Tag Archives: spending

Government Funding

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When I got up this morning, I found in my inbox the following email (reprinted in its entirety, including the link he provided for his short floor speech) from Senator Mike Lee (R, UT).  He makes some valid points; please read his email carefully.  After that, I have a couple of minor points.

We shouldn’t have to fund everything in order to fund anything

Why won’t Democrats take “yes” for an answer on Vet funding

Today, in an effort to move forward and end the government shutdown, I asked for the Senate to pass a bill that had already been passed by the House to fund veterans’ benefits.  The motion was quickly shot down by Democrats who provided little explanation for their opposition to funding veterans’ benefits.

Following proper regular order, Congress would vote on and ultimately approve a dozen or so separate, segmented appropriations measures to fund each area within the federal government.  Each program or function area would have to stand on its own merits in order to get funded.  In a big government that spends between $3.5 and $4 trillion a year, and it’s important that we break spending decisions into pieces.  Unfortunately, over the last 4 1/2 years, we’ve been funding government on the basis of back-to-back continuing resolutions. The problem with these measures is that they basically require us to fund everything or fund nothing at all.

The Republicans in the House of Representatives are quite wisely saying that we should start funding bills within those areas where there is broad-based bipartisan consensus.  I agree  that we should immediately start funding the government in those areas where there is obvious and overwhelming support including programs like veterans’ services, national parks, cancer research, and the National Guard and Reserves.

Republicans and Democrats came together in the House and approved bills overwhelmingly. I think we owe it to the country to show that we can do the same thing in the Senate.  In a matter of hours the vast majority of the government could be funded.  It was the president himself who asked Congress to fund a list of priorities in a speech to the nation a few days ago.The House of Representatives has courageously delivered a series of bills that will do exactly what the president asked.  Now President Obama and Democrats in the Senate are having a hard time taking “yes” for an answer.

I continue to work around the clock with my staff and my colleagues in both houses of Congress to fund the government and protect the people from the harmful effects of Obamacare.  I am confident we can do what is best for Utahns and for the future of our country.

Now, my lesser points.  First, finally, Republicans are talking to us directly.  This is good.  Second, look at the tone of his email, and compare it with the tone of the emails many of you may have gotten from Democrats—usually fund-raisers (none of that in Lee’s email).  If not, the folks at Power Line get missives from Democrats and reprint them.  Which party actually is making an argument for their case, and which cannot and so is limited simply to attacking the other party?

The Mendacity of the Obama Government Shutdown

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Here’s an example.  The House, earlier in the week, passed an appropriations bill—devoid of anything else, a clean CR, IAW Democrat instruction—the Senate passed it, and President Barack Obama signed it.  “It’s the law of the land.”  This appropriations law fully funds the DoD for the next couple of months.

Despite that, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel decided to furlough 400,000 DoD civilians (apparently his fair share of the Obama shutdown).  Congressman Buck McKeon (R, CA) wrote to Hagel, asking how that furlough worked, since DoD was fully funded.

Hagel’s response?  Through “a senior Defense official,” Hagel said he had no way to respond.

Unfortunately, most of the staff who draft congressional correspondence are furloughed[.]

Because the responsible officials—Hagel’s deputies, Obama’s appointees—are illiterate, apparently.  Or they need an authority figure to tell them what to do, and both Hagel and Obama are too busy to provide that instruction.  Or these worthies simply are too proud to do their work with their own hands.

This Is

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…what President Barack Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, UT) and other Democrats want to shut down our government in order to protect:

California: 58,000 will lose their plans under Obamacare. …exodus from the…state’s Obamacare exchange: Aetna, UnitedHealth, Anthem Blue Cross (which left the Obamacare exchange for small businesses,t too)

54% of Californians expect to lose their coverage….

Missouri: Patients of the state’s largest hospital system—13 hospitals—will not be covered by the largest insurer on Obamacare exchanges, Anthem BlueCross BlueShield.  Anthem’s 79,000 Missouri patients may seek subsidies on Obamacare’s exchanges, but they won’t be able to see any doctors in the BJC HealthCare system.

Connecticut: Aetna…won’t offer insurance on the Obamacare exchange: “We believe the modification to the rates filed by Aetna will not allow us to collect enough premiums to cover the cost of the plans and meet the service expectations of our customers.”

Maryland: Aetna and (recently purchased)…canceled plans to offer insurance in the [Obamacare] exchange when state officials wouldn’t allow them to charge premiums high enough to cover costs.

South Carolina: Medical Mutual of Ohio left SC entirely in July due to Obamacare’s “vast and quite complex” new regulations.

New York: Aetna pulled out of New York’s exchange…to keep their plans “financially viable.”

New Jersey: Aetna won’t be a part of the [Obamacare] exchange.

Iowa: Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield…decided not to offer plans in the Obamacare exchange.

Wisconsin: United Healthcare and Humana [will not offer] insurance on Obamacare exchanges.

Georgia: Medical Mutual of Ohio, Aetna, and Coventry left due to Obamacare regulations.

