It’s The Spending

On Wednesday, CNS News posted an article about the income and revenue of the federal government from October 2019 to January 2020.

The article reports:

The federal government set records for both the amount of taxes it collected and the amount of money it spent in the first four months of fiscal 2020 (October through January), according to data released today in the Monthly Treasury Statement.

So far in fiscal 2020, the federal government has collected $1,178,800,000,000 in total taxes.

The previous high for total federal taxes collected in the first four months of the fiscal year came in fiscal 2018, when the Treasury collected $1,172,088,080,000 in constant December 2019 dollars.

While the federal government was collecting that record $1,178,800,000 in federal taxes in October through January of this fiscal year, it was spending a record total of $1,567,985,000,000.

…In the first four months of this fiscal year—while collecting a record $1,178,800,000,000 and spending a record $1,567,985,000,000—the federal government ran a deficit of $389,185,000,000.

The Department of Health and Human Services led all federal agencies in spending in the first four months of fiscal 2020 with outlays of $443,759,000,000. The Social Security Administration was second with $380,623,000,000 in spending. The Defense Department and Military Programs was third with $237,702,000,000.

Spending is controlled by the House of Representatives. It is our responsibility to elect representatives who will cut spending. This has nothing to do with what political party a person belongs to–it has to do with whether or not they are willing to take steps to cut government spending. It has to do with campaign contributions that encourage the spending. It’s time to hold Congress accountable. If we don’t get government spending under control, we will be carrying briefcases of cash to the grocery store because the value of our dollars will crash.

This Needs To Happen

Yesterday American Greatness posted an article about President Trump’s fiscal 2021 budget proposal.

The article reports:

In the proposal, “Trump will seek to make a 21 percent cut in foreign aid which seeks $44.1 billion in the upcoming fiscal year compared with $55.7 billion enacted in fiscal year 2020,” an administration official said. Aid to Ukraine would remain at its 2020 levels under the new proposal.

The White House wants to boost funding for the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) to $700 million compared to $150 million the previous year, said Russell Vought, the acting head of the Office of Management and Budget.

…The DFC was formed in large part to counter China’s growing economic influence. It serves as a development bank that partners with the private sector to provide loans in developing countries. It also serves as an alternative financing option to what the United States sees as predatory practices from China.

U.S. officials want to counter the soft power China has wielded with such loans and help countries avoid what they consider Beijing’s “debt trap” diplomacy in which countries give up control of ports, roadways, or other major assets when they fund infrastructure projects with Chinese loans that they cannot pay back.

Obviously, based on the recent behavior of the Democrats in the House of Representatives, the proposed budget will be dead on arrival. However, there is something else in play here. Who is impacted by a cut in foreign aid? I have stated before that an investigative reporter with good contacts needs to look at the corporations involved in the construction projects paid for by foreign aid to see if family members of Congressmen are involved in those corporations. It is quite possible that a cut in foreign aid could directly impact the income of the extended families of our Congressmen. Peter Schweizer has done some of this investigation and written the book Profiles in Corruption. More investigations are needed.

If there is a serious discussion of cuts to foreign aid when the budget proposal is brought up in the House of Representatives, pay attention to which Representatives strongly oppose the cuts to foreign aid. That could be very telling,

The President’s Immigration Policies Are Working

Breitbart is reporting today that new immigration procedures implemented by Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) effectively disbanded a group of 2,000 mostly Central American caravan migrants.

The article reports:

Immigration policies put in place following an agreement between Mexico and the Trump Administration broke up a caravan consisting of approximately 2,000 people from Central America, Africa, and the Caribbean Islands, the Associated Press reported Saturday. The group began to move northward from Tapachula, Chiapas, early one morning last week after being held up for official travel documents. The group quickly encountered Mexican Federal Police and members of the newly formed National Guard.

When the group came upon the police and soldiers, some scattered while others surrendered.

“This caravan no longer exists,” migrant rights advocate Irineo Mujica told the AP.

