designed and implemented, and even if we overlook the disgraceful manner in which it was created and jammed through Congress before being read by the Democrats who enacted it, it is still a government program that supposes it will be more effective at running 18 percent of the nation’s economy, and one of the most important personal concerns Americans have, than the private sector.
And now $716 billion will be taken out of Medicare to fund Obamacare, meaning reimbursements and senior care will suffer, or the deficit will increase.
Obamacare attempts to do by force what Republicans attempted to do by choice through initiatives focused on the problem areas of the then-current system, and Democrats opposed and defeated those efforts.
Despite Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts’ phantasmagoric redefining the fines imposed by Obamacare as taxes, the U.S. Constitution did not intend for, and does not authorize government to commandeer one-sixth of the economy.
Those who think government is the answer to everything need to remember that the only reason there is a government of the United States of America is because the people – remember “of the people, by the people, and for the people?” – created it by assigning government limited powers in certain specific areas.
It is perverse in the extreme for the people now to be controlled by that which they voluntarily created.
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.
The five disgusting Ps of the Obama/Reid Government Shutdown
We are led to believe the government shutdown is one of the worst things to afflict the country since … well, pick something.
But that’s just more exaggeration from the left in Washington and in the media. The vast majority of Americans would not notice the shut down absent the barrage of horror stories we’ve been treated to, and one other factor.
Shutdowns aren’t that unusual. Since 1976 there have been 17. Six occurred during the Carter administration, 8 during the Reagan administration, one during the elder Bush administration, and 2 during the Clinton administration.
Most lasted less than a week, but in the Carter administration 4 lasted 10 days or more, and the longest of all those shutdowns in 1996 lasted 21 days. On average, government shutdowns last about 6.5 days. There has been a lag in shutdowns since 1997 in the second Clinton term, through the George W. Bush administration, and through the first Obama term.
There is obvious discomfort among furloughed federal workers. However, the House of Representatives voted Saturday to fund back pay, which is what usually happens in shut downs. So, the real pain will be felt by some of the American people, due to the aforementioned “other factor.”
Three things are true about this shutdown: First, the Republican-led House passed three bills to restore government funding. Second, each House measure also sought to delay or defund the Affordable Care Act (ACA). And third, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid refused to act on the House measures and President Barack Obama threatened to veto them.
From this we see: a) House Republicans want to reopen the government and passed three measures to do so, and also wanted to save the American people from the ACA with its broken promises, serious problems, and goodies given to large employers and Members of Congress and their staffs. And b), to Sen. Reid and President Obama, putting the furloughed employees back to work, activating the inactive government functions and opening closed facilities are far less important than implementing the highly flawed ACA.
Mr. Obama is comfortable in his “It’s good to be the king” self-indulgence. But, he’s not “the” king, or even “a” king; he is merely the President of the United States, which is certainly an important and powerful position, but the Executive Branch of which he’s the head is just one-third of our government.
Those who took civics or other classes in American government know that among the ingenious features of the U.S. Constitution are the separation of powers and the system of checks and balances, which were designed to prevent any one branch from acquiring more power than the other two.
Mr. Obama – who was reportedly a constitutional law lecturer – believes that the president is the most important figure in the government, ignoring the Constitutional prohibition of any branch gaining the degree of power and control he desires.
Democrats hold this perspective about the ACA:
*It was passed by Congress and signed by the president.
*The Supreme Court found it constitutional.
*There was an election that confirmed the country’s support for Obamacare.
*Thus, the matter is settled: the ACA is the law of the land. End of discussion.
This scenario is rife with weaknesses. Every Republican in the House also won election in 2012, and nothing prevents a law being repealed or amended. And remember that at one time slavery was the “law of the land,” and Congress made a huge error in abolishing the sale of alcohol through the 18th Amendment.
Congress can right wrongs in the law, as it did with slavery; it can repeal bad laws, as it did with the 18th Amendment. And, it can repeal, defund, or amend the error-ridden ACA.
Because Republicans did not lie down and let the Democrats have their way, we have been treated to the aforementioned “other factor,” the 5 Ps: the petulant, peevish, petty, and punkish political behavior that characterizes the shut down.
Faced with an obstinate opposition party, President Obama convened his strategy team from a nearby elementary school, where members of the third grade gathered on the playground to formulate a plan.
Noting that monuments and memorials were not closed during previous shutdowns, they recommended this tactic to cause pain: Close national parks and monuments, as well as some facilities that receive no federal funds and are not federally owned, like Mount Vernon. Close Florida Bay and Biscayne Bay to commercial fishing. Place barriers to block the World War II Memorial that has no gates and is wide open to visitors. Tell people who rent slips for their live-on boats or own homes on Lake Mead they can’t stay there. Block scenic overlooks, like at Mt. Rushmore, by placing traffic cones that prevent drivers from pulling over to view the monuments. Perfect third grade strategy.
Wesley Pruden, writing in The Washington Times, quoted an angry Park Service Ranger, who confirmed that attitude: “It’s a cheap way to deal with the situation,” he said. “We’ve been told to make life as difficult for people as we can. It’s disgusting.”
You see, if the shutdown doesn’t hurt people, it doesn’t help the Democrats.
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