Tag Archives: federal budget

FEMA Isn’t Really Broke

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FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) isn’t really out of money. According to a Real Clear Investigations article posted on Sunday, FEMA has billions of dollars leftover from previous disasters.

The article reports:

While FEMA is expected to ask Congress for new money, budget experts note a surprising fact: FEMA is currently sitting on untapped reserves appropriated for past disasters stretching back decades.

An August report from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General noted that in 2022, FEMA “estimated that 847 disaster declarations with approximately $73 billion in unliquidated funds remained open.” 

Drilling down on that data, the OIG found that $8.3 billion of that total was for disasters declared in 2012 or earlier.

Such developments are part of a larger pattern in which FEMA failed to close out specific grant programs “within a certain timeframe, known as the period of performance (POP),” according to the IG report. Those projects now represent billions in unliquidated appropriations that could potentially be returned to the DRF (Disaster Relief Fund).”

These “unliquidated obligations” reflect the complex federal budgeting processes. Safeguards are important so that FEMA funding doesn’t become a slush fund that the agency can spend however it chooses, budget experts said, but the inability to tap unspent appropriations from long-ago crises complicates the agency’s ability to respond to immediate disasters.

The article concludes:

Portnoy (Jeremy Portnoy of OpenTheBooks, a nonpartisan watchdog of government spending) first called attention to FEMA’s unspent funds in conversations with RealClearInvestigations on Sept. 8. He said it seems bizarre that federal officials would have a pot substantial enough to cover a projected shortfall while adding billions to the Disaster Relief Fund, but fail to draw on it.

“There is all that money just sitting there,” Portnoy said. “They’re saying they don’t have enough money but when you juxtapose it with the more than $8 billion, well, why not use that right now in Florida and other places?”

The “unliquidated obligations” have stayed on FEMA’s books because it “subjectively” extended the deadlines on some projects. The deadline for 2012’s Superstorm Sandy has been extended to 2026. 

“As a result, the potential risk for fraud, waste, and abuse increases the longer a program remains open,” a DHS report concluded.

Although DHS could probably reach into such unliquidated obligations to help restore order in areas devastated by Helene, experts note that bureaucracies are loath to resort to such tactics when budget negotiations are near, as they are when the fiscal year ends this month.

“The bridges that have been washed out, that’s not something FEMA will have to pay tomorrow,” Cavanaugh said. 

Please follow the link to the article for further details. This is outrageous. The bureaucracy grows and covers its tracks, and the taxpayers pay the price.

I’m A Little Late On This, But I Think It’s Important

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On July 1st, Townhall posted an article about the presidential debate. All of us who saw the debate drew our own conclusions, but I want to talk about some things that happened after the debate. Jill Biden revved up the crowd at Waffle House by calling President Trump a liar. Generally speaking, that is the charge that Biden supporters make against President Trump. They never quite get down to specifics, but that is the talking point.

Townhall reports:

Although news articles often call Donald Trump a “liar,” I don’t think I have ever seen that term used when discussing Joe Biden. Following the first presidential debate in June, fact-checkers at the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal accused Trump of numerous falsehoods. But they couldn’t find a single Biden falsehood. 

…With respect to Trump, they can’t see the forest for the trees. With respect to Biden, they can’t see the trees.

Immigration. Let’s start with the most blatant falsehood in the entire election season. Last January, Biden claimed, “I’ve done all I can do” to secure the border. He has taken almost 300 executive actions on immigration. Nearly all of these actions made immigration easier, including revoking some of Trump’s policies on his first day in office.

The second worst falsehood is his claim that he needs Congress to act. “Just give me the power I’ve asked from the very day I got into office,” he told reporters. Yet he operates under the same congressional laws as presidents Obama and Trump.

Trump states correctly that innocent young girls have been raped and killed by illegal immigrants. He is justified in saying that those girls would probably be alive today if the Trump immigration policies were still in place.

We are not vetting the immigrants we apprehend, to say nothing of all the got-aways. We don’t really know who they are or where they are. Some are connected to terrorist organizations. FBI Director Wray has testified that there is a serious fear of another 9/11.

