Right Wing Granny

News behind the news. This picture is me (white spot) standing on the bridge connecting European and North American tectonic plates. It is located in the Reykjanes area of Iceland. By-the-way, this is a color picture.

Right Wing Granny

Tag Archives: spending

The Numbers Tell The Story

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On Monday, Real Clear Wire posted an article about how well women are doing under the Biden administration versus how well they did under President Trump.

The article reports:

Of the countless lies about Kamala Harris perpetuated by Democrats and their loyal stenographers in the mainstream media, one of the most egregious is that a Kamala Harris presidency will deliver historic economic opportunity for working women. Unfortunately for these desperate Democrats attempting to erase publicly available data, numbers tell the exact opposite story. Kamala Harris and Joe Biden saddled women with the largest pay cut, inflation crisis, tax hike, and economic crash so far this century, whereas President Trump delivered the greatest economic boost for American women of any modern day president. 

The median income for women increased every year during the Trump administration, reaching the highest on record in 2020. Real average weekly earnings increased 8.2% under President Trump yet decreased 3.9% under Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. The unemployment rate for women overall and for black women in particular reached a record low during President Trump’s term. In 2019, the workforce participation gap between men and women shrank to the narrowest in history. President Trump’s economy made history with the most women in the workforce ever.

This wasn’t by accident. Understanding that working women are also balancing families, President Trump delivered a pro-family economic agenda that included doubling the child tax credit from $1,000 to $2,000 per child and expanding eligibility. Nearly 40 million families received an average benefit of $2,200 under his leadership, totaling credits of approximately $88 billion.

There were a number of women in the Trump administration in upper-level positions that were balancing work and families. I suspect that their input helped create an economic environment where women could prosper.

The article also notes:

Families now need an extra $12,590 annually just to maintain the same standard of living they enjoyed three years ago, according to Congress’ Joint Economic Committee—and 67% of parents say inflation has impacted their ability to pay for their children’s education, school supplies, and extracurricular activities this past school year. The cost of childcare has increased 32% for the average family since 2019, and nearly two-thirds are spending 20% or more of their annual income on childcare. The average price for a pack of disposable diapers has increased 32% since 2019, and 47% of families reported struggling to afford them. In 2022, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ incompetence created a baby formula shortage, causing the price to soar to an all-time high. Some 44 million people were living in food insecure households in 2022, a 31% annual increase and the largest one-year increase since 2008.

Most of the speeches made so far at the Democrat Convention will go down as some of the best fiction in recent times.

The Legacy Of The Biden Presidency

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On Saturday, The Washington Examiner posted an opinion piece evaluating President Biden’s legacy as President. It wasn’t a real positive article.

The article notes:

Leaving aside whether or not the country needed saving from Trump, Biden has not “done an excellent job as president,” as claimed by the sweetly generous New York Times. If he is “one of the most consequential presidents in our nation’s history,” as the dulcet-tongued Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) said when he asked Biden to step aside, those consequences have been overwhelmingly negative.

I guess Schiff believes that flattery will get you everywhere.

The article continues:

Biden could have been remembered as a president who united the country and passed the baton to a new generation of leadership. To do this, he needed to govern as a commonsense centrist and then stick to his word and pass the baton. The economy was already adding 1.4 million jobs a month before Biden was sworn into office. If he had simply speeded the reopening of the economy after the COVID shutdowns, he would have presided over strong, equitable economic growth.

Instead, he allowed fawning historians to convince him he could be the second coming of Franklin Roosevelt. This manipulated by the Left, he pushed for massive and unneeded spending on a purely partisan basis, sending inflation through the roof and thus punishing vulnerable workers. As a direct result of Biden’s partisan overspending, consumers have accumulated $12.8 trillion in housing debt, $1.62 trillion in car debt, and $1.1 trillion in credit card debt, all record highs. According to the latest Federal Reserve Economic Well-Being survey, inflation has worsened the finances of 65% of people, including 19% who said it was “much worse.” Almost one-fifth of adults, 17%, said they could not pay all their bills in the month before the survey was taken.

No wonder voters disapprove of Biden’s handling of the economy by 20 points.

The article concludes:

It is hard to see how Biden’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, a politically rushed maneuver that got 13 American service members killed, did not encourage Russian aggression. And while Biden has done some good in managing NATO’s response to the invasion of Ukraine, he has been slow and indecisive in getting Ukraine the weapons it needs to push invading Russian troops out.

Then there are the divisive actions Biden has taken on forcing women’s dorms and bathrooms to take in men, forcing consumers to buy electric cars, and selectively prosecuting his political opponents.

There is a reason — indeed many reasons — that Biden has the lowest approval rating among presidents at this point in his presidency: He is a bad president. No amount of flattery from the New York Times or Democrats eager to push him out of his reelection campaign is going to change that.

