Two Daesh terrorists who grew up in Great Britain have been captured.
Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson told the Sun newspaper on Saturday: “I don’t think they should ever set foot in this country again.”
Williamson is absolutely correct. Barbarians like this, who think terrorism is the way to go, should be allowed freely to leave to join their barbaric gangs.
And then they should be barred from returning. Forever.
…was just passed in the small hours of Friday morning. The high points of what it does is provide funding for the Federal government into late March, provide a budget good for two years, raise the debt ceiling a smidge, and increase spending authorization for defense by $165 billion over the next two years and for domestic items by $131 billion over those two years. It does not include anything regarding immigration, particularly DACA, despite House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s (D, CA) 8-hour speech Thursday, nor does it include anything regarding welfare reform.
The lack of immigration matters in the budget deal is appropriate; Pelosi’s long harangue notwithstanding. Immigration has nothing to do with the budget, and it will be handled separately, as both House Speaker Paul Ryan (R, WI) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R, KY) have said repeatedly. The lack of welfare reform does matter, but it needn’t have been a deal breaker in the present instant. There needs to be a stronger consensus both in Congress and in the nation before that can be done properly—recall the fiasco that is Obamacare.
A number of Republicans in both houses objected to the deal, though, and voted against it and held it up in the Senate. Senator Rand Paul (R, KY) wanted a vote on his amendment to restore the prior spending caps, which would have eliminated those $196 billion in spending increases. The Conservative Caucus of House Republicans also objected to the vasty spending increases. In all cases, those increases will add to the Federal budget deficit and through that to the national debt by up to $1 trillion, depending on how much our growing economy adds to Federal revenues.
Except.
One thing the budget deal does not do, and this is a Critical Item, is require all that money to be spent. The bill is an authorization bill; it sets an outer bound on how much can be spent. That’s all it does. Actual spending will come from the several appropriation bills that must now be passed. This is where those Republicans’ concerns can be addressed, and they should be; the concerns are entirely valid.
In the coming appropriations bills, Republicans must hold the line on the defense spending increases—there’s nothing domestic of any import if we can’t support our friends and allies or even defend ourselves—and reduce spending in other, domestic, areas (including welfare reform, even if only a series of tweaks this year) to pay for the defense increases. And that includes on holding the line on those domestic appropriations bills already passed by the House, which were passed under the lower caps.
The Progressive-Democrats in Congress will howl over this; they view authorization to spend as an absolute requirement to spend. Let them howl. Let the Progressive-Democrats continue to be the heavy spending, deficits and debt be damned, party. Let the Progressive-Democrats run on a platform of profligate spending. They’ll drag out every tear-jerking trope they can dream up—it’s for the children, our grandmas are getting pushed off the cliff, think of the poor people in Illinois and Connecticut, and on and on.
Americans aren’t as stupid as the Progressive-Democrats make us out to be. Our kids, our parents, our poor regardless of where they live will be better off for that spending discipline. Let the Progressive-Democrats try to sell their snake oil budgeting that Government spending and Government income have nothing to do with each other.
One more thing. The budget deal, good for two years like it is, means Republicans won’t be able to pass anything, including those appropriations bills, without nine Senate Progressive-Democrats on board. Appropriations bills aren’t subject to reconciliation votes. Without actual spending authorization, the Federal government will shut down in late March. Without nine Democrats to support ending a Senate filibuster, spending won’t be authorized. Let Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) shut down the government again because he can’t get wastrel spending done. Let the Progressive-Democrats throw another temper tantrum. That won’t play any better than the just ended Schumer Shutdown did.
Senate Republicans and Progressive-Democrats agreed in principle to a two-year budget deal that sets outer bounds on spending allocations that are yet to be debated and passed in the two Houses. The deal increases defense spending by $165 billion over the next two years, and it increases domestic spending by $131 billion over those two years.
But at what price?
One price is the potential for a return to $1 trillion deficits. To an extent, that’ll be reduced by a growing economy as the tax reform law begins to take effect.
The larger price, though, by far, is the lack movement on the big three budget failures: Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid transfers. These remain not on any track toward privatization, or with that last item, not on any track toward reducing to zero transfers.
