Where Did The Money Go?

On Wednesday, The Washington Examiner posted an article about how Washington is spending our money.

The article reports:

The Congressional Budget Office now projects that the federal deficit for fiscal 2024 will total $1.9 trillion, a $408 billion increase from its projection in February that the deficit would amount to $1.5 trillion. The culprit of this 27% increase in the projected deficit? President Joe Biden‘s bailouts of student loan debt and failed banks.

More than a third of the projected increase, or $145 billion, results from “revisions that the Administration made to the estimated subsidy costs of previously issued loans and from the Administration’s proposed rule to reduce many borrowers’ balances on student loans,” according to the CBO. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which was directed by the White House to foot the bill for a series of bank failures even though not all the compromised accounts were insured by the independent agency, has failed to quickly recoup those losses, increasing projected outlays by another $70 billion. Together, Biden’s bailouts of the banks and of student loan debt contribute to a majority of the $408 billion increase.

More pernicious than all the student loan debt Biden is explicitly trying to cancel, often in violation of repeated pushback from the federal judiciary, is the debt taxpayers are clandestinely being forced to take on through the president’s income-driven repayment scheme for student loans borrowers are nominally expected to repay again after a multiyear pause.

This is an election year. President Biden is attempting to buy votes. However, younger voters are not necessarily buying what he is selling. Younger voters fresh out of college, trade school, or high school are discovering the high cost of housing, gasoline, and groceries. Some of the smarter ones are also looking at the lawfare against President Trump and not liking what they see.

If the November election is honest, it is going to be very interesting–many stereotypical voting blocs are changing rapidly.

There Is Spin, And There Is Spin

On January 18th, Issues & Insights posted an article about the difficulty the Biden presidential campaign is having gaining traction.

The article notes:

Rep. James Clyburn, who is a co-chairman of Joe Biden’s reelection campaign, recently tried to explain the president’s predicament by saying that he’s “delivered for the American people in such a way that nobody seems to grasp.”

As campaign slogans go, that’s not exactly “Morning in America.” But the truth is that everybody grasps what Biden has delivered. It’s what he’s delivered that they don’t like.

Clyburn, talking on MSNBC, said the public just needs to “look at the facts and stop listening to all of this tweeting and stuff that’s going on out there that’s not good for the American people.”

We took the South Carolina Democrat’s word for it, and here’s what we found that Biden has delivered, at home and abroad.

This is the list of what President Biden has delivered:

The cost of living has skyrocketed.

Real wages are down.

Poverty is up.

The national debt has exploded.

Deficits are on the rise.

Illegals are flooding across the border.

Attacks on the U.S. are up.

The world is a more dangerous place.

Please follow the link above for further details.

Does anyone want four more years of this?

We Need Fiscal Responsibility In Washington

On Friday, The Washington Examiner posted an article about this year’s budget deficit. One of the conclusions that can be drawn from the numbers is that so far electing Republicans to the House of Representatives has not had any impact (actually that’s because the lame-duck Democrat Congress passed bills that limited the 2023 Congress’ ability to curtail spending). However, now we have a speaker who seems to be less likely to continue previous shenanigans. The next few weeks are going to be very interesting in terms of the budget process.

The article reports:

The United States is increasingly losing the war against red ink.

Per new Treasury Department figures, the U.S. government is courting a worsening fiscal crisis. Officially, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the federal government ran a $1.7 trillion deficit for fiscal 2023, which ended Sept. 30. That’s up from a $1.4 trillion federal budget deficit posted in 2022.

But as highlighted by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, Yellen’s math ignores another $300 billion in debt incurred by President Joe Biden’s student debt cancellations, bringing the actual total of the deficit under the president to a full $2 trillion. Fix that adjustment for fiscal 2022, and that year’s deficit amounted to a little less than $1 trillion.

This means that in just one year, sans recession and sans war, the federal government under Biden managed to double the deficit by more than $1 trillion. And in large part, it’s all thanks to his embrace of inflation, or at least inflationary spending.

Broadly speaking, the explosion of our national debt, which is now the size of the nation’s annual GDP, is primarily driven by our growth of government spending. While the rest of the nation pays handsomely for inflation with their paychecks, reduced in real terms of purchasing power, our wealthiest generation profits from the pockets of taxpayers. Thanks in large part to the cost-of-living adjustments for our entitlement programs, the three greatest categories of federal budget outlays — Social Security ($1.4 trillion), Medicare ($848 billion), and Medicaid ($616 billion) — grew by 11%, 12%, and 4%, respectively, from just last year.

