Tag Archives: spending

Suicide by Spending

Posted on by
Reply

Alexis Tsipras, head of the Coalition of the Radical Left—SYRIZA—has announced that if he becomes the next Greek Prime Minister after the June elections, he will demand that Europe expand funding for Greek spending under a new set of agreements, or he will repudiate all Greek debt, in the expectation that such a repudiation will collapse Europe’s economies.  Europe, demands Tsipras, must move to a more “growth oriented” policy vis-à-vis Greece.  But his idea of growth is simply growth in government and growth in government spending.

Of course, this is naked extortion, and it should make it impossible for any further talks between the EU and Greece to occur—and for any further money to be sent to Greece.

There was a scene (NSFW) in Blazing Saddles that comes to mind from this SYRIZA extortion attempt.  The EU shouldn’t fall for it.

Thoughts on Defense Spending

Posted on by
Reply

Mark Gunzinger and Andre Krepinevich (with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a non-profit defense-oriented think tank), writing in The Wall Street Journal, warn of a reversal of events that contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union—an arms race that they couldn’t afford and so couldn’t win.  This time, it’s Russia and the People’s Republic of China that are pursuing an arms race, this time of powerful, fast, accurate weapons that will bankrupt us countering, if we don’t change our weapons philosophy.

Russia and the PRC are actively developing high-energy lasers designed to shoot down incoming weapons, while we continue to rely on expensive—$10 million per shot—missiles and fighters—$150+ million—per to do the same mission.

Gunzinger and Krepinevich report on two types of lasers that we could field in six years, were the will extant to make the switch: solid state and chemical lasers.

Experts in the US Navy state that within six years, using technologies already developed and demonstrated in test firings, they could field solid-state lasers on warships with sufficient power to counter anti-ship cruise missiles, unmanned aircraft, and fast-attack “swarm” craft like those of Iran.  These lasers could reduce the need for warships to carry bulky—and expensive—defensive munitions, while freeing space for other weaponry.

On the matter of chemical lasers, they write

…new chemical lasers can generate much greater power outputs than their predecessors, enabling them to engage a wide range of air and missile threats, including long-range ballistic missiles. Also within six years…the Air Force and the Army could field ground-based, megawatt-class chemical lasers to help protect key bases in the Persian Gulf and Western Pacific.

And in the homeland.

But that’s just one set of game changing weapons.  Another weapon is the rail gun on which the Navy also is working.  Rail guns use electromagnetic energy rather than explosives—gun powder—to accelerate a projectile down their barrels.  As a result, such weapons can fire accurately a projectile much farther—out to 100 miles vs a current 13 miles—and the ships carrying them don’t need to commit limited shipboard space to that gunpowder, and so they don’t have to worry about all that explosive going off if the ship is hit in combat.

Budget Discipline, Part II

Posted on by
Reply

In the last three years, the Progressive Do-Nothing Senate has passed zero budgets.  Even President Obama completed his stand-up routines in that time frame, offering two massive budget jokes.

Here are some things that grown, adult human beings who are serious about their purposes have accomplished in the space of three years or less.

  • Broad Group erected the 30-story Ark Hotel in Dongting Lake, Hunan, PRC in just 15 days late last year.  (As an aside, the Daily Mail reports that no worker was injured on this project.)
  • Gone with the Wind was filmed in just over 9 months.
  • Building the Empire State Building, then the world’s tallest, took a year and a quarter.
  • The Pentagon, still the world’s largest building in terms of floor space, took a year and a third.
  • The time from D-Day to Germany’s surrender at the end of WWII was 11 months.
  • Indeed, the time from Operation Torch, the British-American invasion of northern Africa in WWII, to Germany’s surrender and the liberation of western Europe was 30 months.

Hmm….

Budget Discipline

Posted on by
Reply

In the House, a budget is passed that contains spending levels below the $1.047 trillion cap agreed in last summer’s Budget Control Act.  The Republicans are heavily scored by Progressives for violating the BCA’s agreement to cap spending by actually spending less than that cap.