The migrants are provided opportunities to request asylum in Mexico. Instead, the group chose to illegally attempt to move through Mexico to the U.S. border.

“I want to pass through Mexico, I don’t want to live here,” Amado Ramirez expressed. Reportedly traveling with his wife and young children, he said he hoped to obtain documents allowing him to pass through Mexico.

The article concludes:

Under the agreement between Mexico and the United States, Mexican immigration officials give the migrants two choices — stay in Mexico or leave via Mexico’s southern border. Many are flown back to their countries of origin. African migrants have a more difficult path as their home countries often lack the infrastructure to handle mass repatriations, the AP stated.

Migrant support groups reported that the presence of the National Guard and other law enforcement officials in southern Mexico made the process for moving north very difficult.

Large group migration through Mexico to the U.S. southern border hit a 12-year high during Fiscal Year 2019. However, changes in Mexican policies negotiated by the Trump Administration effectively dropped the numbers from a high mark of nearly 133,000 in May to about 40,000 in September, Breitbart Texas reported. By the end of the fiscal year, U.S. Border Patrol agents apprehended an estimated 850,000.

Migrant families and unaccompanied minors made up for nearly two-thirds of the apprehensions in the U.S.

President Trump threatened Mexico with high tariffs if they did not end the caravans passing through their country and entering the United States illegally. What we are seeing is an American President who understands that because of America’s strong economy, we can use economic leverage to persuade other countries to do what is right.

One Of Many Reasons Government Spending Keeps Increasing

On September 24, The Daily Signal posted an article about some recent comments made by Senator Joni Ernst. The Senator highlighted the practice of ‘Christmas in September’ spending by government agencies. There are some problems with the way our federal government’s budgeting system works. There is something called ‘baseline budgeting.’ This simply means that your starting point for your yearly budget is how much you actually spent of last year’s budget. Therefore, unless you want your budget to be cut this year, you had better spend all of the money you had in your budget last year. This means that as the fiscal year draws to a close, government agencies have the incentive to spend wildly. It also results in statements that actually make no sense but are widely accepted as fact. For instance, if I ask for a ten percent increase in my budget and only get a five percent increase, I will complain that my budget was cut five percent. In any other world, I got a five percent increase. In the world of government, I got a five percent cut. That is the reason that even though you are reading that the federal budget got cut, the spending actually increased. Unfortunately, to Washington it is all a game. Wild spending of taxpayer money is not a problem to our Congress–only to the taxpayers who have to pay the bill.

The article at The Daily Signal reports:

The fourth-ranking Republican in the Senate called on colleagues Tuesday to pass her legislation to reduce wasteful government spending and rein in agencies’ spending practices.

“Government agencies are going on their annual ‘Christmas in September’ use-it-or-lose-it shopping spree,” Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, said in remarks prepared for delivery on the Senate floor.

“If not spent by midnight on Sept. 30, leftover dollars expire and can no longer be used,” Ernst said. “Rather than returning the money to taxpayers, binge-buying bureaucrats are wasting billions of taxpayer dollars needlessly.”

The federal government’s fiscal year ends Sept. 30, and Ernst’s legislation, called the End of Year Fiscal Responsibility Act, would end agencies’ annual 11th-hour sprints to spend all their budgeted money before the fiscal year runs out.

Her bill would curb how much an agency could spend in the last two months of the fiscal year to no more than what the agency usually spends each month on average during the rest of the year.

…“This bill won’t end all wasteful spending, but it will force agencies to put more thought into long-term planning and curtail the bad habit of out-of-control impulsive spending,” Ernst said.

Ernst said “spending sprees” in the past have included almost $12,000 for a commercial foosball table; $4.6 million for lobster tail and crab; $2.1 million for games, toys, and wheeled goods; over $53,000 on table china; and over $40,000 on clocks.

“With our national debt now surpassing $22 trillion, Washington should be looking for ways to save by canceling or delaying unnecessary expenses, rather than splurging on end-of-year wish lists,” Ernst said.

Another piece of legislation pushed by Iowa’s junior senator would keep her colleagues from returning home until they passed a budget.

