Tag Archives: political parties

Some Government Spending

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Progressives in Congress and the White House are loathe to reduce spending—especially actual reductions, not just the reduced rates of growth that they, along with too many Republicans, masquerade as spending reductions.  This reluctance is part of why they’ve been so indisposed toward passing a budget, which would make their spending excesses even more apparent.

Bret Baier, of Fox News, though, has dug out some numbers illustrating the present excesses.  Just last November, for instance, the Federal government collected $5 billion in total revenue, while spending $11 billion, each day of the month, for a spending excess of $6 billion per day.  The table includes Baier’s numbers and provides some of the biggest spending sources.  (The Totals sums won’t agree  between across and down due to rounding.)

Spender Daily Tab ($billion) Monthly Tab ($billion) Projected Annual Tab ($billion)
Department of Health and Human Services

3

90

1,080
Social Security

2.5

75

900
Department of Defense

1.8

54

648
interest on the national debt

0.85

25.6

307.4
Totals

8.2

244.6

2,935

Notice that the two biggest spenders are Obamacare—HHS—and Social Security: two of the entitlements which the Progressives have already said are not negotiable—no matter the damage to our economy.

Notice further that those $300+ billion in debt interest are utterly withdrawn from our economy; it’s just the vig on our debt.  Those dollars don’t circulate.  Moreover, that vig doesn’t pay down the debt a single fēn (分).  Then, too, when interest rates revert to our historical levels in the neighborhood of 5% from our current roughly 0.25%, those interest payments will explode to the region of $6,148 billion—over $6 trillion.  Per year.

No wonder the Progressives are so reluctant to discuss spending or actual deficit elimination and debt reduction.  That would be hard.

A Press Conference

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Here’s what was said at a recent press conference:

So I’m going to continue to talk to the President and the other leaders up in the Senate.  But, ultimately, they’ve got to do their job.  Right now their job is to make sure that middle-class taxes do not go up and that we have a balanced, responsible package of deficit reduction.

It is there for all to see.  It is a deal that can get done.  But it is not going to be—it cannot be done if every side wants 100 percent.  And part of what voters were looking for is some compromise up here.  That’s what folks want.  They understand that they’re not going to get 100 percent of what they want.  And for some reason, that message has not yet taken up at the White House or in the Senate.

And when you think about what we’ve gone through over the last couple of months—a devastating hurricane, and now one of the worst tragedies in our memory—the country deserves folks to be willing to compromise on behalf of the greater good, and not tangle themselves up in a whole bunch of ideological positions that don’t make much sense.

So I remain not only open to conversations, but I remain eager to get something done.  I’d like to get it done before Christmas.  There’s been a lot of posturing up at the White House and over in the Senate, instead of just going ahead and getting stuff done.  And we’ve been wasting a lot of time.  It is the right thing to do.  I’m prepared to get it done.  But they’re going to have to go ahead and make some adjustments.

Was that Speaker of the House John Boehnor (R, OH)?  Not really.  It was President Barack Obama, and he wasn’t talking about himself and his allies; he was disparaging Republican efforts to avert our fall over the cliff.

Cynical Refusal to Negotiate

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Fox News has this example from the Progressives in Congress.  House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) is refusing even to discuss the possibility of raising the initial eligibility age of Medicare, and Senator Dick Durbin (D, IL) echoes her no-negotiate position.

Raising the Medicare age represents more of the same.  For seniors nearing retirement, it means less security for themselves and their families.  It betrays the bedrock promise of Medicare: that Americans who work hard and take responsibility all their lives can know dignity in their later years.

Yet how can Americans know dignity in our later years?  An overweening government forces us onto the largesse of strangers for, in the present case, our health concerns, and it denies us our ability to set aside those funds for our own future welfare thereby denying us our ability to satisfy our duty to see to our own welfare to the maximum extent possible?  We are denied our dignity by an intrusive government, led by Progressives who refuse to negotiate reform.

Republicans, Fiscal Cliff, and Spending

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We’ve wondered here, there, and elsewhere why the “fiscal cliff” negotiations are occurring in secret.  Is it because the Republicans have been planning on folding all along, and they’re trying to keep that quiet until the last moment?  Is it because they naively think Democrats will negotiate in better faith if they don’t have to be seen as folding to the Republicans until the last moment?

Whatever the excuse, it’s got to stop.  Tried that the last several weeks, it’s failed utterly.  Now it’s time for the Republicans to take overt, public action.  Marc Thiessen, in The Washington Post, has some thoughts on what that overt, public action should look like.  In the main, I agree with him; excerpts below.  RTWT.

…pass legislation extending current tax rates for all Americans.  Let Obama reject it and take us over the “fiscal cliff”—and then be prepared to live under the Clinton tax rates while negotiations on tax reform continue.  In the short term, Americans may blame you.  You can recover from that.  What you will never recover from is surrendering your principles and giving up your brand as the party of low taxes and limited government.