The article concludes:

The stratospheric surge in bond yields should serve as a warning to Washington that even if the Fed won’t force the government to slow down the spending, the nation’s creditors will not continue to bankroll Uncle Sam without him paying a hefty premium for the privilege. While underlying demographic trends and the inherent, gerontocratic structure of entitlements predestined the nation to a certain fiscal fiasco long before the pandemic, the bipartisan embrace of wartime borrowing, and then Biden’s decision to double down on inflationary policy, have put the country on the path where not even the Fed can fight the deficit disaster on its own.

If Washington won’t listen to the Fed, perhaps it will begin to listen to creditors as the coffers continue to run dry.

We can’t afford to fund wars all over the world. The defense contractors love it, but the country will be destroyed by the debt incurred.

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.

Hope For The Deficit

Yesterday The Daily Caller reported that the Trump administration’s budget for fiscal year 2021 will take steps to curb what it calls “wasteful” government spending, including cutting funds for, and in some cases outright eliminating, dozens of federal programs, grants and endowments, documents reviewed by the Daily Caller show.

The article reports:

For the first time, the budget features an entire chapter devoted to saving taxpayers’ money and defines five clear categories of waste requiring attention.

The administration used new guidelines to identify fiscally inefficient programs. The cuts will target agencies with overlapping and similar goals, agencies that provide similar or identical services to the same group of recipients, programs without a clearly defined federal role, federal programs that mirror state-level initiatives and erroneous payments.

The budget calls for eliminating the following programs entirely:

    • National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health’s Education and Research Centers
    • Department of the Interior’s Highlands Conservation Act Grants
    • National Park Service’s Save America’s Treasures Grants
    • National Endowment for the Arts Endowment for the Humanities
    • Corporation for National and Community Service (including AmeriCorps)

The administration also identified several categories of government spending in desperate need of additional government oversight, including travel, employee conferences or workshops, subscriptions, marketing, entertainment, office refreshments and end-of-year “Use It or Lose It” spending. The chapter cites expenditures by 67 federal agencies from December 30-31, 2018 which totaled $97 billion and included more than $15 million worth of fine china, lobster, alcohol, recreational, musical, and workout equipment.

The article notes that the President has had assistance in setting out his program:

The nonprofit group Open the Books, which assisted OMB in calculating spending inefficiencies, lauded the administration for “declaring war on federal waste.”

“The president’s budget to Congress is the first step toward defending the American taxpayer and stopping egregious waste, fraud, duplication, and taxpayer abuse. It’s a target rich environment,” said Open the Books CEO Adam Andrzejewski when asked about the cuts. “Our team of auditors at OpenTheBooks.com is very proud that our oversight reporting and examples of federal taxpayer abuse are being used by the president and the Office of Management and Budget to spearhead cuts. We applaud the president for taking action.”

Getting this done would be an incredible accomplishment and eventually a real benefit to American taxpayers.

We Need To Get Healthcare Right

Yesterday Issues and Insights posted an article about ObamaCare 10 years out.

The article reports:

Based on polling data, Obamacare has been a miserable failure, and Obama will be far from the last president to grapple with this issue.

The most recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds that health care is at the top of the nation’s priority list, with 24 percent of respondents listing it as their top priority for the federal government. Next on the list is immigration, at 18 percent, and after that, economic growth at 14 percent. 

The poll also found that 42 percent list health care as either their first or second choice on the priority list.

Back in June 2008, when Obama was running for president, only 8 percent rated health care as a top priority, just 20 percent as their first or second priority. Of course, the economy was in a recession and the country at war with Iraq, both of which weighed heavily on the public’s mind at the time.

But even in earlier years when the economy was doing well, health care ranked far lower on the list of priorities than it does today. In June 2006, only 14 percent ranked it as No. 1 on their list. A year later, 15 percent said it was their top priority.

The public has not been impressed with ObamaCare:

An ongoing Gallup survey finds that the public was actually more satisfied with their own coverage and quality of health care in 2007 than they were in 2018. Other surveys find cost remains a major complaint.