“Through my No Budget, No Recess Act, members of Congress would be prohibited from leaving Washington if we fail to pass a budget by April 15 or approve regular spending bills by Aug. 1,” she said.

The government must stop enabling agencies to spend money that shouldn’t be spent, Ernst added:

I think Senator Ernst has some really good ideas.

What Happened To Ethics In Science?

Yesterday CNS News posted an article about research going on at the University of California at San Francisco. This research is so horrific I can’t even believe it is being done in America, much less being partially financed by the government.

The article reports:

The Department of Health and Human Services says it has granted a second 90-day extension to a contract it has with the University of California at San Francisco that requires UCSF to make “humanized mice.”

These creatures are made by implanting mice with human tissues taken from late-term aborted babies.

The HHS’s multi-million-dollar contract with UCSF that requires the construction of these “humanized mice” creates a demand–driven by federal tax dollars–for tissue taken from late-term aborted babies. According to an estimate it has published on its website, the National Institutes of Health (which is a division of HHS) will spend $95 million this fiscal year alone on research that–like UCSF’s “humanized mouse” contract–uses human fetal tissue.

Under the new 90-day extension, the contract—which the government calls “Humanized Mouse Models for HIV Therapeutics Development”–will run through June 5.

HHS also is still in the process of conducting the “comprehensive review” it announced last September “of all research involving fetal tissue.”

It’s bad enough that we are killing the unborn. Now we are using them for scientific experiments. That is beyond repulsive.

When Budget Cuts Are Actually Budget Increases

Yesterday Investor’s Business Daily posted an editorial about President Trump‘s budget proposal.

The article included the following graph:

As you can see, the federal budget does increase. However, it increases at a lower rate than it would if baseline budgeting were used. Baseline budgeting is a tactic used by people who want to grow the government to convince the rest of us that the sky is falling. It is very simple–if you got a 3% budget increase last year and you get a 2% increase this year, your budget has been cut (even though it grew by 2%).

The article further reports:

Trump’s proposed spending cuts for entitlement programs have been described as “massive,” “sweeping,” and on the surface, the $1.7 trillion spending cuts Trump proposes look massive.

But these reports always leave out one key fact. Spending on entitlement programs isn’t being cut. At least not in the traditional sense of spending less next year than you spend this year. Trump’s budget doesn’t touch Social Security or Medicare, and only slows the growth of the remaining “safety net” programs.

In fact, the projected 10-year spending for all entitlement programs under Trump’s budget would be trimmed by less than 8%. (See the accompanying chart.)

Some analysts say Trump’s budget would end up cutting $1.4 trillion from Medicaid over 10 years, because his proposed $610 billion in savings from reforming the program would come on top of the $800 billion proposed cuts contained in the House ObamaCare repeal-and-replace bill. (The budget doesn’t spell this out, but does contain a mysterious “allowance for ObamaCare repeal and replace” line item, with annual savings that match up to spending reductions in the House repeal bill.)

If true, that looks like a huge chunk, even from a program slated to spend $5.3 trillion. But keep in mind that states also contribute almost an equal share to Medicaid. In fact, when you combine federal and state spending, Medicaid is forecast to shell out more than $8 trillion over the next decade.

The article concludes:

Is Trump’s budget perfect? Hardly. We’d prefer that he tackle Social Security and Medicare reform in addition to Medicaid. The ObamaCare repeal savings are likely exaggerated. His $200 billion in infrastructure spending will only whet the appetite of lawmakers.

But on balance, this budget is far more realistic, and more responsible, than anything that ever came out of the Obama White House.

And as a statement of Trump’s governing principles — which is really all the presidents’ budgets ever amount to — Trump’s focus on spending restraint, entitlement reform, work incentives and on removing government impediments to growth is spot on.

