Tag Archives: fiscally conservative

Time for Emergency Economic Reform

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A year ago, I blogged about Indiana’s governor, Mitch Daniels and the coming “reality check” for state budgets. He said then: “State governments will soon have to choose between a major downsizing or consigning themselves to permanent decline. Wishing for an improbably huge boom while chasing your own tail through self-destructive taxes won’t prove much of a strategy.”

Today in the Wall Street Journal, Governor Daniels is even more pointed. He calls for a “time-limited, emergency growth program aimed at triggering new private investment” and says that should be a primary goal of the next Congress.

He clearly outlines where we are nationally and it’s not a pretty picture – anemic growth, the failure of trickle-down government spending, job creation being stalled by big-government policies like Obamacare and government recovery projections that rely on rates of growth we have not seen in 50 years. Those rates, by the way, only pull us back from “catastrophe” to “disaster”, and still allows debt to rise to almost 90% of GDP. It’s not a real “fix” – only a vibrant, extended boom can pull us back from true catastrophe – and banking on that is like depending on the lottery for your retirement plan.

Governor Daniels suggests:
*A payroll tax holiday of the Social Security tax for one year, offset twice over through a combination of the following policies:

*Impoundment power - once again authorizing the president to SPEND LESS than Congress appropriates
*Recall federal funds – rescind unspent TARP funds and hundreds of billions in unspent funds from previous appropriation bills
*Federal hiring and pay freeze – better yet, a 10% cut, then freeze
*A “freedom window” for energy companies that would allow them to proceed immediately with new job creation
*Accelerated or full expensing of business investment, something that is rumored to be under discussion right now.

He shares the following story:

Ronald Reagan enjoyed telling of the elderly Blitz victim rescued from her demolished London flat in World War II. A fireman found a bottle of brandy under the ruins of her staircase and offered her a nip for her pain. “Leave it right there,” the matron ordered. “That’s for emergencies.”

Governor Daniels concludes:

With or without Democratic help, Republicans should step forward with these or superior ideas. A stagnant, impoverished America will not be a greener or safer or fairer place. Grown-ups make trade-offs. Pass the brandy, then let’s get busy.

Pay up.

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Your share is $42,285. Scott Tipton, GOP Congressional candidate in Colorado tries to collect in this clever campaign ad. Not many takers. (OK, none)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nn1QMPPd0GU&fs=1&hl=en_US]

Barack Obama's Endgame

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Our spending is not sustainable. We can NOT afford to keep kicking the can down the road. Generational debt? Already out of control.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vczpvxYfbA8&fs=1&hl=en_US]

I will also predict this – if the Republicans do not make serious changes – real, substantive changes – once they regain control of Congress, the party will not survive.

Economic high point – the used car market

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With unemployment rising, home prices crashing, an unstable stock market and talk of a double-dip recession, there is good news for one industry (besides red ink manufacturers, that is.) The used car industry is “enjoying” a surge in the bottom line for their wares. Prices have jumped 10% overall, and by a third in some cases. Thank you, Cash for Clunkers for destroying billions of dollars in assets last year. People still can’t afford new cars and now, they can’t afford used ones.

Ed Morrissey, over at Hot Air, noted:

As predicted last year, the people most hurt by the price increases are those who can least afford them. The used-car market usually attracts people who need transportation on a budget, who cannot afford to buy new. By destroying a quarter’s worth of trade-ins in three weeks and permanently taking them off the market, the Obama administration has forced an artificial inflation by supply restriction. Moreover, they did so by subsidizing new-car sales that would have occurred anyway, eating up three billion dollars in taxpayer money.

In other words, the White House spent $3 billion to make used cars more expensive for working-class families. Nice work.

Feeling left out? Never fear – gubernatorial candidate Peter Corroon recently proposed Utah’s own version of Cash for Clunkers so you too can feel the pain. He neglected to mention how he planned to pay for it.

The Bill That Shall Not Be Named

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Congress’ official Web site calls it the ‘______Act  of____,’ or the ‘XXXXXX Act of XXXX.’”

“A nameless bill for a hopeless cause is a fitting metaphor for a Democratic Congress that refuses to listen to the American people and abandon its job-killing agenda,” said House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH).

Boehner offered 10 possible names for what he called the “union-boss bailout” bill:

– Save Our ‘Stimulus’ (SOS) Act
– ‘Recovery Summer’ Bailout Act (Cash for Flunkers)
– Delivering Unions a Major Boost (DUMB) Act
– Helping Election Expenditures, Hurting American Workers (HEEHAW) Act
– Democracy is Strengthened by Clearly Leveraging and Optimizing Special-Interests’ Effectiveness (DISCLOSE) Act
– Holding Union Bosses Over Until Card Check Act
– Rescuing Incumbent Democrats Is Costly (RIDIC) Act
– Summertime Cash for Union Bosses Instead of Spending Cuts for Taxpayers Act
– Frivolous Act of Ineffective Largesse (FAIL) Act
– Naming These Things Hasn’t Gotten Us Anywhere, So Why Bother? Act

What is no laughing matter is we’ve now spent another $26 billion we don’t have.

