Truth in Spending: Outlaw the Current Services Budget

Sorry, but it’s time to get a little wonky.  There’s a spending bias that built into how the government budgets called the current services budget.  This calculation is a baseline cost of doing next year exactly what the government did this year. Then budget "cuts" are measured from this base. If it would take $90 billion more to duplicate the current activities of the federal government next year, then spending $80 billion more next year than this year is a "cut" of $10 billion. As you can see, this builds in a bias for increased spending every year. What needs to be done is simple. No money should be spent by any federal agency to make a current services budget calculation. All budget baselines will be calculated based on current year actual spending. No need for a 50 page comprehensive bill. Stick it in a budget bill and let the Smartest President Ever try to explain why these two lines make the rest of the bill something he has to veto. I'm sure low information voters will love it. 

Small Ball is the Way to Beat The One

Like a lot of other Conservatives, I was a little disappointed that we didn’t raise slightly more fuss about our Dear Leader’s efforts to make law without Congress.  However, I think the small ball concessions we imposed for the Continuing Resolution is the way to win against the One Not Quite All of Us Were Waiting For.  Small ball puts our Dear Leader on ground he can't hold because he has no attention span and no patience.  His teleprompter tactics are geared towards lying about a few big issues and getting low information voters to believe the lies.   His backers in the Pravda Press are also geared to attacking on a few big issues, like the mythical war on women and the fabricated "hands up, don't shoot."  So forcing the Chicago Machine Prodigy to fight down in the weeds against individual department funding bills festooned with all sorts of riders and budget cuts is exactly how to maneuver him out of his trenches without going over the top into massive machine gun fire from the teleprompter and the MSM repeaters.  A billion here, a billion there is big money whether you're spending or cutting.  Also, technical things, like eliminating the current services baseline budget calculation, can make a big difference and yet be inexplicable to voters, so they can't be vetoed.  

Please excuse my mixed metafors,  Perhaps you should view them as a metaphor smoothie..

Republicans Should Clear Out the Congressional Budget Office

As a Vietnam Era Veteran, I think we should modify "Search and Destroy" to "Search and Separate" any holdovers in any politically appointed positions as every office changes hands. This ESPECIALLY applies to the CBO. They score the bills. If you want to see any tax reform at all, you have to clear out every Liberal in there like Boss Tweed would have done in the bad old patronage days. This ain't no time to play nice. These guys are ruling by decree from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and counting on the Justice Department not to prosecute obvious Obstruction of Justice in the IRS case. We need to clear the decks to stop all of this unconstitutional, lawless behavior. We can't leave snipers in the rear to stop our bills on budget technicalities when they get the word from our Dear Leader.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/393667/voters-spoke-now-listen-john-fund

Obama Won't Make Any Deals with Republicans, RINO or Otherwise

Conservatives have taken to worrying about whether Republicans in Name Only will make bad deals with Barry the Magnificent.  Since Obama won't work with any Republican, it really doesn't matter what RINOs want to do. I'm not the first to notice that the US would be a lot better off if Obama would treat negotiations with Iran more like he does negotiations with Republicans and negotiations with Republicans more like negotiations with Iran. At this point, our Dear Leader's hubris has gotten to the point that he thinks he can rule by decree without any backing from even the Democrats in Congress. The Smartest President Ever only needs to bounce his ideas off Valerie Jarret and David Axelrod in order to make decisions. Cabinet level appointments are used as the designated fall guys. It's pathetic. The bumper sticker I have on my car says it all: "Worst President Ever." And yes, it does have an Obama Campaign "O."

Affordable Care Act Not Affordable & Liberals Don't Care

The commentators of the Pravda Press are wondering where all their support from Millenials went.  It seems obvious to me.  Liberals are running a Ponzi scheme, borrowing today so the Millennials will have to pay later.  Pension and social spending promises are unsustainable, and can't continue at current levels when the Millenials try to collect.  Our Dear Leader has added $4.8 trillion in total Federal debt in just one term and is on pace to easily beat Bush's $6 trillion in 2 terms.  The suburbs of Washington, DC, contain 11 of the 25 richest counties in America.  So it looks like Federal spending in DC is making a lot of government workers and their connections a large part of the 1%.   Meanwhile, Millenials like my son in law take 2-3 years to find a job that uses their law degrees.   So how is the Pravda Press going to convince Millenials that Liberal Economies work better for everyone, not just the politically connected 1%?