In the world of Washington politics, power is measured by how much money you control. Bureaucrats love to spend our money. They will not give up that power easily. There will be a lot of people running around in the coming days yelling “the sky is falling.” They are misinformed. I wish this budget could pass Congress in its present form, but that is highly unlikely. However, I hope that the principles behind the budget will somehow survive and we will see a recognition of the fact that we are currently spending ourselves into destruction. The Washington establishment will not go down easily, but they seriously need to go down.

The Real Numbers About The Budget

This is a picture of the federal budge deficits over the years:

federaldeficitsthrough2016The chart and other related information can be found here.

On Saturday, Conservative Treehouse posted an article about an aspect of the federal budget under President Obama that you may not be aware of.

The article reports:

The last federal budget was signed into law in September of 2007 by President George W Bush for fiscal year 2008.  Since then the entire mechanism of the federal government has been carried out by continuing resolutions, raises in the debt ceiling, and unfettered spending.

Absent of an actual federal budget, all spending falls under a process called base-line budgeting to determine allocation.  Federal distribution of the money within the continuing resolution, is essentially a year-over-year expenditure with a statutory increase based on inflation.  Essentially, whatever was spent in 2009 was respent in 2010 along with a little bit more.   What was spent in 2011 was a little more than ’10, and so forth.

In February 2009  congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or ARRA, commonly referred to as Obama’s stimulus plan.  The stimulus was just shy of one trillion ($986 billion +/-).

At the time of passage this single stimulus expenditure reflected a growth of approximately 20% in total federal spending.  The spending went directly into the deficit.

Approximately 30% of that “one time” trillion dollar stimulus was spent in 2009, the remaining 70% was spent in 2010.  (*note fiscal years run from October 1st to September 3oth annually).

However, absent a federal budget -and because of baseline budgeting- it became a repeated expenditure in each of the following fiscal years.

The $1 Trillion Stimulus was spent eight more times.

The article points out that most Americans cannot tell you what the stimulus was spent on. President Obama put money into the Department of Education to subsidize state education and teachers’ salaries, keeping the teachers’ union happy.

The article reports:

The key point is the $1 trillion 2009 “stimulus” funds, became a tool for President Obama to use in whatever cabinet office need he saw.

So long as congress never passed an actual budget (and the traditional budget appropriations process kicked in), he would always have this massive amount of extra money to play with.  Obama, Pelosi and Reid ensured there was never going to be a budget.

As the economy somewhat gained footing (2012), for the last several years a lot of the money appears to have been spent on propping up ObamaCare and hiding the structural financial collapse.

If Obama didn’t have this extra $1 trillion at his disposal, ObamaCare would have already collapsed.  If you were wondering why ObamaCare didn’t collapse, well, there’s your answer.

This scheme worked brilliantly so long as Team Obama could kick-the-budget-can into successive years.  They did.

…Remember: #1) Obama’s trillion stimulus was a +20% jump in federal spending which has continued year-over-year since 2009, #2) most of that money is now spent on propping up Obamacare via the insurance corridor reimbursement program.

…That $1 trillion in annual expenditure is what initially kept government at full size when originally passed in ’09.  It then transmogrified into a slush fund two fiscal years later, and ever since about 2012 it’s been a way for Obama to fund his priority list – and the UniParty congress has done nothing about it; because, well, essentially, congress agrees with what it’s being spent on.

It’s a staggering amount of money, $986 billion.  If Trump/Ryan eliminate the worst aspects of ObamaCare they can save a massive amount of that expenditure.  However, beyond that – it shows you just how much money can –and hopefully will– be cut out of government by that elimination alone.

It would be wonderful to have a Congress and a President who want to bring federal spending under control, but I am not convinced yet.

The Problem Is Not The Revenue–It’s The Spending

CNS News posted a story today stating that the federal government raked in a record of approximately $2,883,250,000,000 in tax revenues through the first eleven months of fiscal 2015 (Oct. 1, 2014 through the end of August), according to the Monthly Treasury Statement released Friday. This equals approximately $19,346 for every person who was working either full or part-time in August.