…In the debate, Donald Trump claimed that Democrats in general and Biden in particular believe in the legality of killing babies after they are delivered. Even though a Democratic Virginia governor once seemed to suggest that, it is probably not factually correct. But it is very, very close to being correct. For most Democratic candidates, abortion should be legal one minute before delivery, and possibly even during delivery.

…Deficit spending. Some fact-checkers claim that when Trump attacked Biden for running up debt, that was another falsehood. It is true that the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget claims that Trump accumulated twice as much debt as Biden. Yet, this claim has been refuted by the House Budget Committee. Moreover, the official scorekeeper on this question is the Congressional Budget Office, whose ten-year projection finds that Biden’s policies will add far more to the national debt than Trump’s policies.

Please follow the link to the article for further examples. Remember, when you can’t win on policy, attack your opponent personally. It’s not an honest way to run a campaign, but it often works.

Projection As An Art Form

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“President Trump is a threat to our democracy” is the cry of those panicked on the political left. First of all, we don’t have a democracy–we have a representative republic. Second of all, President Trump is not the one limiting free speech and jailing his political opponents. But there are some other current lies that need to be debunked.

On Sunday, The New York Post reported:

Projection is blaming someone else for your own bad behavior.

We saw a classic case of projection in Thursday’s presidential debate, when President Biden — who is overseeing annual budget deficits of $2 trillion — asserted that his predecessor, Donald Trump, added more to the federal debt than anyone else.

It’s part of the latest leftist argument: that if Trump wins the election, he will run deficits twice as large as Biden would.

Debate moderator Jake Tapper joined the chorus of federal finance falsehoods when he claimed Trump had “approved $8.4 trillion in new debt,” while Biden’s actions will increase the debt by (merely) $4.3 trillion over a decade.

Those numbers are based on the predictions of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB). This group opposed the Trump tax cuts which increased federal revenue.

The article continues:

The fundamental flaw of the CRFB analysis is revealed if we examine the projections of the Congressional Budget Office.

The CBO’s projection for 2021, the last fiscal year of the Trump administration, forecast the federal debt to reach about $35.3 trillion by 2031, that is, over the next decade.

Today, 3½ years into the Biden administration, the latest estimates from the CBO project the debt will hit over $42.5 trillion by 2031.

The article concludes:

Biden wanted to spend $2 trillion more in the last year and a half, but conservatives in the House blocked the added bloat. 

You can bet the farm that if the radical left wins the White House and Congress in 2024, that $2 trillion outlay will be first on their legislative agenda. 

Biden’s other big lie, backed by the CRFB analysis, is that extending Trump’s tax reform will drown the economy in debt.

Yet federal tax revenues have increased since that tax reform was enacted — and federal revenues as a share of GDP have not fallen.

All of the increase in today’s debt has been due to massive, out-of-control federal spending — by both parties.

Trump spent and borrowed too much, full stop.

But with a debt headed to $50 trillion if reelected and a political agenda that stifles economic growth, Biden has set America on an unsustainable fiscal path that will lead to financial oblivion.

It’s the spending, stupid.

 

So What Do We Do Now?

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The courts seem to move slowly. Most of the time that’s not an issue, but we have a court case right now where the timing matters. It will be interesting to see what the next step is. Also, at what point is Congress required to follow the U.S. Constitution and what are the consequences when they don’t?

On Tuesday, Just the News reported:

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Tuesday secured a major victory in his challenge to the $1.7 trillion omnibus spending package passed in 2022, with a court declaring that the bill was approved unconstitutionally.

President Joe Biden signed the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 in December of the prior year. The measure effectively set the federal budget for the year by wrapping the 12 annual appropriations bills into a single piece of legislation. Paxton, however, had argued that the House’s passage of the measure was unconstitutional as less than half of the lower chamber’s members were physically present to vote on it. Many lawmakers who were not present voted by proxy. Paxton had specifically challenged stipulations in the bill that affect his state.