Reality does not seem to be involved in the MSNBC world.  The Left's strategy of trying to run healthcare has totally failed, and alienated a lot of Millenials now without affordable health insurance.  The Affordable Care Act is not affordable and Liberals don't care.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/commentary/la-oe-mcmanus-column-millenials-race-20140312,0,4527695.column#axzz2vk4s03sQ

Sell Federal Land, Balance the Budget

The way to open the West is to sell off federal land and use the proceeds to balance the budget. Compromise with liberals on spending as long as any spending in excess of revenue will be paid for by land sales which will specifically include timber and mineral rights. This would pay off in lots of ways. Sale proceeds would balance the budget. Liberals would have to make a tradeoff between spending and preventing more land sales. Once the land was in private hands, it would become much more productive than it is now under the Bureau of Land Management or the Forest Service. It would create jobs when the land is developed. It also will sound reasonable to everyone who is not a mean green.

Response to Ryan's Budget

Here’s a link to a typical liberal’s response to the Ryan budget, in this case by Dana Milbank. 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dana-milbank-paul-ryans-magical-budget/2013/03/12/6c6ad6a6-8b55-11e2-b63f-f53fb9f2fcb4_story.html

What's interesting is liberals and math. We're borrowing 35 to 40 cents of every dollar Uncle Sam spends. No matter what the tax rates, since WWII federal revenue has never been greater than about 20 percent of GDP. However, liberals are spending 24 percent of GDP and want to go higher. The percentage of the potential workforce actually working is 63.5 percent. That's down from 65.8 in February of 2009. Harry Reid has been scared to hold budget votes, even in committee because it would embarrass his members. Democrats have had no plan, but they like to complain about Paul Ryan's plans. Liberals are great on emoting and feeling our pain. Fixing problems, not so much. However, since they really care, we're supposed to forget that their caring has no effect.  Liberals don't have to have facts as long as they emotionally care deeply, right?

Here’s the link to Federal Revenue as a percent of GDP, from that hotbed of conservative thought, the Brookings Institute:

http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=205

Here’s workforce participation:

http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000

Liberals seem to have contempt for the laws that don’t serve their purposes, for example budget laws.  Obama has broken the law by not submitting the budget on time for FY2014.  According to Wikipedia, "The President, in accordance with to the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921, must submit a budget to Congress each year. In its current form, federal budget legislation law (31 U.S.C. 1105(a)) specifies that the President submit a budget between the first Monday in January and the first Monday in February."  It's not going to be ready until April.  Maybe the president’s dog Bo ate it?  Harry Reid broke the law, the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, by not passing a budget.  By the way, Obama's FY 2011 budget lost in the Senate 97 to 0.  The House has passed a budget every year.  The Senate hasn’t passed one since February, 2009.   The Democratic response to Ryan budgets is best summed up by former Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner who said in House testimony: “You are right to say we’re not coming before you today to say ‘we have a definitive solution to that long term problem.’  What we do know is we don’t like yours.” 

Here’s link to Geithner’s testimony:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_f20ZDBj5k

Here’s the link to the US Budget process:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_budget_process

Liberals want the tax rates of Clinton. Conservatives would prefer the spending rates of Clinton.  The overall number of jobs under Obama is still below where it was when he took office.  I know it's all Bush's fault according to liberals, but when will the economy become Obama's?  So far, all the  stimulus seems to be mainly stimulating the UAW, AFSCME, SEIU and Obama's Solyndra buddies.  Could it be that political contributions have consequences?

The assertion that we are borrowing 40 cents on the dollar comes from Democratic Senator Kent Conrad on Sunday, January 23rd, 2011 in an interview on "This Week with Christiane Amanpour."

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/jan/27/kent-conrad/kent-conrad-said-were-borrowing-40-cents-every-dol/

Grand Bargain?