The article further reports:

Despite the record tax revenues of $2,883,250,000,000 in the first eleven months of this fiscal year, the government spent $3,413,210,000,000 in those eleven months, and, thus, ran up a deficit of $529,960,000,000 during the period.

…The largest share of this year’s record-setting October-through-August tax haul came from the individual income tax. That yielded the Treasury $1,379,255,000,000. Payroll taxes for “social insurance and retirement receipts” took in another $977,501,000,000. The corporate income tax brought in $268,387,000,000.

The chart below is an illustration of America‘s spending problem.

The article also noted that under ObamaCare new taxes took effect in 2013.

Excessive spending is a problem that Washington has no incentive to fix. It is up to the voters to give them an incentive–fix this or we vote you out of office!

 

The Internal Revenue Service And Tax Fraud

On Tuesday, Byron York posted an article at the Washington Examiner website about widespread fraud in the Earned Income Tax Credit program.

The article reports:

“The Internal Revenue Service continues to make little progress in reducing improper payments of Earned Income Tax Credits,” a press release from Treasury’s inspector general for Tax Administration says. “The IRS estimates that 22 to 26 percent of EITC payments were issued improperly in Fiscal Year 2013. The dollar value of these improper payments was estimated to be between $13.3 billion and $15.6 billion.”

That’s not pocket change. Remember that these are the people who will administer the revenue part of ObamaCare.

The article explains that the IRS is not making any serious effort to end this fraud:

The new report found that the IRS is simply ignoring the requirements of a law called the Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act, signed by President Obama in 2010, which requires the IRS to set fraud-control targets and keep improper payments below ten percent of all Earned Income Tax Credit payouts. “The IRS continues to not provide all required IPERA information to the Department of the Treasury,” the new report says. “… For the third consecutive year, the IRS did not publish annual reduction targets or report an improper payment rate of less than 10 percent for the EITC.”

Let’s eliminate all bonuses paid to IRS employees until this fraud is at least under control. That might cause the IRS to develop some interest in solving the problem.

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The People Who Make Our Laws Can’t Even Follow Their Own Rules

CBN News is reporting today that despite passing a law last year that made earmarks illegal, Congress passed more than 100 earmarks for 2014.

The article reports:

Every year, the Pig Book Summary blasts Congress for its wasteful pork barrel projects.

“There are 109 earmarks, costing taxpayers $2.7 billion in fiscal year 2014,” Thomas Schatz, with Citizens against Government Waste, told CBN News.

Congress has even passed millions in spending for agencies who didn’t want the money.

One example of an agency that did not want the money is the $90 million for M1 tanks the Pentagon insists it really doesn’t want.

The article further reports:

“The secretary of the Army said they don’t need to build more M1s. They want to delay this for four years and save $3 billion,” Schatz said. “There are 2,000 M1s sitting idle in the desert of California.”

Meanwhile, the Defense Department is getting $866 million to mostly duplicate research on the very same illnesses and diseases as the civilian sector.

“Breast cancer research can be done at the National Institutes of Health and it’s done –billions of dollars [for] other research done at other agencies,” Schatz charged.

Americans are pinching pennies to stay afloat in the so-called economic recovery, and Congress is borrowing money our children and grandchildren will have to pay back. This is ridiculous. It’s time to vote every Congressman out of office who has supported the runaway spending of recent years.

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This Is The Vote On The Omnibus Spending Bill

Taken from The Blaze:

Please remember this vote during the coming election. The people who voted yes voted to increase the budget in every area except one–they cut the retirement benefits of our military.

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Does The Debt Matter?

The chart below was posted at zerohedge.com on Thursday:

Debt-vs-GDP-101713

The article cites what it considers the most disturbing sentence uttered during the debt ceiling debate/government shut down, that should raise some concerns by both political parties:

“We must increase our debt limit so that we can pay our bills.”

When you think about it, that is an amazing statement.