“Like many constitutional challenges, Texas asserts that this provision is unenforceable against it because Congress violated the Constitution in passing the law. In response, the defendants claim, among other things, that this Court has no power to address the issue because it cannot look to extrinsic evidence to question whether a bill became law,” the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Lubbock Division wrote. “But because the Court is interpreting and enforcing the Constitution—rather than second-guessing a vote count—the Court disagrees. The Court concludes that, by including members who were indisputably absent in the quorum count, the Act at issue passed in violation of the Constitution’s Quorum Clause.”

So what happens now? Does this matter?

The article concludes:

The Texas Public Policy Foundation served as co-counsel in the case.

“The Court correctly concluded that the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 violated the Quorum Clause of the U.S. Constitution because a majority of House members was not physically present when the $1.7 trillion spending bill was passed. Proxy voting is unconstitutional,” TPPF senior attorney Matt Miller said.

We Have A Spending Problem

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On Monday, The Daily Signal posted an article about government spending. The article included five charts that illustrate the problem.

These are the charts:

When interest payments make up a quarter or our spending, we have a problem. We have been living beyond our means for so long that we will never get out of debt without drastic action. There have been various plans to cut the federal budget in the past–one of which simply required taking one penny away from every dollar. It is time to reconsider these plans and to reconsider shrinking federal employment by at least 10 percent. If companies are forced to cut back because of inflation, the federal government should also be required to reduce its size. We are becoming the economically illiterate consumer who pays the minimum payment on his credit card every month and wonders why the balance never goes down.

Disappointed Again

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Carrol Quigley was an American historian born in 1910. He died in 1977. He once stated:

He was totally accurate in his prediction.

On Tuesday, The Blaze reported the following:

…McCarthy (House Speaker Kevin McCarthy)  told reporters Monday night that he plans to pass a short-term continuing resolution in September to fund government until December. He also expressed his plan as if it were some sort of theocratical exercise in efficiency, not as if we are in the war to save our civilization and basic constitutional rights. There was no promise whatsoever to refuse a penny of funding for these harmful activities. In other words, the same song and dance we’ve seen for years.

That’s not what he was elected to do. As Americans suffer the ravages of inflation due to runaway government spending, the elected Republicans in the House need to move to curtail that spending. Where is the promise of the twelve appropriations bills that are supposed to be part of the budget process?

The article notes:

McCarthy already betrayed us with the debt ceiling deal, as we face the biggest debt bomb ever. That debt has increased by $1.2 trillion since his deal, the quickest in American history, and the Biden administration plans to service trillions more in debt in the coming months. Canceling the August recess to properly prosecute a budget fight is the only way to atone for that sin.

Some of us tried to warn about this after the midterms. It was precisely because of these moments why we wanted a better speaker. But Trump used his political clout to pressure the heroic members seeking change rather than supporting them. As such, he owns McCarthy. So why is Trump himself not warning McCarthy not to fund a penny of the DOJ come October 1 absent a provision defunding the prosecutions against him? Where is the sense of urgency? Clearly, we cannot wait until Jan. 2025.

If the Republicans keep acting like Democrats, there is no point in voting for Republicans.

The Omnibus Spending Bill

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Kevin Roberts, The Heritage Foundation President released the following statement on Wednesday regarding the Omnibus Spending Bill:

“Americans are tired of the elites in Washington playing political games and using cheap tricks to pass massive spending bills that will only increase our debt and further drive inflation. Both parties in the House and Senate are working together this week to pass a $1.5 trillion omnibus bill that spends more money that we simply do not have, and they are playing games with our national security to do so. 

“Instead of following a transparent appropriations process, the House is using a procedural stunt to separate the 2,700-page omnibus bill into two divisions. This move is designed purely to secure enough votes to pass the bill in the House and send it to the Senate as one package, allowing House and Senate leadership to have full control over the outcome. 

“The national security spending in this bill is necessary, but it shouldn’t be used as leverage for a laundry list of far-left domestic priorities. The American people need relief from soaring inflation, higher prices, and a national debt that increasingly threatens their financial futures. Congress is showing that they still don’t understand this basic reality and are intent on causing more hardship for working Americans across this country.  