The article lists a few problems with ObamaCare:

It has done nothing to slow, much less reverse, the rising cost of health care. In fact, Obamacare itself caused premiums in the individual market to more than double in its first four years.

…National health spending, which was 16.3 percent of GDP in 2008, is now 17.9 percent and is slated to hit 19.4 percent by 2027. Per-capita spending on healthcare jumped from $7,898 to $10,739 over those years.

Far from driving the deficit down, Obamacare is pushing federal red ink up. The Congressional Budget Office has calculated that repealing Obamacare would cut the deficit by some $473 billion in the first 10 years

Rather than admit failure, the Democrats simply want to throw more money at it.

The article concludes:

Naturally, because of these failures, the Democrats’ answer is to dump even more taxpayer money into government-run health care programs, with most now favoring a $32 trillion plan developed by socialist Bernie Sanders to have the government nationalize the entire health insurance industry.

Only in government, and only among fans of big government, are massive failures like Obamacare rewarded with still more government. 

The Uni-Party Needs To Be Voted Out Of Office

The Washington Examiner posted an article today with the following headline, “Republicans join Democrats to kill Rand Paul’s fiscally responsible Pennies Plan because no one cares about the debt crisis.”

As of today, the national debt of America is approximately 22 trillion dollars. That’s a lot of debt for our children and grandchildren to be saddled with.

The article reports:

That was a nice decade of Republicans pretending to care about our $22 trillion national debt and annual multitrillion-dollar deficit. But as of Monday, we can safely say the Tea Party is over.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., introduced about as reasonable an attempt to rein in our exploding deficit with his Pennies Plan, which would cut 2% from on-budget spending per year for the next five years. Additionally, Paul’s plan would expressly protect Social Security, include instructions to make the individual income tax reforms passed by President Trump permanent, and expand access to Health Savings Accounts.

It’s a modest but tangible step in the right direction. It wouldn’t solve our debt crisis, but it would ameliorate it somewhat. So naturally, a large bipartisan majority voted to block it from the Senate floor.

Just 22 Republicans proved themselves to be great American patriots. Sixty-nine senators, including a whopping 25 Republicans, voted not to bring the bill to a final vote.

What are we voting those 25 Republicans into the Senate for? Conservatives tell me that Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., is the next big thing. But while he’s found the time to nearly derail Trump’s exceptional judicial agenda and threaten to go full-big-government on private social media companies, he refused to bring the Pennies Plan for as much as a floor vote.

It is time for those who formed the Tea Party Movement in 2009 to rename and rebrand their movement and work to shrink the cost of government. Increasing debt is not a workable financial model. It is time to elect legislators who will actually keep their promise to shrink government–not grow it. There is something in the water in Washington that causes people who run as conservatives to forget who put them in office. We need to keep voting them out of office until we find someone who knows how to keep his promises.

How Does This Statement Make Sense?

Yesterday I posted an article that included the following:

…Newly-elected Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) also endorsed impeaching Trump on her first day in office, according to The Nation, which described Tlaib as calling for “immediate steps” to remove the president from the White House.

“Each passing day brings more pain for the people most directly hurt by this president, and these are days we simply cannot get back. The time for impeachment proceedings is now,” Rep. Tlaib declared.

I really am confused about how this president is hurting people. I am further confused by looking at Representative Tlaib’s statement in view of some economic news that was reported today.

For instance, CNN is reporting today:

US employers added 312,000 jobs in December, well above what economists expected and underlining that the American economy remains strong despite recent market turbulence.

The unemployment rate rose to 3.9% as more people were looking for work. It had been at a 50-year low of 3.7% for two of the last three months.

Employers added 2.6 million jobs in 2018, compared to 2.2 million in 2017. Revisions to the October and November estimates added an additional 58,000 jobs to the 2018 total.

…Paychecks grew as employers raised wages to attract new workers. Average hourly pay was up 3.2% compared to a year earlier. The average number of hours people worked also edged up.

…The unemployment rate rose because more than 400,000 people joined the labor force looking for jobs. The percentage of the working-age people in the work force matched a five-year high.

“Yes, the nation’s unemployment rate rose to 3.9%, but for the best of reasons,” said Mark Hamrick, Bankrate.com senior economic analyst. “That’s a deal we’ll take if more people are participating in the workforce.”