But those Clinton tax rates are wonderful, don’t you know: when Republicans got them cut, across the board, during Bush the Younger’s administration, those tax cuts were, according to our Progressive betters, only good for the rich; the middle class could never benefit from them.  Thus, it’s plain that reverting to those rates can’t possibly harm the middle class since the lower rates never did us any good.   And, of course, those wonderful Clinton tax rates went along with Clinton’s spending rates—some one-third of President Barack Obama’s.  But never mind about that.

Additionally, Obama and his publicity machinethe NLMSM will ensure that Republicans get the blame; there’s no “may” to it.  As Thiessen points out, though, they can recover from this—see below.

Go on the offensive.  Immediately put forward a plan to fundamentally reform the tax code.  You will be able to outbid Obama and the Democrats in any tax-cut fight.  And the intellectual groundwork has already been done.  During the supercommittee negotiations last year, Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) put forward a plan to lower rates, raise revenue and limit deductions.  Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) has a revenue-neutral corporate tax reform plan that lowers the rate to 25 percent and moves to a territorial system.

On the spending side, “soak the rich” by getting rid of the billions of dollars in government benefits, taxpayer subsidies and corporate welfare the wealthy receive each year and don’t need, and by means-testing government programs from unemployment benefits to farm subsidies.

On entitlements, put forward a plan to save Social Security and Medicare through structural reforms and by reducing benefits for well-off retirees and eliminating them entirely for the wealthiest seniors.  Propose a “Buffett Rule” of your own: Warren Buffett does not need taxpayers to subsidize his retirement and health care.

The Romney tax reform proposal is a good place to start: personal income tax rates cut 20% across the board with total deductions capped at $50,000, and business income tax rates cut to a peak rate of 25% (still too high, but it’s a start).  Also, include in the tax reform the Obamacare investment taxes and the medical device tax—these should be withdrawn entirely.  There’s already significant Democratic support for getting rid of these jobs killers.

The corporate welfare cuts should include subsidies to oil and gas companies (chump change) and to “green energy” businesses and dependencies (not at all chump change) alike.

Social Security and Medicare should be privatized altogether; however, that’s…unlikely…this year.  Severe means-testing is a good start, though.

Pass your plans.  If the president refuses to negotiate and no progress is made by February, inform him that you will attach all or part of your plan to legislation raising the debt limit and pass it in the House.  Then do so.

Obama’s failure here will put both serious spending and tax reform, and default, on his plate.  Not even the NLMSM will be able to cover up Obama’s disaster here.  Moreover,

According to Bob Woodward, when Obama told his advisers he intended to veto the debt-limit bill the Republican-controlled House had passed, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner told him he couldn’t—that if Republicans didn’t give in, he had no choice but to sign their bill.  “You can’t veto,” Geithner reportedly told Obama, because the consequences “would be indelible, incurable.  It would last for generations.”

Now Republicans know better.

We’ll see if they’ve found any courage.  So far, I’m not sanguine.

There’s Secession and There’s Secession

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There are petitions on the White House’s Web site, signed by a sufficient number of petitioners to require a response from the White House, advocating secession from the union by various states.  These are being carefully ignored, but that’s a different story.

In Wisconsin, when the democratic process went against Democrats, those Democrats seceded from Wisconsin, decamping for motels in Illinois.  They remained in their state of rebellion for weeks, paralyzing Wisconsin’s government, attempting to destroy the democratic process they hated so much.

In Indiana, when the democratic process went against Democrats, those Democrats seceded from Indiana, also decamping for motels in Illinois.  They remained in their state of rebellion for weeks, paralyzing Indiana’s government, attempting to destroy the democratic process they hated so much.

Now, in Michigan, when the democratic process went against Democrats, those Democrats seceded from Michigan, this time relocating nearby.  That these Democrats’ rebellion failed so quickly (but not for lack of effort) was only because Michigan’s laws made the Michigan Democrats’ secession toothless.  There were sufficient majorities (and no need for supermajorities) in both houses of the state’s government from non-Democratic Party representatives and senators to form a quorum in each house, and neither the Michigan government nor Michigan citizens’ continued access to democracy were harmed materially by the Democrats’ rebellion.

The state citizens’ petitions to secede from the union were never serious efforts to depart; they were protests of an overweening federal government, gestures only.

The Democrats’ secessions from those three state governments were not gestures.  They were conducted for the avowed purpose of bringing down those democratically elected governments so Democrats could impose their minority will on the majority; so Democrats could override the will of the citizens as implemented by their elected representatives to their governments.  What the Democrats could not achieve through the democratic process they attempted to force into being by force of rebellion.

“Elections have consequences.”  But those consequences are acceptable only when they serve Progressive ends.  That’s the face of Progressivism and the Democratic Party today: rather than abide by a democratic election result, secede and try to prevent government from functioning.