Tag Archives: political economy

Value in Spending vs Parity in Spending

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The House and Senate leadership met Wednesday in Speaker Paul Ryan’s (R, WI) office, along with White House Director of Legislative Affairs Marc Short and OMB Director Mick Mulvaney, to see if there’s any possibility of the Progressive-Democrats working with Republicans to get Federal spending under control.  It seems not.

Both parties claim to want to increase our ability to defend ourselves and our friends and allies, and so both claim to want to increase defense spending.  Only one of the two seems serious, however.  House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D, CA):

In these talks, Leader Schumer and I will continue to insist on parity in the caps[.]

Parity in the spending caps, she meant.  The icon of Progressive-Democracy in Congress is conflating parity with equal value.

There will be no domestic spending available if we can’t defend ourselves.  We will have nothing with which to deal with the opioid epidemic, veterans, pensions, disaster relief, National Institutes of Health, Children’s Health Insurance Program and community health centers, or infrastructure rebuilding, or education, or Social Security, or Medicare, or Medicaid or anything else if we can’t defend ourselves.

Or if we merely go broke, whether by being forced to spend all of our money just to pay the vig on that debt or by defaulting outright.

Parity—this is not the same as equal value. It is, however, another example of the Progressive-Democrats’ constant demand for equal outcomes rather than true equality.

It may be time to kill the filibuster on matters involving the Federal budget and spending bills, at least for the current Congressional session.  The alternative, if the Republicans stand tall on spending, along with getting their messaging skills up to snuff—finally—is to let the Progressive-Democrats shut down the Federal government over their demand to spend us into oblivion as their price for letting us spend enough on defense to rebuild our military.

To do any of that, though, Republicans also will have to understand that parity is not equality.

Trade Reciprocity

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When the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US refused to approve a deal between the People’s Republic of China’s Ant Financial Services Group and MoneyGram International Inc, wherein the former would acquire the latter, Anjani Trivedi in a Wall Street Journal article lamented the demise of “deal making” between American companies and PRC companies.

Beijing has softened its attitude somewhat recently, relaxing its foreign-investment policies to lure more capital into specific sectors, including financial services. With the CFIUS decision on Ant and MoneyGram, it’s clear such moves aren’t going to be met with much reciprocity.

And

For investors, the takeaway is that the “China bid” that has helped boost global asset prices this century may be gone for good….

Leave aside the artificial hysteria of “gone for good.”  The PRC’s “moves” are empty rhetoric, as their limited nature demonstrate. Further, such “moves” can only be tokens as long as the PRC demands that partnership with Chinese companies; or transfer of technology, including proprietary tech; or PRC-run back doors into foreign business’ software be accepted by the foreign business as the price of doing business in the PRC.  Such “moves” can only be tokens so long as PRC acquisitions of US companies are aimed not at strengthening a business but at “acquiring” US technology.  Such “moves” can only be tokens so long as Chinese companies are arms of the PRC’s government.

There’s nothing with which to reciprocate.

Uninformed

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New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is upset because his enormously high taxes are going to be exposed in all their fiscally painful glory by the just-passed tax reform bill.

We’re going to propose a restructuring of our tax code. I’m not even sure what they [Republicans] did is legally constitutional and that’s something we’re looking at now.  You can change the tax code. You can’t penalize my state because of its political affiliation. There’s never been a double taxation before in the history of the nation.

Cuomo and his fellow Progressive-Democrats in the State’s government have been needing to “restructure” how much they’re overcharging the good citizens of New York for some time.  That’s a separate issue.

Passing a tax law that applies the same criteria to each of our 50 States equally?  That equality is unconstitutional only if Cuomo can make the case that New York is somehow special and doesn’t deserve equal treatment under law.

Andrew Cuomo: the canonical uninformed voter.

A Thought on Student Loans

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Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is taking steps to redress the Obama administration travesty of a student loan program, but these can only be interim steps and by themselves are entirely insufficient.

Unfortunately, the student loan programs are entirely dysfunctional and want complete revamping. My high-level suggestions:

  1. student loan discharge only via bankruptcy, no special treatment of these loans
  2. let schools and students write their own loan agreements, including interest rates and payback provisions, without Government interference
  3. hold those schools and students to those agreements
  4. if Government guarantees any student loans, do so IAW the following:
  • interest rates charged must be commensurate with the employability and median first-five-year pay of the major being pursued; higher rates for lower employability and median pay. Higher risk loans should pay higher rates
  • in the event of bankruptcy discharge of a loan, the school floating the loan must completely reimburse the government, NLT the following fiscal quarter, for the taxpayer loss from the bankruptcy discharge.

The Veteran’s Choice Program

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This is a program that would give veterans the option of going to a private sector doctor in lieu of playing the delay wait game at a Veterans Administration facility, after the veteran has jumped through the requisite VA hoops.  After a political tussle in Congress over increasing/renewing its funding, some additional money was provided.  That additional funding was necessitated because

its popularity depleted the allocated funds more quickly than anticipated. Patient visits through the program increased more than 30% in the first quarter of fiscal year 2017, according to the VA.

Extra points for those of you who can say why the program is so popular.

Despite the success of this limited program, the Progressive-Democrats in Congress want to get rid of it.  Congressman Mark Takano (D, CA), for instance,

argued on the House floor in July that it’s a “mistaken belief that the private sector is better equipped to care for our nation’s veterans than specialized VA doctors.” But while the VA provides high-quality specialized care in certain areas, for the most part veterans’ needs are similar to everyone else’s.

Indeed.  Takano and his fellow Progressive-Democrats just want to maintain control over OPM. It’s a mistaken belief that the private sector cannot care for our nation’s veterans better than specialized VA doctors. As Burgess and Cleland (authors of the piece at the link) note, mostly our veterans’ needs are similar to everyone else’s.

Those few specialized needs unique to a veteran’s particular military history? The VA’s specialists, functioning in the private sector, can deal with those at least as well as they do now, and probably better and faster without the VA’s bureaucratic impediments.

Make the Veteran’s Choice Program functionally universal: privatize the VA, and use its current and what would have been its future budgets for veterans’ vouchers.

Veteranos Administratio delende est.