John Hinderaker at Power Line made the following observation yesterday:

The declining deficit is due to the election of a Republican House in 2010, which led to the sequester, and to tax increases. But in historical perspective, a $650 billion deficit is nothing to celebrate: the U.S. has never run a deficit anywhere near that big in any fiscal year when Barack Obama was not president. Don’t be fooled by Democrats who try to attribute FY 2009 to George Bush. The Democratic Congress didn’t pass spending bills covering the vast majority of FY 2009 spending until Obama was safely in office, and FY 2009 includes the Obama/Pelosi/Reid “stimulus” spending, with which George Bush, obviously, had nothing to do. The largest deficit of the George W. Bush years was $459 billion, in FY 2008, the year when financial markets collapsed. The largest deficit of the Clinton years was $255 billion; of the George H.W. Bush years, $290 billion; and of the Reagan administration, $221 billion.

As Americans, we need to be concerned about the deficit. Until we get the deficit under control, it acts as a ticking time bomb that will eventually destroy the American economy. We need to elect people who will bring spending under control. If we do not do that, then we are responsible for our own demise.

 

 

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One Reason Government Spending Is Out Of Control

On Saturday the Washington Post posted an article about some of the end-of-the-year spending done by government agencies. The spending is a result of one of the side effects of baseline budgeting, which is something our government needs to get rid of. Baseline budgeting is the concept that a department’s budget is based on how much money they spent in the previous year. If they spend 90 thousand dollars and their budget was 100 thousand dollars, the department budget will be 90 thousand dollars in the following year. If they don’t spend all of the money in their budget, their budget is cut. This creates a mad rush to spend their entire budget by September 30, the end of the fiscal year. If they spend the full amount and ask for a 10 percent increase and get a 5 percent increase, that is considered a 5 percent budget cut. That is how Congress can claim they are cutting the budget while the spending continues to increase. These two concepts explain some of the rather interesting end-of-the-year spending done in the past few weeks by the government. As you read this, remember that this is under sequestration when Democrats are complaining that there is no money.

The article posts some examples of spending in recent weeks:

On Monday, VA paid $27,000 for an order of photographs showing sunsets, mountain peaks and country roads. They would go into a new center serving homeless veterans in Los Angeles; a spokeswoman described the art as “motivational and calming, professionally designed to enhance clinical operations.”

On Tuesday, the USDA bought $127,000 worth of toner cartridges (“end of year,” the order explained). VA spent another $220,000 on artwork for its hospitals.

On Wednesday, the Coast Guard paid $178,000 for cubicle furniture, replacing high-walled cubes with low-walled ones to improve the air flow in a large office area.

“Other higher-priority projects were not able to be executed, so they moved [money] to this lower-priority project” before the year’s end, said Coast Guard spokesman Carlos Diaz. “The money was going to be spent anyway.”

On Thursday, VA was buying art again. It spent $216,000 on artwork for a facility in Florida. In all, preliminary data showed that the agency made at least 18 percent of all its art purchases for the year in this one week. One-sixth of the buying in one-52nd of the year.

This is not a reasonable system. There is a spreadsheet at adelphi.edu that shows the federal deficit over the years. When President Obama took office, the deficit was approximately 12 million dollars. The deficit is now approaching 17 million dollars. That’s a pretty hefty increase in five years. However, the really interesting part of the spreadsheet is the relationship between the deficit and which party controls the House of Representatives. Remember, the House controls the spending. Please follow the link to the spreadsheet and take a look at the history of the federal deficit.

At any rate–baseline budgeting needs to go.

 

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A Sad Year For America

CBN News reported today that during the 2011-2012 fiscal year, Planned Parenthood performed 333,964 abortions.

The article further reported:

At the same time, contraceptive services at Planned Parenthood has dropped 12 percent since 2009. Cancer screening and prevention services dropped 29 percent.

Meanwhile, Planned Parenthood reported a record $542 million in taxpayer funding last year. The Susan B. Anthony List reports that is 45 percent of Planned Parenthood’s annual revenue.

At some point Americans need to realize that Planned Parenthood is not providing healthcare for American women–it’s purpose is killing babies. In three years, Planned Parenthood has killed nearly one million babies.

That is truly a sad statistic.

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