Biden must go not because his legacy is splendid but because he has been an unmitigated calamity for America.

That pretty much sums it up!

The Choice Is Between Bad And Awful

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On Wednesday, Armstrong Economics posted an article about inflation and recession.

The article reports:

Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis President Neel Kashkari has advised against anticipating near-term rate cuts. While speaking to the Financial Times, the Fed president stated that people would simply prefer a recession to continued inflation.

“I have learned that the American people—and maybe people in Europe equally—really hate high inflation. I mean, really viscerally hate high inflation,” he told the Financial Times’ The Economics Show podcast. Kashkari is speaking as if we are not already in a recession. It is not difficult to understand the “visceral” hatred people around the world feel toward rising prices. The effects of inflation are felt with every purchase, causing the average person to adjust their entire lifestyle.

The article concludes:

Real prices have far surpassed anything they calculate in CPI. Everyone understands that prices have risen far more than the arbitrary number the Fed provides us. Taxes are continually increasing for everyone in every tax bracket. The government not only adds to inflationary issues with their spending but then expects their citizens to foot a portion of the bill with taxes, which will simply never be enough.

Then we have Washington telling the masses to blame corporations for price gouging while raising their taxes and making it increasingly difficult to conduct business and maintain a large workforce. It is not that the people would prefer to be in a recession, the real issue is that countless people are entering survival mode. People everywhere want to hold onto whatever they may have out of fear for the future, but they are unable even to hoard as real prices now demand they hand over whatever they have to maintain their lives.

In a recession, consumer spending drops, and people lose their jobs. A service economy such as the one America currently has is more vulnerable to recession than a manufacturing economy. A recession creates hardship for working families.Inflation impacts both working families and retirees. Either one is a bad deal. The most practical way to deal with inflation in America would be to cut government spending and to resume domestic oil production. Both of those things would help revive a miserable economy.

What Four More Years Of Bidenomics Would Look Like

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On May 14th (sometimes it takes me a while to get to things), Stephen Moore posted an article at BizPac Review detailing some of the economic plans the Biden administration has if they win the election in November. If you like trying to stretch your dollar because of inflation, you will love the new challenges.

The article reports some of the plans:

1. Tax rates on investment up to 70%.

2. $2 trillion in new debt spending.

3. A “net zero” energy policy eliminating production of nearly all our abundant fossil fuels.

4. An end to state “right-to-work” laws in 26 states.

5. The antitrust assault against Silicon Valley and corporate mergers ramps up.

The article also concludes:

There is more to worry about under Bidenomics in a second term. One worry is that Dems will agree to eliminate checks and balances in our system of government by overturning the filibuster rule of at least 60 votes in the Senate to pass legislation. Another concern is that Dems will lock in their electoral strength by making Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico states to add four more Democratic senators. Remember Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of Pennsylvania heroically voted to save the filibuster — but they won’t be around in January 2025 to stop the court packing.

Could American businesses and families survive getting smashed by these gale-force winds of another Bidenomics hurricane in 2025 without capsizing the ship of state? I wouldn’t bet on it.

Stephen Moore is a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a senior economic advisor to Donald Trump. His latest book is: “Govzilla: How the Relentless Growth of Government Is Devouring Our Economy.”

Your vote counts. We need enough votes against Joe Biden to overcome the fraud that is already being planned.

Who’s Idea Was This?

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On Mondays, Newsweek posted the following headline:

US to Sell Off Entire Northeast Gasoline Supply Reserve

The article reports:

The sale of the Northeast Gasoline Supply Reserve is among the provisions intended to raise funds in one of six bills setting out appropriations for some federal departments this year after Congress narrowly avoided another shutdown last week.

Under a bill providing funding for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for the fiscal year, a million barrels of the government’s strategic reserve of petroleum would be sold off—the same amount as in the NGSR, which is located in New York Harbor, Boston, Massachusetts and South Portland, Maine.

“Upon the complete of such sale, the Secretary [of Energy] shall carry out the closure of the Northeast Gasoline Supply Reserve,” the bill states, and “may not establish any new regional petroleum product reserve unless funding of the proposed regional petroleum product reserve is explicitly requested in advance in an annual budget.”

…Congress is expected to pass the package, which is the result of cross-party negotiations, with votes set to take place this week. Negotiations on a further six spending bills continue.

This is reckless. What part of ‘Gasoline Supply Reserve’ does Congress not understand? This is not to be used to fund America, this is supposed to be used in case of emergency. If the government truly wants to reduce the deficit, they need to look at the amount of land the government controls that could easily be sold without endangering national security.