More than a million-and-a-quarter insurees and potential insurees are affected by this Democratic Party action.

Government Shutdown

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The Democrats are demanding one at the top of their lungs.  The House passed a bill that funds the government for the next few months; delays Obamacare for a year; removes Obamacare’s medical device tax that’s already costing jobs; and guarantees our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines get paid in the event of a government shutdown.  Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, UT) says, “No.”

To be absolutely clear, the Senate will reject both the one-year delay of the Affordable Care Act and the repeal of the medical device tax[.]

And

…the White House vowed President Obama would veto the plan….

What we have here, then, is the Democratic Party preferring to shut down the government—rejecting a bill that funds it.  We have the spectacle of the Democratic Party rejecting a bill that pays our military—the very men and women who defend with their lives, in Secretary John Kerry’s words, these Democrats’ right to be stupid.  We have the…foolishness…of the Democratic Party rejecting a bill that provides for the rescission of a job-killing tax.

Why? Because the bill also delays Obamacare for a year—after President Barack Obama, by diktat, already has delayed major parts of it, such as the Employer Mandate, for that same year.

How dishonest is this?  How destructive of our economy is this?  All for the sake of two egos.

Obama said last week that one shouldn’t “threaten to burn the house down simply because you haven’t gotten your way.”  Yet here he is doing exactly that.  He and Reid need to figure out how to yes to the 99% they’re getting in this bill instead of demanding to shut down the government over his precious 1%.

Two Government Stimulus Plans

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…from a redneck Conservative18th Century Liberal, yet.  The idea from this post came from an op-ed by Martin Feldstein in a week ago Monday’s Wall Street Journal.  He wrote, in part,

A successful growth and employment strategy would combine substantial reductions in the relative size of the future national debt with immediate permanent tax-rate cuts and a multiyear program of infrastructure spending.

However, I have a slightly different couple of takes on the path to recovering our economy.

I have a dim view of government spending, based on the ultimate source of the money and the inherent inefficiencies of government spending.  Many others have gone into this, also; I’ll not belabor them here.  Instead, and in keeping with the spirit of those objections, I’m proposing something of the following.

President Barack Obama’s 2009 “Stimulus” Bill was $830 billion over and above the “ordinary” budget already passed during Bush the Younger’s last year.  The 2010 budget deficit was $1.17 trillion as Obama continued profligate spending as “stimulus.”  Or would have been had there been a budget passed.  Given the deficits of the preceding years, let’s take $830 billion of that projected/planned deficit as “excess” deficit whose sole purpose was to be stimulative.  For those two years, then, the spending targeted at stimulus totaled $1,660 billion.

The Federal tax rebates of 2008 went as high as $600 for a single person whose adjusted income was under $75k, and $1,200 for a couple whose income was under $150k.  If the $1,660 billion were divided evenly among households regardless of income (just to keep the arithmetic simple in this post), then those billions could have been used to pay to each household a rebate of…$14.

The rebates didn’t work in 2008 because they were temporary.  Instead of spending the money—the rebates’ purpose being to stimulate consumption—most Americans saved the money against an uncertain future or they used it to pay down existing debt.  Both of these were very important to the long-term health of the economy, but they didn’t do anything for near-term stimulation.  Even so, the money was used far more efficiently than the government could have—that saving and debt reduction—vs the government’s inherent friction of many bureaucratic middlemen absorbing much of that money.

But instead of rebating those $1,660 billion—and the $14 likely would have been spent; it’s about a beer and a pizza, and so stimulative, at least for the pizza house and its employees—government just ran up the debt going for shovel ready jobs that weren’t shovel ready after all.

That brings me to my preferred option.  As Feldstein noted in that op-ed,

The only way to reduce future deficits without weakening incentives and growth is by cutting future government spending.

I propose, though, more government “spending,”* albeit of a less traditional form: a reduction in our tax rates (with a commensurate reduction in “normal” spending forms to pay for this alternative spending program).  In 2010, the Federal government collected right at $1,600 billion in total tax revenue from all sources.

Hmm….

Maybe the Feds should spend all that “excess” deficit in the form of a permanent tax rate cut—not the simplistic one of 100% to absorb all of that “excess;” the government needs some funds for the things it’s legitimately required to do: national defense, Federal law enforcement (we have too many Federal laws, but that’s a different story), regulation of interstate commerce (and not intrastate commerce, but again, that’s a different story), and so on.  Let’s go for a permanent reduction in our tax rates of 10% across the board.

With a permanent cut, instead of a temporary rebate, folks not only will save and pay down their debt, they’ll spend more, too.  They’ll also spend far more efficiently than government because there’s no middleman involved, and they’ll be spending on what they want and/or need, and not taking what the government thinks they should want and/or need.

Senator Mike Lee’s (R, UT) tax proposal makes an interesting start in this direction.

 

*In quotes because, of course, it’s not the government’s money; it’s ours, and so the government leaving what’s ours in our hands isn’t actually government spending.