IT’S THE SPENDING, STUPID
Some Basic Economics
Dumb blonde joke: “How can I be overdrawn? I still have checks in my checkbook.”
We’ve all known people like this. They have new cars, entertainment systems and dine out all the time. Vacations are lavish and exotic. They can’t wait to get into the next biggest house. And yet, as far as you know, their income is about the same as yours. One day, that huge house is for sale and sad kids are coming home from a college they can no longer afford. Other times, these are the people who can’t ever retire, having assumed Social Security will cover their bills.
It's so easy to live beyond your means. We expect to take out loans to buy a house and a car; it’s easy to start putting everything on credit cards, which feel like “free money.” But unlike the federal government, when the bill ultimately comes due, we cannot print money. Each of us pay the price for profligacy.
Government Budgets on Steroids
It’s easy to blame Democrats for overspending, but Republicans are also guilty. It seems the focus of every politician is to ensure re-electability, which means offering “stuff” to voters. But we’ve been here before – in the Carter era, where inflation was 7-10% and taxation went up substantially. Remember gas prices tripling, homes becoming unaffordable and people having to make hard choices despite good incomes. It was all supposed to be “temporary.” On college campuses, riots were common. Weak America encouraged bad actors to invade countries, like Nicaragua and Afghanistan.
Biden is far worse than Carter, committing many of the same mistakes, and Carter was bad enough. The belief is that high taxes will bring prosperity; they won’t. While both parties spend too much, Democrats are worse, and when their policies fail, they double down on costly, intrusive actions that beggar all of us. It’s time to turn it around.
Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) – Solutions
Long noted as the leader in identifying waste in government, CAGW continually offers politicians ways to make our country more prosperous by shrinking government and cutting regulations. We voters need to demand implementation of their recommendations. Here are some of the latest suggestions from this think tank.
1. Reforming Civil Service. The Federal government is the largest employer, having 2.1 MM civilian workers (not counting military). It’s not just their salaries; they can use work time on union efforts, which in 2019, resulted in a cost of $135MM from 2.6 MM hours of time. That’s our money. It’s very hard to fire anyone, even if they are incompetent, lazy or the work they do is no longer needed. Most are incredibly unproductive, as there is no reason to hustle. Pay and benefits used to be modest, with a nice pension, but now, they rival and exceed the private sector, still with mandated generous pensions based on their inflated salaries.
2. Earmarks – While they were temporarily killed, earmarks (special spending for a politician to ensure more votes) have returned in full force, courtesy of the Democrats. Check out the Congressional Pig Book by CAGW, issued every year. In 2022, there were 5,138 earmarks at a cost of $18.9BB. While not the highest on record, it is still an astonishing number. These are stuck in huge (omnibus) bills, where most of us would never see them. Often, these pet projects would be laughable to us if we knew of them. At the cost, we shouldn’t be laughing.
3. Energy – Green energy is an expensive scam that started showing its costs during Obama’s term. He funded selected solar companies in Silicon Valley, all of which failed spectacularly, at great cost. As you know, Biden wants us off everything that doesn’t come from the sun, wind or water (and the eco-freaks hate the water projects.) During Trump’s term, we became a major energy exporter; now, we are a begging importer, when the resources lie under our own land. He used up loads of our Strategic Energy Reserves, trying to make his policies look good. Blue states jumped on board. It’s hard to afford gas, which we can all see, and our choices for appliances are becoming more limited. One aspect many do not realize is that we have states dependent on natural gas and oil revenues to fund education, healthcare and conservation. Louisiana and Texas are being badly hurt by his policies, with no easy way to recover. Get rid of ALL of the Biden/Left policies and return us to energy independence.
4. Federal Land Management – The Feds own more property than anyone else in our country (even the Chinese). This includes 130,000 domestic civilian buildings which as of 2019 cost billions to operate and maintain. In 2021, 7,697 were vacant and another 2,265 were partly empty.
It’s almost impossible to relinquish the space, due to regulation. In the 116th Congress, Rep. Greg Murphy (R-N.C.) introduced H.R. 6128, the Eliminate Excess Space Act. This would eliminate many regulations making it easier to privatize the space, as needed. This doesn’t even speak to the vast tracts of land which are under-utilized by government decree. Too many want inaccessible land kept from public use for a variety of reasons, few of which make sense. I can also see them closing a lot of buildings in Washington, DC, including space used by Commerce, Education, EPA and other meaningless organizations. Perhaps Justice should lose a few buildings, as incompetent as they have proven to be.
There are many more recommendations. See the link to learn more. This organization is on top of waste and unfortunately, it can take many years to address it. But if we, the voting public, work hard to elect those who understand these issues and seek to downsize government, we may have a chance.