The chart that I watch to see how things are going is from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It is the chart of the Workforce Participation Rate. It indicates how many Americans are actually part of the workforce. This is the chart:

Note that we have reached the 63.1 percent participation rate only three times since 2014. When President Obama took office, the rate was 66.2. By the time President Obama left office, the rate was 62.7. That was after the federal deficit doubled due to the stimulus package that was supposed to create jobs.

The House of Representatives has a choice–they can either join in the efforts of President Trump to improve the American economy and the lives of American workers, or they can do everything they can to slow it down. Unfortunately, the new rules they are putting in place will bring us laws and policies that will slow the economy down. That is unfortunate–Americans deserve better, even though they elected these people.

Six Major Challenges In 2019

On December 28th, Investor’s Business Daily posted an editorial listing what their editors considered would be the top six issues of 2019. The title of the editorial is, “Will 2019 Be Happy? It Depends On How Washington Handles These 6 Challenges.” I suspect that is true.

The editorial lists the six items:

1. The Federal Reserve

2. Trade

3. Immigration

4. The Coming Budget Battle

5. Slaying The Regulatory Dragon

6. Fixing Health Care ‘Reform’

Here are some of the observations from the editorial on each item:

The Fed has raised its benchmark funds rate eight times over two years in pursuit of a “neutral” rate. Its most recent rate hike, coming about a week before Christmas, was followed by a steep decline in stocks and growing concerns that the economy might fall into recession next year if the central bank follows through on its plan to raise rates at least twice more.

It’s of more than academic interest that all 11 of the U.S. recessions since World War II were preceded by a sharp run up in Fed rates. Every one of them. It’s not a record of which to be proud.

…Despite bitter criticisms, President Trump successfully concluded a “new Nafta” deal with both Canada and Mexico covering $1.3 trillion in trade. The deal closes a number of holes in the old Nafta, increasing U.S. access to Canadian dairy markets, for instance, while also making cars tariff-free if 75% of their parts are made in the U.S., Canada or Mexico. All three countries signed off on the deal. The only question is, will it ever go into effect?

With Democrats controlling Congress and just six months for the trade deal to go into effect, some worry that major changes will be requested. President Trump has asked that either the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement be approved outright, or revert to the pre-Nafta trading rules. Congressional Democrats may even challenge Trump’s right to make a deal, putting the so-called USMCA in limbo. Stay tuned.

…With Americans eager to control immigration, as polls repeatedly show, Democrats may decide that negotiation rather than confrontation is a better tactic. That could mean a deal for a pathway to citizenship for the millennial illegal immigrant “dreamers,” many of whom have lived in the U.S. for most of their lives despite not having citizenship. With an estimated 22 million illegals in the U.S., many states are eager to gain some stability in our immigration policy.

…This year’s budget battle over funding the wall will likely pale in comparison to next year’s. The continued growth in entitlements, compounded by the sharp rise in interest payments, thanks to the Fed’s rate hikes, will balloon the deficit. The Congressional Budget Office’s last official projection pegged the deficit for 2019 at $981 billion. It will likely end up topping $1 trillion.

…But as we’ve pointed out many times, the problem isn’t tax cuts, it’s the unwillingness of anyone in Washington — including Trump — to deal with entitlement programs that have swamped the federal budget. Trump and the GOP will have to stand firm on taxes next year, while grappling with a rising tide of debt that will soon surpass $21 trillion.

…ObamaCare limped along for another year, with premiums for 2019 falling, overall, after years of massive double-digit increases. Trump took several steps to improve ObamaCare. The most important fix was to breathe life back into the short-term insurance market that President Obama tried to snuff out to protect the ObamaCare exchanges. Unfortunately, since Republicans blew their chance at repeal, the best we can hope for is that Trump will continue to tweak the law where he can. But he shouldn’t shy away from fighting for more free-market reforms. Should Democrats resist, or start pushing for socialized “Medicare for all,” it will create an opportunity for Trump to paint Democrats as big-government extremists.

The article concludes:

The coming year will be eventful, with many of Trump’s main initiatives set for action by Congress — a Congress, as we noted, that won’t be as friendly to Trump as the last one. Whether Trump and the Democrats can, as the bumper sticker says, coexist, or whether the Trump agenda founders on a never-ending stream of congressional investigations and hearings on the White House, remains to be seen. We guarantee it won’t be boring.

