Tag Archives: spending

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.

One More Reason

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The last two administrations have dumped $3.5 trillion of supposed Wuhan Virus relief funds into our economy since the virus situation began in early 2020.

Now we’re learning that almost $100 billion of it has been stolen. That doesn’t seem like a large per centage of the total. However, as numbers have a quality all their own, and while those $100 billion are a small per centage of the trillions, they would have had their own use. Fighting the Wuhan Virus’ entry into our nation via our southern border, for instance, by building more of the wall that Biden-Harris has been so desperate to stop. Generating more—many, many more—of the home tests that Biden-Harris has been lying about producing. Plusing up our police forces so as to reduce the rate of crime that Progressive-Democrats like Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D, NY) insist are no big deal and that other Leftists insist is justified reparations. Plusing up our military. The list goes on.

In the end, this is just one more reason to not use the Federal government to handle, centrally, such handouts. Instead, make block grants to the States.

That won’t stop the graft of this sort, but it at least would divide the money up across the States so that it would be harder to steal, and the governments making the disbursements would be closer to the problem—and to their constituents for accountability.

Better yet would be to tot up the total of all Federal transfers to each State and roll those into block grants—no strings attached—to the States. Then reduce the size of the block grants each subsequent year by 10% of that first year’s block until no more monies are being transferred to the States from Federal coffers.

After all, those monies, the Federal coffers, are the tax monies sent to the Feds by each State’s citizens. Let each State keep those tax funds in the first place, and eliminate the middle man. Each State will use the money more efficiently and more directly for that State’s citizen needs and wants and not for another State’s purposes.

The Federal government should collect, and use, only that which it needs for the only Constitutionally mandated purposes extant: to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States. That general Welfare, too, is enumerated in (and limited to) the purposes delineated in the next 16 clauses of Art I, Sect 8; the last clause being not a spending purpose but an authorization for Congress to make specific laws for specific spending.