When You Have Someone In The White House Who Does Not Understand Basic Economics…

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On Wednesday, The Gateway Pundit posted an article about one of President Biden’s recent speeches. The President is most interesting when he is not reading his notes.

The article reports:

President Biden acknowledged Monday that prices are still “too high” and argued that companies should lower them after an 18% jump in consumer costs since he took office.

“We know that prices are still too high for too many things — that times are still too tough for too many families,” the 81-year-old said near the White House.

“We’ve made progress, but we have more work to do,” Biden added. “Let me be clear to any corporation has not brought their prices back down, even as inflation has come down, even supply chains have been rebuilt: It’s time to stop the price gouging and give the American consumer a break.”

The prices of some goods, such as food products, are expected to decline in the coming months, but periods of general deflation are rare in US history.

Biden previously used his bully pulpit to try to pressure oil companies to take action to lower gas prices last year.

The only one price gouging is the federal government–they call it taxing. The cause of our current inflation is government spending, but that is the one cause that Washington consistently refusing to examine.

We need a businessman in the White House and many more in Congress.

Israel Aid?

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On Thursday, The Daily Wire posted two articles relating to American aid to Israel.

The first article reported:

Twelve House Democrats joined with Republicans on Thursday to pass a White House-opposed plan offset $14.3 billion in aid for Israel by slashing the same amount of funds meant for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

The GOP measure to provide emergency aid to Israel as it fights Hamas passed by a 226-196 vote, sending the legislation to the Democrat-led Senate where Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has already vowed not to bring it up for consideration.

Instead, Schumer announced earlier in the day, the Senate would “work on our own bipartisan emergency aid package that includes funding for aid to Israel, Ukraine, humanitarian aid including for Gaza, and competition with the Chinese Government.”

But the passage of the GOP House plan has already proven to be bipartisan with a dozen Democrats voting in favor of it: Reps. Angie Craig (D-MN), Don Davis (D-NC), Lois Frankel (D-FL), Jared Golden (D-ME), Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), Greg Landsman (D-OH), Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), Darren Soto (D-FL), Haley Stevens (D-MI), Juan Vargas (D-CA), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), and Frederica Wilson (D-FL).

The second article reported on Senator Schumer’s reaction to the bill:

The Democrat-controlled Senate will refuse to consider the House GOP plan to send aid to Israel in its fight against Hamas, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) announced on Thursday, setting up a standoff with the Republican-led lower chamber.

Opting for a different path, Schumer said the Senate will move forward by working on legislation that combines Israel assistance with other national security matters — a strategy rejected by House conservatives, but favored by the Biden administration.

“Let me be clear: The Senate will not take up the House GOP’s deeply flawed proposal,” Schumer said in a post to X. “Instead we will work on our own bipartisan emergency aid package that includes funding for aid to Israel, Ukraine, humanitarian aid including for Gaza, and competition with the Chinese Government.”

The Democrats are allergic to spending cuts. Because of that, it is questionable whether any American aid will reach Israel. However, I suspect the Democrats will find a way to send more money to Ukraine. Maybe it’s not really about the spending cuts.

We Need Fiscal Responsibility In Washington

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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.

Reporting On The American Economy

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On Monday, Issues & Insights posted an article about inflation and the state of the American economy.

The article includes the following:

Ronald Reagan, in his 1980 campaign for president, updated Harry Truman’s useful definitions of two key economic terms.

“It’s a recession,” Truman had intoned, “when your neighbor loses his job. It’s a depression when you lose yours.”

To which The Gipper appended, entertainingly: “And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his.”

The article notes:

These articulations sprang to mind in pondering the variations of inflation measurements advanced by economists to determine whether price growth is “easing,” as the counterfeit chief executive would have one believe.

Should the focus be the “headline” Consumer Price Index? The one the Bureau of Labor Statistics describes as “a measure of the average change over time in the prices paid by urban consumers for a representative basket of consumer goods and services” (listed on the chart below)? Should the guide be a CPI subset referred to as “core inflation,” which excises “more volatile” food and energy prices? And how about the latest craze: “super core inflation?”

According to Fortune magazine, super core “does not have an established definition” but “refers to price measures that exclude sectors that economists feel distort the broader inflation figure.”  Economists like Paul Krugman (yeah, we know; kind of like discussing “military intelligence”) surmise that super core leaves out not just food and energy but also housing.

The article concludes:

Yet both the spending and the inflationary outcome – a dragon that had been largely slain since the Reagan Administration – are now revived for one reason: provide another set of tools of power and oppression.

The spending is to get citizenry and businesses alike hooked on federal largess. Inflation is another means of weakening the populace and private institutions as their labor and investment yields less and, in yet another spiral, they get all the more dependent on Uncle Sam and its cohort of crony capitalists.