Get out the popcorn.

The Law Of Unintended Consequences

It’s hard to defend the actions of the Federal Reserve right now. The people who propped up the economy under President Obama seem determined to destroy the economy under President Trump. But we know that the Federal Reserve is apolitical. Sure we do. However, there may be some unintended consequences of the current Federal Reserve actions.

The Gateway Pundit posted an article today which explains some of those consequences.

The article reports:

The Chinese were relentless in their efforts to obtain Western technology and grow their economy.  They set up trade barriers and manipulated their currency in ways that helped China. The US was at a disadvantage in trade resulting in massive deficits into the billions.

Along comes the Trump Administration, the first administration to address China’s unfair trade advantage.  President Trump is a shrewd negotiator and he obviously believes now is the time to encourage China to make changes to their trade barriers with the US.  China may have no choice but to go with what the US offers to keep its economy afloat.

The more pressing issues for China surround real estate, in a manner similar to the US in 2008.  As China grew, it invested in its infrastructure and in addition it invested in large housing projects throughout the country.  These efforts helped bolster China’s already fast growing economy.

The problem is that China over invested in these random properties all over China and these properties today remain empty.

…Now to add to China’s misery, the Fed is doing all it can to kill the US economy.  China is dependent on the US economy to stay afloat.

…The US debt now stands at $21.8 trillion. A 2.25% interest increase on this amount of debt is an annual increase in debt interest payments of $500 billion!!!

The Fed is doing all it can to destroy President Trump’s economy. What the Fed doesn’t realize is that a flat US economy means disaster to the Chinese.

China’s financial crash may make the 2008 crash in the US look small.  The implications will no doubt impact the entire world.  Jerome Powell at the Fed has no idea what he is doing!

Hang on to your hat, if the Federal Reserve continues on its current path, this may be a very bumpy ride.

Why The Republican Party Is Losing Voters

The 2016 Republican Platform includes the following on Page 8:

Reducing the Federal Debt

Our national debt is a burden on our economy and families. The huge increase in the national debt demanded by and incurred during the current Administration has placed a significant burden on future generations. We must impose firm caps on future debt, accelerate the repayment of the trillions we now owe in order to reaffirm our principles of responsible and limited government, and remove the burdens we are placing on future generations. A strong economy is one key to debt reduction, but spending restraint is a necessary component that must be vigorously pursued.

On May 10, 2018, CNS News reported:

The federal government collected a record $2,007,451,000,000 in total taxes through the first seven months of fiscal 2018 (October through April), but still ran a deficit for that period of $385,444,000,000, according to the Monthly Treasury Statement.

It’s the spending–not the revenue–that is the problem. So what are Republicans doing about it?

On May 8, 2018, The Washington Times posted the following:

House GOP leaders vowed Tuesday to speed President Trump’s new $15.4 billion spending cuts proposal through their chamber, brushing aside complaints from Democrats and some Republicans over the trims the White House wants to see.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday predicted the House will pass the package, which includes 38 cuts to programs and generally involves money that’s sitting unused.

So what happened when the bill reached the Senate?

The Daily Haymaker posted the story today:

Senators voted Wednesday to block President Trump’s $15.4 billion spending cuts package, with lawmakers saying it trimmed the budget too much.

Brushing aside administration promises that the cuts were chiefly to money that was never going to be spent, the Senate voted 50-48 to keep the bill bottled up. Two Republicans — Susan Collins of Maine and Richard Burr of North Carolina — joined Democrats to defeat the package.[…]

So if the Republicans won’t even cut spending on money that wasn’t even spent, why in the world should I vote for them? Didn’t they read their own platform? How long could you run up your credit card before creditors would start clamoring for their money? Is the government any different?

 

The Problem Is Not The Income

The Wall Street Journal posted an article yesterday about the amount of tax revenue the federal government collected for fiscal 2015. The good news is that the government collected a record amount of money–$3.249 trillion. That is an 8 percent increase in revenues for the year. The bad news is that the government still managed to spend more than it took in. The budget deficit was $435 billion–a decline of $48 billion. The article notes that although the decline is small, it is huge for the seventh year of what the government claims is an expansion. The article also notes that inflation is growing by less than 2 percent.

