Tag Archives: political economy

One Party Reign

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Congressman Don Beyer (D, VA), Chairman of the Joint Economic Committee, has this on working with Republicans to do things (assuming “things” need doing, which isn’t always the case, especially by Government):

I would personally prefer that it [President Joe Biden’s multi-trillion dollar “infrastructure” plan] was fully paid for but I’m not going to insist on it. If we can get it half paid for, that’s a huge step forward….

Debt profusion doesn’t matter. It’s only money.

Working with Republicans on actual infrastructure? Here’s Beyer again:

[W]e’re not going to not do it because they won’t come along. … But at the end of the day, if they’re going to say no, then we will proceed with the reconciliation.

Come along. Either do things our way, quietly, or we’ll simply ignore you. That’s the Progressive-Democrat view of unity.

And it’s not just on infrastructure. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) is pushing for robo-reconciliation. Here’s the current rule [emphasis added]:

Under the 1974 Budget Act, Congress once each fiscal year can pass via simple majority vote a budget resolution for federal revenue and outlays.

And

Mr Schumer’s office is telling the Senate parliamentarian he wants more. His claim rests on Section 304 of the Budget Act, which allows for “a concurrent resolution on the budget which revises or reaffirms the concurrent resolution on the budget for such fiscal year most recently agreed to.” In English, Mr Schumer says he should be able to pass more bills with a mere 51 votes as “revisions” to underlying budget resolutions.

No need to talk to Republicans at all on money matters. They’re obstructionist tightwads, anyway. Again, it’s only money. Especially since it’s OPM.

Progressive-Democrats aren’t interested in bipartisanship.

Costs and Capitalism

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Texas State Representative Matt Shaheen (R, District 66—full disclosure: he represents me among others in the District) put this up on his Twitter feed Tuesday:

(Note: the blue box at around 60% on the y-axis reads “Overall Inflation (59.6%”)

Notice that. All those blue-lined curves running at no or decreasing inflation (some might say, “deflation”) are in competitive industries. There’s nothing wrong with those health care costs—hospital and medical care services—that replacing government with competition, with capitalism, in the market segment wouldn’t cure.

Additional note: see the college-related curves. Those also result from government intrusion into our post-high school education system, here in the form of overt subsidies to the institutions. There’s nothing wrong with these costs, either, that replacing government with competition, with capitalism, in the market segment wouldn’t cure.

An Example of Why

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…State and local jurisdictions don’t—and didn’t—need the billions of dollars of Americans’ tax money sent to them as “bailouts.”

San Francisco plans to start paying 130 local artists $1,000 a month starting in May through the fall in a pilot program announced on Thursday.

Here’s the kicker [emphasis added]:

[San Francisco Mayor Landon] Breed previously announced nearly $25 million from a budget surplus that would go toward preserving the arts as well as nearly $12 million in grants to local arts organizations

The PRC, American Business, and Decoupling

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Matt Pottinger, former President Donald Trump’s Deputy White House National Security Adviser, had a number of thoughts concerning the People’s Republic of China, and its targeting of American businesses, with unusual bluntness.

Beijing’s message is unmistakable: you must choose. If you want to do business in China, it must be at the expense of American values. You will meticulously ignore the genocide of ethnic and religious minorities inside China’s borders; you must disregard that Beijing has reneged on its major promises—including the international treaty guaranteeing a “high degree of autonomy” for Hong Kong; and you must stop engaging with security-minded officials in your own capital unless it’s to lobby them on Beijing’s behalf.
Another notable element of Beijing’s approach is its explicit goal of making the world permanently dependent on China, and exploiting that dependency for political ends.

RTWT.

What also drew my eye is this, near the end of his op-ed, in response to a PRC strawman that the US was working on decoupling our economy from the PRC’s.

No one in Washington is seriously threatening a wholesale decoupling of the two economies.

That’s sadly true, regardless of the fact that Pottinger, with that sentence, was setting aside the PRC’s nonsensical claim. Pottinger did suggest that we are decoupling in key technologies, but I think that’s inadequate.

Washington—and private enterprise—should be moving apace to decouple from the People’s Republic of China. Not just in “key technologies,” too, but all across our economy, from strategic minerals, through those key technologies, to ordinary consumer products, components, and raw materials.

It’s a wide world, and we have no need to trade with our enemies, much less one who’s clearly stated goal is to conquer us and that wide world.

Mistaken Emphasis

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This is what our Federal Reserve Bank MFWIC Jerome Powell said, with a straight face, on public radio last Thursday:

Given the low level of interest rates, there’s no issue about the United States being able to service its debt at this time or in the foreseeable future[.]

Our current national debt is some $27.8 trillion. At Powell’s low interest rates, our interest payments on that debt will amount to some $380 billion for FY2021. Our economy has use for those $380 billion; it would behoove Powell and our…politicians…to cut out the borrowing and begin paying down the debt, rather than hiding behind “sustainability.”

Powell’s claim is just a tad bit circular, too: it’s his Fed that’s artificially suppressing those interest rates. And he’s going to lose control of the whole thing when, as our economy recovers from the Government-created shutdowns from the Wuhan Virus situation, Mr Market begins bidding down the prices of private economy debt instruments—driving interest rates higher—and walks away from Federal debt in favor of those private instruments’ returns—which will drive up Federal interest rates, whether Powell likes it or not.

After that claim, too, Powell added this, with no sense of irony:

[T]here will come a time—and that time will be when the economy is back to full employment, and taxes are rolling in, and we’re in a strong economy again [see, by the way, a couple paragraphs above]—when it will be appropriate to return to the issue of getting back on a sustainable fiscal path.

“Get back on a sustainable fiscal path.” Implying—no, meaning very clearly—that we’re not now on a sustainable fiscal path.

Which drives the question: since we’re not on a sustainable fiscal path, in what universe is our ability to service our national debt—which is Fed-speak for “make the interest payments, to hell with paying down principle”—a sustainable path at our debt’s current, and growing, level?