Chaffetz: Taxpayer Hero

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When Rep. Jason Chaffetz ran for office two years ago, he ran a lean, fiscally-conservative campaign, one that remained debt-free – an unusual feat for a challenger.  He campaigned hard on a promise of fiscal restraint and has earned a reputation as a fiscal hawk.  From pointing out money wasted on mohair subsidies to calling for a spending freeze after a few weeks in office, he is following through on that promise of restraint.

Today, the Council for Citizen’s Against Government Waste released their rankings for 2009. Chaffetz has a stellar rating of 98%, earning him the title of “Taxpayer Hero“.

The rest of the Utah delegation (all fans of earmarks, by the way) did not fare as well. Senator Bennett voted with CCAGW  70% of the time, Hatch – 79%, Rep Bishop – 77% and Rep Matheson – an utterly abysmal 11%.  (Matheson’s bottom-of-the-barrel rating earned him the title of hostile. So much for the Blue-Dog fiscal conservative.)

CCAGW’s 2009 Congressional Ratings scored 120 votes in the House and 74 votes in the Senate. By comparison, in 2008, CCAGW rated 48 votes in the House and 42 votes in the Senate. According to CCAGW, the dramatic increase in the number of votes scored in 2009 “is a reflection of the intensely partisan 111th Congress, the Obama administration’s relentless pro-spending agenda, and many members’ inability to support a pro-taxpayer agenda.”

Many House votes were Rep Jeff Flake’s “striking amendments” – the ones he offers which would cut pork out of the bills where they’ve been hidden in. For example, Mr. Flake, the champion of no earmarks, offered 553 amendments, comprising 1,102 earmarks to the defense appropriations bill last year.  (None passed.)

There is a mistaken notion that if an earmark were ever to be stripped from a bill (a rarity, to be sure), the money for that earmark would just go back into the big money pot.  However, that’s not true. The earmark and its funding would be removed completely, saving the government – I mean the US taxpayer – money – and lots of it.

Maybe when the House flips in November some fiscal sanity will be seen in DC.  (I was going to say return, but I’m not sure there’s ever really been any.)

Until then, we have groups like the CCAGW and  people like Congressman Chaffetz who will continue to shed light on – and fight against – the problem of out-of-control DC spending.

Let them eat cake

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Or something like that.  In a summer where many Americans took a “Stay-cation”, or  drove to  Grandma and Grandpa’s, did a bunch of free stuff and then came home, our First Lady is on a $400,000 vacation in Spain.  She took her daughter Sasha, the Secret Service and some friends and their daughters and headed to the sunny beaches of Spain, prompting some to liken her to Marie Antoinette, the French queen who lived lavishly while her people were starving.

Staying at a posh resort where the rooms start at $600/night, Mrs. Obama and her group of 40 have also been out seeing the sights. When they were ready to hit the beach, Spanish police used palm trees and police tape to mark off the boundaries of a 100-yard expanse for the American delegation. On either side, onlookers gawked – and police occasionally stopped and searched sun lovers if they strayed too close to the private party.

The stressful life of living in the White House must be getting to the Obama family. So far this year, Michelle has taken the following vacations:
*March: Over spring break, Mrs. Obama, her daughters and mother, Marian Robinson, visited New York with friends and took in some Broadway shows.
*Memorial Day: a weekend trip home to Chicago.
*June: Mrs. Obama, her girls and her mother flew to Los Angeles for sightseeing.
*July: A Camp David visit
*July: A weekend in Maine (after encouraging Americans to vacation in the Gulf states)
*August: Spain

Since that is so draining, after she and Sasha get back, there are two more vacations planned. The Obama family will travel to the Gulf Coast for the weekend of Aug. 14, followed by a 10-day vacation on Martha’s Vineyard off the coast of Massachusetts.

You(can)Cut government programs

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Back in May, U.S. Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), Minority Whip, launched “You Cut” – a program where “we the people” can go to a website and select programs that should no longer be funded by the federal government.

Each week, the “House Economic Recovery Solutions Group” posts new proposals and asks site visitors to vote on which one they think is the worst waste of money. Participants can also text their votes via cell phone.

So far, $1.3 million votes have been cast to eliminate such things as the mohair subsidy program, collecting back taxes from gov’t employees, ending funding for whaling programs in Mississippi and prohibiting taxpayer funding for campaigns in foreign countries.

Here is Rep Cantor explaining this innovative idea:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSeLw_9XXvI&hl=en_US&fs=1]

While presented as a bipartisan effort, it’s been heavily supported by the Republicans and not nearly as much by the Democrats. Finally, last week’s top YouCut item was presented by 4 Democrats – but when their proposal was presented on the House floor, 3 of the 4 voted against it!

So do your part and every week, head on over to Rep Cantor’s site to cast your vote. Maybe, just maybe, one of them will actually be implemented.