“It’s time for Congress to end the political games and govern responsibly. If Republicans are serious about governing like conservatives next year, they should start by rejecting this irresponsible approach to the people’s money.” 

It’s time to go back to the real budget process where every government department submits a budget to Congress for Congressional approval.

Someone asked the website Quora when the last federal budget was passed using the conventional budget process.

The website posted the following answer:

Usually a President’s first year in Office is under the previous President’s budget. However knowing that Barack Obama was winning, the Congressional Democrats used Continuing Resolution to push the budget forward. With Obama in Office, they passed the full budget in April 2009. I think since then we have only operated in a world of continuing resolutions and an omnibus budget. After gaining the control of the congress in 2014, Republican promised to return to regular order and it hasn’t happened yet.

To answer your question, the 2007–08 budget was probably the last regular budget passed.

We need to elect people who will return to the normal budget process.

When Life Gives You Lemons…

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I think we all admire people who are able to turn a difficult situation into something enjoyable. The good news story of the week illustrates that principle.

Yesterday Steven Hayward posted an article at Power Line Blog that illustrates one aspect of the coronavirus lock-down that most of us had not considered.

The article reports:

But no, by far the the best stand-up-and-cheer-for-‘Murica story this week is “Team Allegedly Sets New ‘Cannonball Run’ Record on Empty Highways During Coronavirus Lockdown.” Now that’s making the best of the bad situation, American-style! Me, I’m getting three weeks to the gallon on my car right now, and so admire and envy the lust for speed on the open road.

But it sets me to wondering whether the American economy will put the pedal to the metal when the lockdown ends, such that we’ll experience an economic Cannonball Run. We’re in uncharted territory, but unfortunately I wouldn’t bet big on a big boom coming out the other side.

Let’s consider one tiny bit of microeconomic data, and one bit of lagging macroeconomic data, that ought to make us worry. The microeconomic data is my own monthly credit card statement. For the first time in my life, I’m looking forward to getting my monthly credit card statement later this month. I’ve been too busy to check online, but I expect I’ll have a credit balance for the first time ever, on account of all the plane fights and hotel rooms I’ve had canceled and refunded over the last month, on top of the restaurant meals I’m not having and other retail purchases. I’m not even buying many books at the moment, since Amazon and other online sellers are delaying book shipments in favor of more urgent items (though for me, what could be more urgent than another book?).

Unfortunately the article ends on a discouraging note:

The point is, even if 80 percent of the pre-crisis economy comes back by mid-summer, you’re still looking at a major recession, if not a near depression. Mauldin, by the way, has been predicting for the last couple years that a recession would see the federal budget deficit soar to $2 trillion. Now that would be regarded as “the good old days.” This year’s federal budget deficit is more likely to be over $4 trillion. And that may be optimistic.

I am hoping he is wrong. What we may see is a slingshot effect–people who have been holding on to their money because of uncertainty may feel comfortable spending some of what they have been holding on to. There will also be the desire to get out of the house–go anywhere! The American economy is consumer driven. If the consumers come out of hiding when the lock-down ends, I believe the economy will recover by the fall. I am also hopeful that various areas of the economy will begin to open up in the very near future. A lot of what has gone on under this pandemic is illegal under the U.S. Constitution. The thing I fear more than an economic downturn is the precedents that are being set that may pave the way for limiting the God-given rights of Americans.

Your Tax Dollars At Work

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On Thursday, Just The News posted an article about some of the things the National Institute of Health (NIH) is spending your tax money on.

The article reports:

On a steamy summer day inside the lecture auditorium of the storied National Institutes of Health headquarters, Dr. Michael Bracken delivered a stark message to an audience that dedicated its life, and owed its living, to medical research.

As much as 87.5% of biomedical research is wasted or inefficient, the respected Yale University epidemiologist declared in a sobering assessment for a federal research agency that spends about $40 billion a year on medical studies.