There is no grand bargain worth having that Obama would ever offer.  Closed door grand bargain negotiations are a mechanism to shift the blame for failure to Republicans.  The House should continue to pass bills and let the Senate Democrats choke on them.  In immigration as well as budgets, the key is to pass bills in the House that seem reasonable and let Harry Reid explain why they don't pass the Senate.  For example, a guest worker program is a natural for Republicans.  However, once such a bill gets to the Senate it will die because the SEIU and the union farm workers don't want a guest worker program to pass.  The Senate would be unlikely to even consider the bill.  How would Senate failure to pass a guest worker bill play with Hispanic voters?  An expansion of H1B visas is another Republican natural that the Democrat's organized labor allies hate.  How would the Senate failure to pass a House expanded H1B visas bill look to Asian voters? 

Sequester Cuts as Drug Ad Disclaimer

These cuts are not for everyone.  In some liberals, these cuts can cause blindness, nausea, anxiety and even rectal leakage.  Do not take these cuts if you have allergic reactions to tea.  Consult your Senators before taking these cuts.  They may have alternative cuts that might reduce undesirable side effects. 

Keynsian Economics Has Failed

Unfortunately, liberal elites are still the slaves of a dead economist, John Maynard Keynes.  Economists have not recognized the failure of Keynsian economics.  I think the uniform failure of deficit spending to promote growth has to be recognized.  If the model worked, we would not be talking about Japan's lost decade, or more accurately lost generation.  Japan's debt is now over 200 percent of GDP.  Their growth rate in response to an ocean of deficits is uniformly poor.  The story is similar in Europe, particularly Southern Europe.   There is no way Uncle Sam can continue to borrow 40 cents of every dollar spent.  When governments get this far behind, they usually pay off the debt with hyper inflation.  This never ends well.  The usual outcome is social disintegration followed by dictatorship.  For example, the hyper inflation of Weimar Germany after WWI lead to Hitler.  The Federal Reserve's constant quantitative easing in search of economic growth is going to lead to increasing inflation and interest rates.  They are buying 70 percent of the debt Federal Governments incurs each month.  Once interest rates go up, the deficits will balloon, 160 billion dollars a year for each percentage point.  We have got to cut spending and stop the coming train wreck.

Borrowing 40 Cents on the Dollar

How can you liberals ignore that 40 cents of every dollar Uncle Sam spends is borrowed?  Do you liberals really believe that you can raise taxes that much on just "the rich?"  The fiscal cliff negotiations were all tax increases, combined with some small spending INCREASES.  That’s right, a balanced approach of all taxes and no cuts.  We conservatives are done with tax increases.  Pass a bill in the Senate with cuts equivalent to the sequester cuts and we’ll carefully consider it.    I'm not big on personal attacks, but liberals seem stubbornly math challenged.  When any government's debt gets too big to pay, the only way to pay it is hyper inflation.

       The Federal Reserve has been buying 70% of Uncle Sam's debt.  They just raised their official inflation target.  Congressional liberals and our liberal president object to ANY spending cuts.  Do you seriously think this can go on forever with no consequences?  How much money can the Fed create before there's a serious problem?  I guess liberals want to do the experiment.  With regard to the relationship of unemployment and inflation, google the Phillips Curve, and cure your ignorance.  Liberals are Debt Deniers.  Every percentage point that the interest rates do go up will cost us about 160 billion dollars per year. Governments that run up this kind of debt, generally use inflation to pay it off in cheaper dollars.  See for example, the Weimar Republic in post WW1 Germany, where it famously took a wheelbarrow full of money to buy a loaf of bread.  I am not sure how you think we can continue Social Security and Medicare when our economy is trashed by hyper inflation and financial disaster.  You seem to think there is no limit to how much money we can print.  Money has value only when it's scarce.  If you print unlimited quantities, it's not scarce.  If the money is worthless, all the compassion in the world is not going to help seniors, including me.

      For me, the optimal inflation rate is zero.  When I was a kid, in the 50’s and 60’s, gold was 35 dollars an ounce and a good sized candy bar was a nickel.  Now, with the Federal Reserve having pursued the “optimal inflation rate” all these years, gold is 1,678 dollars an ounce and a candy bar costs at least $1.25.  Both parties are to blame for that.  However, there is no need to continue looking for an optimal inflation rate.

As far as Republicans not letting Obama have everything he wants, I can only quote a much beloved president: "Elections have consequences."  This is true in Congress every bit as much as it is for the president.