In the Senate, a bill to increase spending on the Post Office is proposed.  If passed, this spending bill will increase the Federal deficit by $34 billion because it does not offer spending reductions elsewhere—thereby exceeding the $1.047 trillion cap.

Senator Jeff Sessions (R, AL), the Ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee (you remember that bunch—the Progressive dominated committee that’s been so well disciplined that it has produced zero budgets in the last three years, including a half-hearted effort of just a week ago that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, UT) ordered scotched before it was born), has announced that he’ll raise a number of points of order to block this bill of ill discipline.  (As an aside, it’ll take separate 60-vote majorities, under Senate rules, to kill each of the points of order.)  Sessions made a statement on the floor of the Senate Monday explaining his action; it can be found here.  Following is an excerpt.

Under Senate rules, no committee can bring a bill to the floor that spends even one penny more than is already going to be spent under current law, or increases the deficit more than it will increase under current law.

In other words, the spending and debt under the postal bill violates the debt limit agreement reached just last summer.

…

This is particularly odd since the President and the Senate Majority Leader have accused the House members, the Republican House, of breaking the budget agreement by trying to save a little more money than the Budget Control Act said that they should save.  This argument is not sound, of course, but that bill established basic spending caps, basic limits—the maximum amount that could be spent on discretionary accounts.  Not one word in that law prevents us, or any member of Congress, from doing the duty to try to save more money.  Not one word in that law requires Congress to max out and spend up to that cap, to that limit.  So this is not a matter of interpretation; caps are the maximum, not the minimum, you can spend.

Can we really afford any more Progressive budget discipline?

Entitlement Waste

Posted on by
Reply

In the pouring taxpayer money down a rathole category, we have this and this.

In one of President Obama’s Chicago Way executive edicts, he pushed through a “demonstration program” of $8 billion to pay performance “bonuses” under the Medicare Advantage insurance program.  The bonuses were claimed to be incentives to improve performance; however, in fact they were targeted at average performers: out of a 5-star scale, Medicare Advantage plans that got 3.5 stars got bonuses.  In such a canonical “esteem is more important than performance” reward system, a reasonable person might ask after the incentive to do better when simply meeting standard is remarkable.  Moreover, the enormity of this program meant that the bonuses, in their aggregate, actually undid nearly two-thirds of the cuts in overall Medicare Advantage costs that Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act supposedly provided.

The Government Accountability Office has recommended that this waste be done away with, and the bonus program be canceled.  This isn’t a lone recommendation.  The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, an independent Congressional agency, also has a dim view of this administration “bonus” program.  MedPAC’s view is that the bonuses are just “a mechanism to increase payments,” and Commission Chairman, Glenn Hackbarth, wrote that the bonus plan

lessens the incentive to achieve the highest level of performance

It gets better.  A report released Monday by the Social Security Trust Fund’s trustees contained this bit of good news:

The Social Security retirement fund is projected to run out of money in 2035 while the Social Security disability fund is projected to run out in 2016.

Combined, the two funds will last all the way to 2033.  If they run dry, payroll taxes would only cover about 75 percent of current benefits.

These failure dates are closer in than claimed last year.  The program’s finances are worse, say the trustees, due to a couple of factors:

Workers are expected to work fewer hours than previously projected, even after the economy recovers.

High energy prices suppressed wages, a trend the trustees see as continuing.

Thus we see another effect of Obama’s destructive energy policy, as well of his failed economic policies generally.

But just try to rescue these entitlement programs from their failure.  On the one hand, we have the Ryan Plan, which the Progressives in Congress and the Executive Office timidly snipe at from the sidelines, and on the other hand, we have the Progressives’ plan.  Umm, what was their plan, again?  Oh—the do-nothing Senate and the do-nothing President don’t actually have one.  They just want to keep throwing money down this rathole, too.