Tag Archives: spending

Chamber of Commerce and the Progressive-Democratic Party

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The US Chamber of Commerce decided in 2020 to endorse a number of first-term Progressive-Democratic Party Congressmen on the theory that Party would control Congress after the elections and in the expectation, tacitly agreed to if only by their silence, by those Party endorsees. Fifteen of those twenty-three first-termer endorsees were reelected.

So, how’d they do regarding Chamber of Commerce wishes and expectations?

Every one of the 15 voted for the $1.9 trillion spending bill in March 2020, despite Chamber opposition to sweeping jobless benefits that stoked labor shortages and stimulus checks that fed inflation. They also voted for the PRO Act, a radical pro-union rewrite of labor law.

That’s no-for-two, so far.

Now comes President Joe Biden’s (D) Build Reduced Back Act, just passed by the Party-controlled Senate and tossed over to the House, which likely will vote on it by the end of this week—that’s tomorrow, or maybe (unlikely) Saturday.

The chance of Democratic defections is slim. Despite aggressive Chamber lobbying, all 15 rolled over for the $3.5 trillion Build Back Better bill last year, so they are unlikely to oppose something that has Senator Joe Manchin’s (D, WV) approval.

Did the Chamber miss? No, those folks knew what they would be getting.

…most of the Chamber Democrats had a voting record of hostility to business.
Twenty had voted in the previous Congress for a bill to abolish right-to-work states. Eighteen voted for a $15-an-hour federal minimum wage. Nearly all had publicly expressed support for scrapping the 2017 corporate tax reform, and for new climate, banking and healthcare regulations.

This is what anyone can expect from a Party politician. And from a political power-driven weather vane Chamber of Commerce, which has shown through its incompetence that it is no friend of American business or businesses.

Climate and Party

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Here is the Progressive-Democratic Party’s goal with the Build Reduced Back Act just passed unilaterally by Party in the Senate and about to be passed unilaterally by Party in the House, in a nutshell as summarized by the Wall Street Journal:

[It] won’t reduce inflation, won’t reduce the budget deficit, and it won’t reduce the world’s temperature. What it will do is transfer some $369 billion from taxpayers and drug companies to the pockets of green energy businesses and investors.

Notice that. The Act isn’t about correcting the planetary climate. Never mind the arrogance of claiming the US can impact the planet’s climate when the People’s Republic of China and India are rapidly expanding their use of/dependence on fossil fuels and the associated alleged pollution output of CO2, or that Africa cannot switch to “renewable” energy. It’s strictly about passing billions of American taxpayer dollars to the Climate Funding Industry in return for (Party hopes) Climate Funding Industry campaign funding, votes, and political power maintenance/enhancement.

Because Housing Price Inflation Isn’t High Enough

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California State Senate Leader Toni Atkins (D) wants to exacerbate it with $10 billion more thrown at the State’s housing market to create even more buying demand for this supply-limited product.

Democratic State Senate Leader Toni Atkins on Wednesday unveiled details of a proposal she’s pushing to create a revolving fund that would provide interest-free loans for up to 30% of the purchase price of a home for low- and middle-income households.

Even spreading the money over 10 years would throw $1 billion per year at a housing market that’s already suffering enormous inflation—nearly 12% just since last August—due to the limited supply of houses for sale vs the burgeoning number of buyers, both institutional (viz., Blackrock) and individual.

That won’t add to the inflation of housing cost will it?

Local Control vs Federal Funding

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Tennessee’s General Assembly is considering a bill that would indemnify teachers and all other employees of public schools and local education agencies against civil liability or “adverse job actions” if they refer to a student by pronouns consistent with his biological sex rather than by his preferred gender pronouns. The General Assembly’s Fiscal Review Committee noted that the bill

could violate Title IX and would put at risk the state’s federal funding, which for the current school year is more than $5 billion.

That’s the important aspect of this bill, and it has much broader implications for all State-level legislative actions. The $5 billion might seem like a lot of money for a State, but it pales against the long-term cost outcomes of a State accepting any Federal funds under any guise: the more money a State accepts from the Federal government, the more control over its own internal affairs the State surrenders to the Federal government.

The Feds are acting entirely legitimately when they attach strings to the money they provide the States, or to any non-State entity. Anyone providing money to anyone or anything else naturally gets to specify the manner and purpose for which the money is to be used. It’s the existence of those strings, not what they require, that should give States pause in the decision to accept any of the Federal government’s money.

In the end, States that want to retain control of their own intra-State affairs should reject Federal funds transfers—and join with other States in efforts across the legal spectrum to end Federal transfers of State tax remissions to other States altogether except in the event of an emergency declaration. Nor should any exceptions to the bar be allowed: once carve-outs are begun, in very short order, the bar will be so exception-ridden as to cease to exist in any meaningful form.

Earmarks—Congress Has Them

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They’re back, in spades, courtesy of Congress’ latest spend-a-thon, the $1.5 trillion omnibus spending bill just rushed through under the guise of billions more dollars in aid and weapons for Ukraine. The funding for Ukraine is sorely needed, but that should have been argued and enacted through a separate, stand-alone bill. Instead, Progressive-Democrats and too many Republicans (vis., Senator Richard Shelby, R, AL) used the blood and bodies of Ukrainians to speed through their personally convenient spending wishes—earmarks.

The argument for earmarks is that Congress should direct this spending rather than leave it to the federal bureaucracy. But the bureaucracy is better placed to make trade-offs based on economic value and urgent need in a world of limited resources.

There are two failures in this claim by The Wall Street Journal‘s Editorial Board.

One is that earmarks are perfectly fine as compromise grease and tradeoffs—they just should occur from within a separate budget and allocation line item for earmarks, and each such earmark should be openly debated on the House and Senate floors so We the People can see them and approve or disapprove of them.

The other is the incredibly naive claim that bureaucracy is better placed to make trade-offs based on economic value and urgent need. No, it’s not. Bureaucrats, just like any other politicians, whether elected or Civil Servant, will make the trade-offs that best suit the bureaucrat(s) involved. On top of that, it’s Congress that controls spending, not bureaucrats. Spending decision should be left to our elected representatives in those houses; delegation needs to be reined in and severely curtailed.