The cynical, midterms-oriented pause in the upward price of fuel, occasioned by further manipulation of energy markets in the form of petroleum reserve releases, is only a stall in this brutal power play.

No matter the Fed’s efforts to run twice as fast – and come up with new fictions when it comes to measuring the real price of the dollar – there is no way for the central bankers even to stay in the same place when Jerome Powell’s exertions are swept under by a continued flood of Inflation Reduction Act and Omnibus(t) largess and excess.

Meanwhile, this correspondent will continue to define inflation as what it is: the loss of his dwindling dollars’ buying power. And relief, again paraphrasing The Great Communicator, as the prospect of another loss of power: Joe Biden’s.

Hang unto your hats. Unless Congress develops a spine to stop the spending, the future looks a little shaky.

Solutions For America

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On December 18th, Victor Davis Hanson posted an article at American Greatness titled, “10 Steps to Save America.”

The article lists his ten ideas:

Cut the Debt

Secure the Border

Tap Natural Resources

Oppose Discrimination

Disrupt and Reform Higher Education

Revive the Armed Forces

Fix Voting

Drain the Swamp

Upend the Welfare State

Restore Norms

Many of these problems are the result of well-meaning policies that were supposed to solve the problems they created. The welfare state was supposed to end poverty. Instead it created a bureaucracy that has no incentive to reduce the number of people on welfare. Draining the swamp refers to the administrative state that is currently making most of our laws–instead of the legislative branch of the government that is supposed to make them. Restoring norms like community standards, marriage as the foundation of our society, and protecting children from pornography would be a step forward.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. These are things we can all work to implement that would definitely improve the future of our country.

Why Elections Matter

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Yesterday The Carolina Journal posted an article about North Carolina spending policies in recent years.

The article reports:

At $6 trillion, President Joe Biden’s first budget calls for an unprecedented level of federal spending. Republican members of Congress who criticize the president’s plan are understandably reminded by Democrats that the GOP did not do much to resist—and even contributed to—excessive government spending during President Donald Trump’s time in office. During those four years, rampant spending led to nearly $8 trillion in more federal debt, though this included pandemic-related funding approved with bipartisan support. Still, this represents a 40% jump in mortgaging the future of ourselves, our kids, and our grandkids. It’s time for responsible budgeting at every level of government.

Republicans in Washington don’t have much of a leg to stand on when it comes to criticizing the profligacy of congressional Democrats and the Biden administration. But Republicans in many state capitals across the country, however, do. That’s because Republican governors and lawmakers in several states are getting government spending under control by passing conservative budgets which remain below population growth plus inflation. North Carolina is among the most prominent examples of this phenomenon—but is not the only one.

Since Republicans took control of the North Carolina General Assembly for the first time in a century a decade ago, they have kept growth in state spending on a conservative budget trajectory that keeps government growth within the average taxpayer’s ability to fund it. Since 2013, North Carolina state spending has grown by an average of 2.24% annually, which is below the population growth plus inflation rate of 2.58%.

These fiscal policies in North Carolina have resulted in budget surpluses and the lowering of the state income tax.

The article notes:

North Carolina lawmakers are now working to enact a new conservative budget that provides further tax relief. Those who want to continue the sustainable budgeting of recent years received good news in early June as legislative leaders from both chambers of the General Assembly announced a consensus spending figure that, if the new budget does not exceed it, would have state spending continue to grow slower than the combined rate of population growth plus inflation. More recently, the North Carolina Senate unveiled its version of the budget, which, in addition to spending less than the figure agreed to with the House in early June, cuts the personal income tax rate from 5.25% to 3.99% while phasing out the corporate income tax by 2028. That budget was approved with a bipartisan, veto-proof majority in the North Carolina Senate on June 24.

“We are pleased to see that the fiscal restraint the General Assembly has shown over the last ten years will continue,” said Brian Balfour, senior vice president of research at the John Locke Foundation, a Raleigh-based think tank. “It’s a strategy we would like to see added to the state constitution in the Taxpayer Bill of Rights.”

These policies have had the following results (reported in Global Trade):

NORTH CAROLINA

The second-largest food and beverage manufacturing state and the overall fifth-largest manufacturing state in America, North Carolina is home to the largest manufacturing workforce in the Southeast. The manufacturing industry employs 460,000 skilled workers in North Carolina–nearly 11 percent of the state’s workforce. North Carolina manufacturing makes up about 20 percent of the state’s gross state product, to the tune of $102.48 billion in 2017 and $31.06 billion in exports in 2018. North Carolina has experienced tremendous growth in manufacturing goods in recent years, with a nearly 35 percent increase in exports from 2010 to 2018. North Carolina’s pro-business climate and expert workforce make it an ideal state for manufacturers.

North Carolina has set an example Washington, D.C. needs to follow.