He backed his staggering statistic with these additional stats: 50 out of every 100 medical studies fail to produce published findings, and half of those that do publish have serious design flaws. And those that aren’t flawed and manage to publish are often needlessly redundant.

The article notes where the NIH has spent money instead of researching cures for a coronavirus pandemic:

As you weigh that question, consider this: In the 15 years since evidence first emerged that drugs like chloroquine might help in a coronavirus pandemic, NIH spent:

Just two days ago, in the midst of surging coronavirus deaths in America, NIH released a joint study by its National Cancer Institute and the National Institute on Aging that came to a heady conclusion: If you walk more, you are likely to live longer.

If the NIH had investigated chloroquine fifteen years ago, we might not have governors forbidding doctors to use it to treat coronavirus. It really is time to go through the federal budget line by line and get rid of stupid research projects and useless programs. We could probably pay for the stimulus package with what we cut and have money left over.

 

One Of Many Reasons Government Spending Keeps Increasing

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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.

About The Taxes You Pay On Your Social Security

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In the past few days I have been getting notices on my phone to sign a petition to end taxing Social Security. I normally support smaller government, less spending, and lower taxes, but in this case, I want to keep taxing Social Security. I want to keep taxing Social Security until the federal budget is balanced. Who do I hold responsible for the unbalanced budget and the increasing debt? The voters. I will explain.

There are a lot of factors that went into my deciding that Social Security should be taxed (despite the fact that the money has already been taxed once). I will attempt to list them here. The majority of today’s Social Security recipients are the baby boomers. Those born in 1957 or before are now eligible to collect Social Security. In 1971, the voting age was lowered to 18, and those people born in 1957 began voting in 1975. The gold standard ended in 1973. Up until that point, budget deficits were running between $1 billion and $23 billion.

I want to focus on the baby boomers. We were the generation that ‘had it all.’ We were the ‘me generation.’ Our parents had come through the depression and World War II and enjoyed the prosperity of the 1950’s. We were consumers. As adults, we began the serious use of credit cards. We took out student loans to send our children to college. We were seriously into instant gratification. We were idealistic–we wanted to end poverty. We also wanted to end communism. We tried to do both at once and spent money we didn’t have. In the 1970’s and 1980’s the deficits grew rapidly. We continued to elect people who helped them grow. We complained when they grew, but continued to elect people who overspent. We are the ones currently collecting Social Security. We deserve to be taxed on it because we are the ones who elected the people who have run up the deficit.

So who is responsible for the rapidly growing federal debt–the voters. Don’t talk to me about the money or lobbyists in politics–if your Congressman is voting against your interests because of lobbyists, it is your responsibility to vote him out of office. When the Republicans caved on repealing ObamaCare, they deserved to be voted out of office. We need to keep voting people out of office until we get what we want.

I would love for Social Security to be tax free, but let’s put people in Congress who will control spending first!

This Explains A Lot

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Yesterday The Daily Caller posted an article that explains a few things that were curious at the time. When viewing these events, it’s a good idea to consider the underlying currents–establishment Republicans don’t want the wall any more than the Democrats. Their reasons are different, but the goal is the same. That is why the Secure Fence Act of 2006 was never actually carried out.

100 percent fed up detailed the timeline of events following the passage of the Secure Fence Act of 2006 in an article posted on August 16, 2015.

Here are some highlights from that timeline:

In his speech in El Paso on immigration reform on May 10, 2011, Obama declared that the fence along the border with Mexico is “now basically complete.” Like much of what comes out of the Obama administration, that was a lie. What was supposed to be built was a double-layered fence with barbed wire on top, and room for a security vehicle to patrol between the layers. Except for 36 of the seven-hundred-mile fence, what was built looks like the picture above or the one below.

This is the above picture:

This is the below picture:

Somehow the two pictures do not appear to be the same.

