Tag Archives: spending

NASA Finally Got It Off

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After two failed launch efforts, canceled due to hydrogen leaks during fueling, NASA finally got its Lockheed Martin Corp-built Artemis I to launch Wednesday morning on its multiple-week mission to the moon and back.

But not until after another hydrogen leak had to be fixed.

On Tuesday, NASA’s launch team for Artemis I was able to fuel the SLS liquid hydrogen tank relatively easily. A valve used to top off the tank, however, later began leaking, prompting the agency to send a so-called “red crew” of three people out to the launchpad to tighten the valve’s bolts.

That’s way too much hands-on massaging for what’s intended to demonstrate a routine launch; NASA still cannot handle liquid hydrogen fuel efficiently. Artemis, also, is another government (not just NASA) program that’s billions of (taxpayer) dollars over budget and years behind schedule.

No word yet on whether the rocket’s first stage successfully landed after it separated from the rest of the Space Launch System rocket.

Oh, wait….

DHS Responsiveness

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House Republicans have put Department of Homeland Security management on notice to hold onto a variety of data; they’ll be investing the department if they win a majority of the House this Tuesday (and the out-days of vote “counting”).

House Oversight and Reform Committee Ranking Member Congressman James Comer (R, LA) has warned Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas that Republicans would seek to hold him and his agency accountable for the ongoing crisis at the southern border should they win in next week’s midterm elections.
“We cannot endure another year of the Biden Administration’s failed border policies,” Comer and his fellow committee Republicans wrote to Mayorkas, per the Washington Times. “We have written DHS fifteen times this Congress to conduct oversight over the border crisis. Again, we request documents and information to understand the Biden Administration’s plans, if any, to secure the border.”

Here’s a thought. Republicans should withhold funding (defund, in the Progressive-Democratic Party’s favorite jargon) for the DHS other than ICE, CBP, and other border/immigration-related agencies, and the Coast Guard unless and until all documents are turned over to the new House Committee on Oversight and Reform’s satisfaction, and DHS Secretary and Deputy Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and John Tien, respectively, have resigned.

They shouldn’t just yap about having called repeatedly for documents or bark about “we’re going to investigate the Hell out of you,” knowing there’s no hope of subpoenas being enforced—they should put some teeth into their demands. They should take their own, purse string-related, steps to enforce their demands and investigations.

The Progressive-Democrat President certainly will veto such a budget, and he’ll threaten to shut down the government. However, both the Biden administration in general and Mayorkas’ DHS are prime examples of why that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Aside from that, the Obama Shutdown of 2013 is example of the harmlessness of the Federal government not operating for a time.

National Defense Authorization Act

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This bill is intended to fund our national defense effort, it’s an annual bill, and the one for 2023 is being put together these days.

Here’s some of what the Progressive-Democratic Party Senators insist on including in it, things which they insist are critical to our national security.

  • an amendment to address high credit card fees
  • an amendment to exempt foreign graduates of American universities with advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering, and math from annual green card limits
  • an amendment to stop federal employees from being reclassified as political appointees without the consent of Congress

To the extent that some of these are good ideas, they should be put into separate bills and debated and voted on separately. That they’re not is a pretty clear indication that the Progressive-Democrats don’t really believe in them; they’re only using them to obstruct and to push their unrelated agenda.

Backdoor Guaranteed Income

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The DC city council is getting ready to give holders of the city’s municipal bus and rail system fare cards a recurring $100 balance. Card holders will have that much fare money given to them, repetitively, by the taxpayers among the District’s residents (given to themselves to the extent there’s overlap between the two groups).

A slice of guaranteed income for council-approved persons. If Mayor Muriel Bowser’s (D) government were serious about lowering city transportation costs for its residents, those personages could, instead, simply lower the fares, so that all the residents could share in the program.

But, no….

One Simple Fix

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Nearly $2 trillion were appropriated and allocated in early 2021 to the States by the Progressive-Democratic Party-controlled Congress and the Progressive-Democrat President. Those trillions were intended to help the States mitigate the outcomes from the Federal and State governments’ response to the Wuhan Virus situation then in full bore.

Most of that money remains unspent by the States, and much of what was spent went to programs wholly unrelated to digging out from under the governments’ responses.

What do an armored SWAT vehicle in Pittsburgh, “restorative justice” educational discipline in New York City, racial healing pop-ups in Minneapolis, and school vape detectors in Montgomery, Ala., have in common? They’re all funded by federal taxpayers through the hastily-passed American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA)….

And

Just 12% of the money earmarked for elementary and secondary schools has been spent so far, according to federal statistics. And according to Treasury Department figures, as of the end of March 2022 only about $70 billion of the $350 billion allocated for state and local governments had been spent. Just over $100 billion of that money was contractually committed to be spent.
A Treasury spokesperson told Fox News Digital that 67% of the money available to state and local governments through March was budgeted—and likely more, due to smaller jurisdictions not reporting. The total funding available through that point was just under $225 billion. That means likely about half of the overall $350 billion had been budgeted for future use by late March.

It gets…better. Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Brian Riedl told Fox News Digital:

Washington allocated $350 billion to state and local governments to close budget deficits that did not even exist. These states are totally awash in more money than they know what to do with, so it’s no surprise they haven’t allocated yet—they’re going to be sitting on this money for years.

There’s a straightforward fix to this, even if perhaps politically difficult to do.

Let Congress appropriate the money for a particular purpose (illustrated by, but far from limited to, the ARPA purpose) with a string attached, but then hang onto the money. The string is this: if the States don’t become eligible to receive the money within a time-frame—say, within 12 months or by the end of the then-current Congressional session, whichever comes first—the money remains unallocated and is removed from the Federal appropriations and cannot be spent.

For a State to become eligible for the funds transfer, it must begin the project(s) that satisfy the purpose, have contracts let, “ground broken,” and concrete, measurable, and significant progress made on the projects for [six months]. At that point, the States would become eligible for six months-worth of the funds Congressionally allocated on unanimous agreement by the Speaker of the House, the House Minority Leader, and the Senate Majority and Minority Leaders. At similar subsequent intervals, with similar demonstrable progress, the States would become eligible for subsequent backfills of the State’s expenditures until the allocation is consumed or the project(s) completed. If the project(s) are incomplete when the money runs out, the State becomes ineligible for any further Federal transfers for future retries or for related project(s).

Require the States to demonstrate need, rather than just throwing down piles of dollars with the instruction to “use these up.”

Regardless of what we might think about this or that purpose for transferring Federal (our taxpayer) money to the States, or of Federal transfers to the States generally, this simple fix would at least greatly increase the likelihood of the transferred money actually being used for the claimed purpose.