In 2016, the Federal government spent almost $950 billion on Social Security payments and a bit over $590 billion on Medicare. Federal Medicaid transfers to the States in 2016 ran some $325 billion.
Fixing those would be produce a large reduction in deficits to the point of budget surpluses, which could be used to run down our national debt. And the fixing would produce a large return to the personal responsibility that has contributed so strongly to our nation’s greatness and prosperity.
Some of you may recall the umbrella protests in Hong Kong a few short years ago concerning the rapid erosion of freedoms there as the People’s Republic of China accelerated its walk away from its promise to Great Britain to respect Hong Kong liberties after the island city was surrendered to the PRC.
Joshua Wong, one of those protesters, sentenced to jail for participating and speaking his mind, is out of jail pending his appeal. Hong Kong Commissioner Clement Leung had a Letter to the Editor of The Wall Street Journal earlier this week objecting to a WSJ piece decrying the whole sorry charade that is the current Hong Kong judiciary.
Surprise: I have my own response to Leung.
Joshua Wong was convicted because he was resisting the enforcement of a court injunction to reopen the roads in a blocked protest site.
No, Wong was convicted for continuing to exercise his free speech rights in the face of a court ruling that erroneously subverted those rights.
Mr Wong and others were also convicted and sentenced in another case, not for exercising their freedom of expression, but for their disorderly and intimidating behavior….
The use of the “disorderly and intimidating behavior” charge was simply a Communist Party of China-directed cynical euphemism for “speaking too freely.” The only ones who saw disorder or who were “intimidated” were those unused to being disobeyed in their diktats and others unused to the rollicking noise of democracy.
As an experienced Commissioner, Mr Leung should know better.
Whether the current idea of a Deep State plotting against the current administration is accurate or not, it has been clear for some period of years that bureaucrats who have been in Federal employ for too long become entrenched and begin working at cross purposes with those of their agency bosses. The latter, being political appointees, are, at least indirectly, selected by the Federal government’s employer, us citizens.
While we can cure the overt incumbency problem of our politicians by electing others in their stead, the incumbency of bureaucrats, none of them elected, is both generally unseen and harder to correct.
There are, though, a couple of things we can do to correct this.
One is to limit the power of public unions by barring them from collecting “dues” or any other fees from non-members. After all, rather tautologically, they don’t—can’t—represent anyone other than their members. Non-members should be free to negotiate their own government employment contracts, and if those contracts happen to look like union contracts, that’s just a happy—or unhappy—side effect of those separate negotiations. The wage competition also would apply downward pressure on government labor costs, to the benefit of us taxpayers who are the ones paying those wages, anyway.
It’s also important to take the government side out of the labor negotiations; although likely this is just pie in the sky. Currently unions, when they make political donations, are donating to the politicians nominally negotiating those contracts on behalf of us taxpayers. One possibility is to have a third-party negotiator represent us rather than those politicians, albeit this is even more pie in the sky. Then put the union employment contracts up for final approval/rejection by plebiscite in the jurisdiction in which the contract is proposed.
Another measure is to change via legislation the nature of the employment contracts that are allowed. Civil servant employment contracts should be limited to a five-year period with automatic expiration unless each house of Congress positively renews the contract. Moreover, those contracts should be renewable only in three-year increments, and each renewal should be justified first by the agency for which the employee works and then by each house of Congress.
Additionally, transfers between agencies, whether permanent or temporary, should not be allowed unless the receiving agency eliminates a job position for each transfer in. Such transfers should be for the expertise gained, not simply to increase headcount.
Finally, every five years, the public service union of relevance should be recertified, first by secret ballot vote of the union members, and then by roll-call vote in each house of Congress.
Five years is long enough to get useful work out of a new hire, and having to justify the continuation of the employment contract can help to hold down the disruptive power of bureaucrat incumbency by increasing turnover. Requiring the public service union to recertify also can help to hold down the ability of the union to bloat off us taxpayers.
Yes, that will increase the work load of Congress. That’s beneficial, too. Working on this sort of thing will contribute to Congress not working on foolishness.