So what happened? The article reports:

The first blow against the promised fence was made by Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican Senator from Texas, at the urging of DHS she proposed an amendment to give the Department discretion to decide what type of fence was appropriate in different areas. The law was amended to read,
“Nothing in this paragraph shall require the Secretary of Homeland Security to install fencing, physical barriers, roads, lighting, cameras, and sensors in a particular location along an international border of the United States, if the Secretary determines that the use or placement of such resources is not the most appropriate means to achieve and maintain operational control over the international border at such location.”
Hutchison’s amendment was included in a federal budget bill in late 2007 despite the fact that Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., had a cow…he argued the amendment effectively killed the border fence promised in the 2006 bill, he was right. Hutchison’s intentions may have been honorable, but she didn’t foresee Barack Obama being the next president.

The article concludes:

Here’s the bottom line. Back in 2006, the people of the U.S. were promised a border fence. Since then thanks to Kay Bailey Hutchison and Barack Obama 95% of the fence wasn’t built. The arguments against the fence are bogus especially if you look at Israel’s history. It’s time for America to demand that its leaders build the fence they promised. No one can honestly say it wont work, after all, it hasn’t been tried.

Yesterday after an interview with President Trump, The Daily Caller reported:

President Donald Trump says former House Speaker Paul Ryan promised to secure wall funding while Republicans controlled both Houses in exchange for the president’s signature on the 2018 omnibus spending bill.

But after the president signed the massive, $1.3 trillion spending package, Ryan reneged on his commitment.

“Well, I was going to veto the omnibus bill and Paul told me in the strongest of language, ‘Please don’t do that, we’ll get you the wall.’ And I said, ‘I hope you mean that, because I don’t like this bill,’” the president recounted in an exclusive Wednesday interview with The Daily Caller.

“Paul told me in the strongest of terms that, ‘please sign this and if you sign this we will get you that wall.’ Which is desperately needed by our country. Humanitarian crisis, trafficking, drugs, you know, everything — people, criminals, gangs, so, you know, we need the wall.”

“And then he went lame duck,” Trump said.

“And once he went lame duck, it was just really an exercise in waving to people and the power was gone so I was very disappointed. I was very disappointed in Paul because the wall was so desperately needed. And I’ll get the wall.”

Paul Ryan began well. He stood up to President Obama on various issues (without actually accomplishing anything). He began as a budget hawk, trying to keep spending under control. However, he somehow became part of the Republican establishment and went down the wrong path. I seriously doubt that he ever had any intention of building the wall.

Because I Have To Write Something About The Wall

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The Washington Examiner posted an article today about the wall that seems to be responsible for the government shutdown.

The article reports:

According to the results of an ABC News and Washington Post poll released Sunday morning, 42 percent of Americans support a wall. That is up from 34 percent one year ago and a previous high of 37 percent in 2017.

With 54 percent, the majority of Americans polled still oppose building a border wall. However, that opposition is shrinking, as 63 percent opposed the wall a year ago and the previous low was 60 percent two years ago.

The article also reports:

According to the poll, only about a quarter of Americans — 24 percent — believe there is a crisis-level situation in regards to immigration at the border.

That is a very sad statistic. We have drugs coming across the border, human trafficking is happening at the border, and American citizens are being killed by illegal aliens that should not even be in the country. There is a crisis. A wall will not end that crisis, but it will provide a partial solution that will greatly help the border patrol. Either Americans are not well-informed or they don’t see a crisis because it hasn’t directly impacted them. I am not sure which is the case. At any rate, the wall (and the increased border security requested with it) represents such a small part of the federal budget that there shouldn’t even be a question about whether or not to build it.

In Fiscal Year 2019, the federal budget will be $4.407 trillion. Compare the cost of the wall and the increased security at our border with the annual cost of illegal immigration. The wall is a bargain.

Six Major Challenges In 2019

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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.

This Is Called Blackmail

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Yesterday Fox News posted an article with the title, “IRS chief warns of refund delays over budget cuts.” You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out what is going on here. If people experience delays in getting their tax refunds, they will complain. If they make enough noise, Congress will have to give the IRS more money to get the refunds out promptly. I hope Congress is smarter than that.

