Tag Archives: spending

This is Backwards

Posted on by
Reply

In a Wall Street Journal article on the difficulty of estimating ridership on roads and highways to be built in the future and so the need for them, and the poor allocations of costs and Federal dollars that result from the inaccuracies, there was this statement.

If lawmakers enact the $550 billion bipartisan infrastructure bill now before the House, state and local officials will have to decide which projects to spend money on.

This is backwards. State and local officials should have to decide first what infrastructure projects they want to complete, their cost, their priority, and have contracts already let contingent on receiving Federal dollars before Congress contemplates an infrastructure bill that would send taxpayer money to any of those States.

Those are critical first steps in getting to shovel-ready jobs to which to commit funds.

In Which I Disagree

Posted on by
1

There is a bipartisan bill afoot that would cut all taxpayer-based funding for any gain-of-function research into any virus or bacterium for at least next five years.

I disagree.

As the Wuhan Virus, which the People’s Republic of China government released onto the world (whether by design or by incompetent lab carelessness) demonstrates, we need, desperately, to understand such plussed up biologics, whether they’ve been…enhanced…for politico-military use, as our enemies are surely researching, or they’ve naturally jumped from their animal origins to human infectiousness.

That requires gain-of-function research because that’s the only way we’ll be able quickly to understand and then to respond to a new disease. We just need to do the research entirely domestically rather than relying on, or paying, our enemies to do the research for us.

Lies of the Progressive-Democrats

Posted on by
Reply

Another in the interminable series.  This time, it’s Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) demanding Republicans support raising the debt ceiling during this Congressional session:

We’re paying the Trump credit card with what we would do to lift the debt ceiling[.]

Not at all. What she—and her Progressive-Democrat syndicate family—want to do is raise the debt ceiling so they can borrow an additional $3.5 trillion for their reconciliation spend-a-thon.

Bipartisan Negotiations Progressive-Democratic Party Style

Posted on by
Reply

There is a bipartisan group of Senators who are close to agreement on a trillion-dollar infrastructure bill. Set aside, for the moment, whether the bill is good or bad. Consider, first, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D, NY) and his Socialist colleague Bernie Sanders’ (I, VT) position and planned move regarding that bill.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Budget Chairman Bernie Sanders have started the process of adding elements of Biden’s agenda to a large-scale budget reconciliation bill, regardless of the outcome of ongoing bipartisan negotiations on infrastructure.
Schumer has said the reconciliation bill will include the parts of Biden’s $2.25 trillion American Jobs Plan and $1.8 trillion American Families Plan that are not included in a potential bipartisan agreement on infrastructure spending.

The bipartisan negotiation is a sham, a decoy, an attempt at a shiny object. The Progressive-Democrats in that group are fully aware of this, and they’re enthusiastic participants in the distraction.

This is what Republicans and Conservatives have to deal with.

Yet More and Bigger Spending

Posted on by
Reply

The House Problem Solvers Caucus, with 29 Progressive-Democrats and 29 Republicans, are proposing their own “infrastructure” bill—to the tune of $1.25 trillion dollars, more than double the Senate Republicans’ original proposal of some $570 billion (and which, in their own abject meekness, they exploded into a nearly trillion dollar supplication).

The Republicans in this “problem solver” gang are engaged in their own surrender to the spending and taxing Party.

Of course President Joe Biden (D) and his Congressional Party leadership aren’t negotiating in good faith—they don’t need to. They can hold out for everything in their original demand because they know they’ll get it.