The article reports:

The reason for the small decline is that spending for the fiscal year climbed 5.2% to $3.685 trillion. That increase came even though defense spending fell $16 billion, or 2.7%, thanks to the drawdown in Afghanistan.

The spending burst included a 16.1%, or $49 billion, increase in Medicaid for the first full year of ObamaCare. Medicaid spending has climbed $85 billion to $350 billion in two years, and that’s with 19 states declining to join.

The Congressional Budget Office also cites a $30 billion, or 51%, spending increase for the Department of Education—“mostly because of an $18 billion upward revision in the estimated net subsidy costs of student loans and loan guarantees issued in past years.” Translation: Mr. Obama’s takeover of the student-loan business is costing far more money than advertised, probably due to growing defaults.

Let’s put these numbers together. Inflation is less than 2 percent. There was an 8 percent increase in revenues collected by the federal government. There was a $435 billion deficit. These numbers are unsustainable. They will assure the destruction of America. We need to elect people to Congress and the White House who will cut government spending. It is a national disgrace to have an 8 percent increase in revenues and still have a deficit. It is time for any rational members of Congress to demand a spending cut.

Some Notes On The Current Budget Debate

The super committee is desperately trying to find a way to cut the budget deficit. I am not alone in believing that no solution will be reached.

On Friday Heritage.org posted an article about what exactly is being discussed. Some basic facts pointed out in the article:

Words can’t even begin to describe the scope of borrowed federal spending, but it is no doubt a staggering figure that has risen dramatically in the last decade and is more than $4 trillion higher than when President Barack Obama took office less than three years ago.

Federal spending, at about 24 percent today, is significantly over the average of 20 percent of GDP, but in a decade it will top 26 percent.  Within a generation it will reach nearly 35 percent of GDP.

The facts are simple: Entitlements are going to generate European style debt levels unless they are reformed. Paying for it without bringing down their spending would require constant, crushing tax hikes on all taxpayers — not just the top 1 percent.

And there are some in the House and Senate who understand the problem and are advocating significant action. Seventy-two Members of the House and 33 Senators are standing against continued overspending, over-borrowing, and overtaxing. In a letter yesterday to the super committee, the House Members wrote, “It is evident that America has a fiscal crisis because Washington spends too much, not because it taxes too little,” and warned, “Increasing taxes on Americans would destroy jobs, erase all hope of an economic recovery, and simply serve to feed out-of-control spending in Washington.”

If those in Washington do not have the courage to cut the spending, we need to elect people who do.

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Are The Republicans About To Get Rolled In Washington Again ?

We had an election in 2010. The Republicans made historic gains. The message from the American voters was ‘we want smaller government.’ ‘get the government out of our lives and our pockets,’ and ‘get rid of professional politicians.’ That may not be exactly right, but it’s close. The Democrats have ignored that message and governed as if it never happened. If the Republicans don’t hear the message and differentiate themselves from the Democrats, the Republican Party as we know it will cease to exist.

Now we are at a point in history in Washington that will determine the survival of the Republican party. Because the Republicans did not have the intestinal fortitude to stand their ground on the budget deficit discussions, they formed a ‘super committee.’ The super committee has no guts either, and they are supposed to come up with debt solutions by November 23. That deadline is fast approaching and it doesn’t look good.

On Thursday, CNS News reported that the Democrats on the super committee have offered a deal–Democrats are proposing to match any spending cuts with new tax increases, attempting to find $1 trillion in savings to match $1 trillion in new taxes. This offer comes after Democrats turned down an offer by Republicans for $1 trillion in projected spending cuts over the next 10 years and raise taxes by $1 trillion over 10 years. Either one of these deals would be a mistake for Republicans. Spending cuts over the next ten years never happen–this present Congress does not have the power to control the actions (and spending) of any future Congress. Also, under baseline budgeting–if the $1 million budget for my department does not increase at the going rate (whatever that is), and stays the same for the coming year, that is considered a spending cut. You will note that there was no savings involved, but it was still considered a spending cut.

It’s time to put the government on a starvation diet. Unfortunately, the powers that be that are currently in Washington have no desire to do that. The election of 2010 brought many small government Tea Party types to Washington, but it did not change the leadership of the Republican Party. Until we change the leadership of both the Republican and Democrat Parties, there will be no change in how business is done in Washington.

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