The IRS in recent years has abused its power and become a political tool. I think it is time to cut its funding (actually, I think it is time to make it go away and replace the income tax with a consumption tax of some kind).

The article reports:

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen gave details Thursday on ways the tax-collection agency might try to cut costs. He said everything from taxpayer services to enforcement efforts could be affected.

But, in a move that could impact millions, he said there could be a lag in refunds being processed.

“Everybody’s return will get processed,” Koskinen told reporters. “But people have gotten very used to being able to file their return and quickly getting a refund. This year we may not have the resources, the people to provide refunds as quickly as we have in the past.”

In recent years, the IRS says it was able to issue most tax refunds within 21 days, if the returns were filed electronically. Koskinen wouldn’t estimate how long they might be delayed in the upcoming filing season, which is just a few weeks away.

Congress cut the IRS budget by $346 million for the budget year that ends in September 2015. The $10.9 billion budget is $1.2 billion less than the agency received in 2010. The agency has come under heavy fire from congressional Republicans for its now-halted practice of applying extra scrutiny to conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status.

I totally support cutting the budget of the IRS. I would also support eliminating the agency.

 

Haven’t These People Read The Constitution ?

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CNS News reported yesterday that Representative Nancy Pelosi has suggested that Congress simply give President Obama the power to personally raise the debt ceiling whenever he thinks it is necessary. Hasn’t this woman read the U. S. Constitution?

The article reports:

The Constitution expressly gives the power to borrow money to Congress–not the president. Article 1, Section 8, Clause 2 says: “Congress shall have power … To borrow money on the credit of the United States.”

When he met with members of Congress on Thursday to discuss a deal to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff that is set to occur at the end of this year, Secretary Geithner suggested that Congress give Obama the personal power as president to lift the legal limit on the federal government‘s debt.

I really can’t think of a worse idea. The article points out that under the arrangement Representative Pelosi proposed, the only limit on the national debt would be President Obama’s willingness to borrow money in the name of American taxpayers. Somehow I doubt that would be any limit at all.

The Constitution was set up to let Congress control the purse strings. Congress is expected to pass an annual budget, and the government is expected to abide by that budget. Unfortunately, The last time the Senate passed a traditional year-long budget was April 29, 2009. Frankly, I don’t see that changing anytime soon.

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Why We Need More Of The Tea Party In Congress

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Yesterday John Hinderaker at Power Line posted an article about the recent budget votes in Congress. He echoes the feelings of many Americans in stating that the budget cutting is a sham and that nothing in Washington has changed since 2010.

Jeff Sessions, who voted against the bill, explains why:

Beyond my concerns over the last-minute vote, there are several important reasons why I have decided to oppose the spending bill in its current form. Rhetorically, leaders in Washington have made a commitment to reduce spending. But, if the offsets do not pass—and I fear Senate Democrats will oppose them—Congress will actually end up increasing discretionary spending by $4 billion over last year. Even if the offsets do pass, due to previous discretionary appropriations, Congress will still fall short of the $7 billion discretionary reduction that was promised as part of the budget deal this summer—spending $2 billion more than the $1,043 cap identified as the maximum spending level.

John McCain stated:

“Here we are again,” said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). “Not one member of this body has read the 1,221 pages of this bill representing $915 billion of the taxpayers’ money. Here we are with 15 minutes to consider a document representing $915 billion of taxpayers’ money filled with unauthorized, unrequested spending.”

“It’s outrageous,” continued McCain. “I have amendments to save billions and billions of the taxpayers’ money, but never mind because we are going home for Christmas.”

We are at this point because the Senate has refused to pass a budget–even when the Democrats controlled the House of Representatives, the White House, and the Senate. As Jeff Sessions pointed out, almost 1,000 days have passed since Senate Democrats have offered a budget.

The Tea Party Republicans in the House of Representatives have made serious efforts to cut the budget. The Democrats and the establishment Republicans have fought them at every turn. There are places where a conservative Republican cannot be elected. I understand that. However, where voters have a choice, we need conservative Republicans to change the climate in Washington. Otherwise, we will have more of the same.

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