Tag Archives: spending

An Alternative Move

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Vice President JD Vance (R), in his new capacity as leader of President Donald Trump’s (R) newly formed anti-fraud facility, has paused transfer of some $260 million in Medicaid funding to Minnesota until that State begins to do a better job of accounting for how it spends those American taxpayer dollars. Minnesota’s Progressive-Democrat governor, Tim Walz, promptly claimed that Vance’s move was nothing more than a

campaign of retribution. Trump is weaponizing the entirety of the federal government to punish blue states like Minnesota. These cuts will be devastating for veterans, families with young kids, folks with disabilities, and working people across our state.

There is a valid concern buried under Walz’ manufactured hysteria—the loss of financial support for the groups of Americans he named. As Vance noted,

Vance…recalled his own experience growing up depending on government programs and said the money should be there for people and children who need it. “It’s disgraceful that fraudsters out there are taking advantage of programs like Medicaid[.]”

There is an alternative solution to a blanket cutoff, however temporary. Who the individuals are in those groups about whom Walz so piously pretends to care is known to the Federal government. Those $260 million should be sent directly to those individuals, entirely bypassing the State and the third parties Walz’ administration uses to distribute and funnel the money.

The shift would go a long way toward reducing the corruption in the State’s Medicaid facility by bypassing it entirely. Remaining fraud would be limited to the Federal government’s distribution facility, and that, as a one-time affair, would be minimal. The Trump I administration’s distribution of a one-time followed by a smaller one-time distribution of Wuhan Virus shutdown funds to American taxpayers shows the way.

“aren’t subject to Congressional appropriations”

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In the house editorial, The Wall Street Journal editors wrote about the burgeoning tax revenues accruing to the Federal government over the first third of the present fiscal year, the reduction in spending in several government departments and agencies, and the burgeoning spending on welfare entitlement programs.

Then they added this risible claim:

…continuing boom in the giant retirement and healthcare entitlements that aren’t subject to Congressional appropriations.

The editors might want to review their junior high Civics class notes. Here’s our Constitution’s requirement for Federal spending:

Art I, Sect 9: No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law

All spending is subject to Congressional appropriations, and that includes “retirement and healthcare entitlements.” There are no caveats in that Section’s clause, no “except for programs inconvenient to alter or eliminate.”

Cutting spending on entitlements may be politically difficult but that’s not what the editors claimed. If the editors can’t find their notes, they need to listen better to their junior high interns when those kids brief them in preparation for expounding on government spending.

Wrong Distinction

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There’s a new challenge, allegedly, for grocers and their junk food sales; although their problem is whether, and if so how much and where, they should stock junk food on their shelves. This is suggested by the headline:

Is a Cookie a Type of Candy? Supermarkets Have a New Food-Stamp Conundrum

This is a trivial question, though, one that awaits only a government definition of what foods are eligible for food stamps. The larger, and the far more serious problem is posed by this claim, buried in the middle of the article:

Critics said that limiting grocery options ignores the real causes of poor diets, such as low incomes, high food prices and access to healthy food. Studies, they said, show little difference between what SNAP recipients buy and the purchases of non-SNAP households.

Say the critics are correct, and food stamp food eligibilities don’t address those root causes. Say, further, that those studies are accurate in their conclusions.

Those criticisms are wholly irrelevant. The fact remains, and it remains unaddressed, as well, that there is no reason for the rest of us to pay with our tax dollars for the poor diet choices those eating on our dime—those food stamp programs—make. If they want those junk foods, let them pay for them on their own dime, just as the purchasers in non-SNAP households do.

How dare we presume so, some might bleat. It’s a simple dare. We’re the ones paying and with our money. We’re the ones who should be determining how our tax dollars are spent.

It’s that straightforward, and it should be that simple.

Expanding our Defense Budget

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President Donald Trump (R) says he’ll propose a $1.5 trillion defense budget for 2027, a 50% increase over this year’s proposed (because it’s only passed the House, with no guarantee that an obstructionist Progressive-Democratic Party will allow it to be passed in the Senate) $1 trillion budget. Of course, there’s no guarantee that the larger budget proposal will ever be passed, either, which adds to the premium on Republicans and Conservatives winning the 2026 mid-terms for the reasons below.

The subheadline set the framework.

A $1.5 trillion military will cost much less than a war with China.

This is a war that, presently, we would lose and lose in the most humiliating fashion.

But, but—

[H]asn’t the US military shown, in Iran and Venezuela, that it is unmatched? Yes, and brilliantly so, against small powers when we can dominate space and the skies, and use our experience in combined arms operations. Going up against China, or a multiple front conflict, is far less certain.

Actually, in a fight with the PRC or a multi-front war, the outcome is pretty certain, just not favorably so. The Ukrainian military’s last attempted offensive against our near-peer Russia was an abject failure. That offensive was conducted in accordance with NATO—which is to say American—combined arms doctrine (which worked so brilliantly in Venezuela), but without a Critical Item component of that doctrine: air power and support. Absent that, even with the technologically superior ground weapons Ukraine employed against the Russian forces, Ukraine’s offensive was stopped in its tracks with very heavy loss of those superior armored vehicles.

When the People’s Republic of China invades the Republic of China, American air power will be stripped away from any putative support we might have in mind for the RoC as our Pacific aircraft carriers are sunk and our surviving naval forces are driven all the way back to Hawaii.

Nor would the PRC would have no incentive to stop there, because

new technologies are proliferating in ways that threaten the US homeland. These include hypersonic missiles, space and cyber weapons, drones, and as ever nuclear weapons. All of this is before AI is weaponized in multiple ways.

Unlike 1940s Japan, the PRC has both the stated goal of dominating us in every important way and the wherewithal to follow up its naval victory in the Western Pacific.

The US remains helpless against cyber attacks as demonstrated by the repeated hacks against a variety of data storage sites and infrastructure distribution nodes. The PRC has a first strike capability with its hypersonic, nuclear-capable missiles, which have intercontinental reach. As part of its invasion of the RoC, the PRC has strong incentive to isolate us from the island and wage its cyberwar against us and then to exercise its first strike capability. With the latter, there will be no possibility of a nuclear threat, much less response, from the United States.

We would be left with the PRC dominating our foreign policy and, especially with its control of the Pacific sea lanes of communication and of commerce, dominating our domestic economy. With those controls, the PRC will control us.

That budget must be passed without delay, and DoD’s reform of contract-letting, of weapons development, and of procurement and production must proceed ruthlessly and with similar pace.

Right Idea, Wrong Plan

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Alexandra de Hoop Scheffer, German Marshall Fund of the US President, says three things must occur in order to redress Europe’s defense situation, a situation which I believe currently threatens its ability to survive a war as a collection of sovereign, independent nations. Some of these steps apply to us, and we are also, I believe, in the same war-losing peril of our own sovereignty and independence.

First, Europe must rearm, and fast.

Indeed. But even today, I see little stomach for that in too many of the continent’s nations critical to the continent’s survival against a Russian attack. Both France and Germany are in financial crisis and are showing no political will to correct that. The UK is even worse off; its political management doesn’t even seem aware of the depth of its failure. Until they do gain the awareness and the will to act—and then act—they’ll be unable to be serious about rearming, much less hardening their digital and material (water, fuel, and heating distribution) infrastructure against cyber attacks. Only those nations still fresh from the Russian boots on their necks—Poland, the Baltics, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Moldova—remember what that life was like. Poland and the Baltics are serious about rearming, but they’re smaller even than Ukraine compared to the barbarian’s hordes and equipage. And they have a knife poised at their back in the form of Hungary, which is busily toadying up to Russia in its own effort to mitigate the consequences of being conquered again. Rearming is necessary, but it doesn’t seem promising, much less occurring any time soon.

Second, defense innovation must become a shared transatlantic mission. Neither side of the Atlantic can out-innovate geopolitical rivals alone.

De Hoop Scheffer fleshed this one out a bit; however, she’s mistaken in her proposed execution.

The US leads in emerging technologies, but Europe brings industrial capacity and advanced manufacturing. Joint work on protecting critical infrastructure, countering hybrid threats, and developing secure telecommunications and next-generation defense technologies must continue regardless of political noise.

Yes, and no. The US certainly can out-innovate our enemies alone. That’s how we ran the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics out of existence. We can—and we must—do so again, for all that we’re facing an aggressive Russia and an innovative People’s Republic of China. Our economic players’ freedom to innovate as they see fit gives them, and us as a nation, much more flexibility, and the ability to profit from their innovations, gives them much more incentive to innovate and to run the risks necessary for innovation than can any centrally planned process.

We need, though, to do our own manufacturing. Europe can never be an arsenal of democracy, especially with respect to modern weapons and cyber and space threats. Additionally, the industrial powerhouse of Europe, Germany, is not that anymore. Their industrial capacity is shrinking, and it’s becoming ever more expensive and unreliable as the German government insists on unreliable and expensive “renewable” energy sources while disdaining cheap, reliable oil, natural gas, coal, and nuclear energy sources.

Aside from that, we’re too likely to have to fight two or three wars simultaneously; we need our own manufacturing capacity to meet those equipment expenditure needs.

That doesn’t mean we should not share innovations with our friends and allies; of course, we should and they should with us. Accumulating best practices speeds innovation. We just need to guard against becoming dependent on others. Our dependence on the PRC for far too many items critical to our economy, our health, and our defense capability demonstrates the destructive folly of that. Friends and allies may be less likely to cut us off at critical moments, but that’s a non-zero proposition. See, for instance, an earlier France kicking our military out of that nation. See the German bureaucracy getting in the way of serious training exercises, including joint exercises.

Nor does that mean we shouldn’t buy European manufactures, also. We just can’t be dependent on them. Aside from the continent’s incapacity, two world wars showed vulnerability of US weapons flowing to Europe. That threat applies to the flow of manufactures from Europe to us in the event of another shooting war.

Third, Washington and European capitals must accept that their alignment is no longer automatic.

This is especially true given that fully a third of the European NATO members continue to welch on their financial and equipment obligations to NATO (and in so doing betray the other members of NATO) and continue to freeload off American money and our promise of American blood in defense of NATO Europe, legitimate members and scofflaws alike.

They need to build flexible coalitions outside the usual trans-Atlantic circle based on shared benefits, not only historical ties.

This is especially true for us. We need to stand up a new mutual defense arrangement that incudes the nations of the Three Seas Initiative, us, and the UK; although the latter’s inclusion should depend on its getting its fiscal house in order and then plussing up its defense establishment to something firmer than a secondary school football team. Absent both of those, the UK would be a net drain and so should not be considered.