Unilateral Disarmament

You have to love the Republicans.  They have just won a landslide victory for no other reason than they are not the Democrats.  In that case, I suppose it would be more accurate to say the Democrats suffered a crushing defeat, a rejection of their policies that have given us an anemic economy and a pathetic world standing.  Clearly, the voters want a change in direction.  Therefore, before the new Republican majority takes office in a month, let's pass a budget that will last through September.  What?  Are you nuts?  No, you are spineless Republicans.

Why would the Republicans allow the lame duck Democrat Senate to be involved in a long term budget?  It is not going to reflect Republican spending priorities.  It isn't going to defund Obamacare.  It will be a status quo ante budget that will take the power of the purse out of the incoming majority's hand until October.  Why?  First, fear of a shutdown.  Yes, the Republicans are so terrified of a shutdown that they will do just about anything to avoid it, even if that makes the election meaningless.  Obama knows this.  He will veto the government into a shutdown and then blame Republican intransigence.  That's what I would do!  Duh!  If the Republicans can't answer that, then the election is meaningless.  Second, the Republicans want to spend the money.  What is the point of taking over a multi-trillion dollar government and then reducing the amount of spending?  Sure, that's what the voters want but they don't know how much fun it is to spend it and have people come on bended knee to beg for grants and tax exemptions.

 

It is funny that many Republicans have criticized Obama for taking military action off the table when negotiating with Iran, declaring that such can only embolden Iran and weaken our position.  Are they oblivious to the parallels with government shutdown and impeachment?  Never take it off the table unless you get something in return.

Much Ado About Nothing

The president is painting a picture of apocalypse if the sequestration is allowed to happen.  This is a strange change from November of 2011 when he announced that he would veto any bill that sought to prevent the automatic cuts.  Of course, these aren't even cuts.  The sequestration is actually $15 billion more spending than last year.  Preventing the sequestration would be $100 billion in more spending.  Strange, no?

This gets to the trick of Washington accounting.  All budgets are scheduled to grow year after year.  So, let us suppose that all budgets are automatically set to rise by 10% each year.  Thus, if the Pentagon is getting $600 billion this year, it will get $660 billion next year and $726 billion the year after that.  Instead, sequestration 'slashes' the budget 'to the bone' by only spending $630 billion next year and $693 billion the following year.  Oh, the humanity!  There are no cuts, only reductions in the rate of growth.

Here is an interesting note.  What if we didn't cut or increase but just spent the same as last year's budget.  Oh, there was no budget last year.  Or the year before that.  Or the year before that.  Okay, let's skip back to the 2008 budget.  Suppose we just spent that same budget for the last 5 years.  What would the deficit be today?  $279 billion, far below the trillon dollar deficit we have.  We are spending $800 billion more a year today than we were in 2008 and yet can't afford to 'cut' a mere $85 billion?  Really?

Government is greedy.  It wants all of your money.  It will continue to take your money and spend your money.  It will tell you that the world will be thrown into a Great Depression and the sky will fall if you force the government to cut back the way most people have been forced to cut back.  A reduction of 2.4% in its spending is unacceptable.  Even after Obama got his $600 billion tax hike in the Fiscal Cliff, he can't give up $85 billion in spending.  It's because he wants a 'balanced approach' that 'asks millionaires and billionaires' to pay more while government doesn't give up one thin dime.  Balance!

Why No Budget?

Today, the Senate voted down 5 budgets.  President Obama's proposed budget went down to a 0-99 defeat.  The other four budgets, proposed by various Republican senators, were also defeated but none so badly as this.  Only Rand Paul's budget came close to matching Obama's crushing defeat though his got 16 votes in favor.

The Constitution requires Congress to pass a budget.  The House passed a budget last year and passed one this year.  The Senate has gone more than 1000 days without passing a budget.  The House is controlled by Republicans and the Senate by Democrats.  Of note, it only takes 51 votes to pass a budget, so the Democrats could pass a budget without a single Republican vote.  Moreover, as it is a budget, it is not subject to filibuster.  Reconciliation is how the Bush Tax Cuts were passed even though the Republicans didn't have a supermajority.

One wonders why the Democrats have failed to pass a budget.  The Republicans can't stop them from passing a budget.  Once a budget is passed, the House and Senate would reconcile their differing budgets through horse trading, which is how it has happened for more than 2 centuries.  Why not now?  We've had divided government before.  This should be nothing new.  And yet we are moving into 3 years without a budget.  There must be a reason.

Failure to pass a budget means that the only options on the table are to continue current spending levels via a continuing resolution or a government shutdown.  Republicans were burned badly the last time they tried the government shutdown (1995) and won't dare to do it again.  That leaves the continuing resolution.  What budget is thus extended?  The 2009 budget, which dramatically expanded government spending through the stimulus package.  Thus we have our answer.

If the Senate passes a budget and then goes into conference committee with the House, it is a certainty that budget priorities will change.  The Democrats will not get a budget as much to their liking as the 2009 budget that was passed by a Democratic House, Senate, and President.  Better to forever extend a budget they like than to pass a new budget that they dislike.  All the complaints that the Republicans are intransigent is nonsense but it plays well in the media.

Who's Unpatriotic Now?

The problem is, is that the way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion for the first 42 presidents – #43 added $4 trillion by his lonesome, so that we now have over $9 trillion of debt that we are going to have to pay back — $30,000 for every man, woman and child. That’s irresponsible. It’s unpatriotic.

Barak Obama, April 2008

Today, The US is $15.5 trillion in debt. That is $49,725 for every man, woman and child. Is that responsible? Is that patriotic? Bush took 8 years to accomplish his irresponsible and unpatriotic spending. Obama has already outdone him and it took less than 4 years. And spending on Obamacare hasn’t even begun. The path to insolvency is as clear as day and yet we are not taking action. No tax rate can pay for the promises that government has made. Government WILL renege on its promises because it is bankrupt. The debt is less than half the story.

The government has also promised to pay $15 trillion to retirees through Social Security, $20 trillion for prescription drugs, and $81 trillion for Medicare. A business is required to put these liabilities on its balance sheets but the government doesn’t; that would be a crime under the accounting rules that government has imposed on others. These bills cannot be paid and the longer we wait to reform the system the worse the disaster will be. But every president and congress decides to kick the can down the road. Let the next fellow deal with it.

Paul Ryan has a plan and has been repeatedly savaged for it. He wants to throw granny off a cliff according to a commercial. At least he has the courage to propose a fix. I also like Ron Paul’s plan of cutting a trillion dollars in his first budget. Everyone knows this must be done. MUST. There is no avoiding this. Either cut or go bankrupt. There is no other way.

Abandoning Space

On March 10, President Obama canceled the Constellation Program. With this decision, the United States will no longer be able to place astronauts in space once the space shuttle is retired later this year. Just as China is working on a space program and even Hugo Chavez wants to team with the Russians for a launch facility in Venezuela, the US is throwing in the towel. We must now hitch a ride on Russian rockets, which I expect will be increasingly more expensive as they realize they have a monopoly on space travel. What will happen if they refuse? Perhaps Virgin Galactic will be able to taxi American astronauts to the international space station.

Obama has said that the US cannot afford the expense of the Constellation Program. Funding for the next 15 years was projected to be $217 billion, a little over one fourth of the cost of last year's Stimulus. And who knows how much Health Care Reform will eventually cost. So, yes, we cannot afford it but that could be used as a reason to stop all of the spending that Obama hasn't canceled.

However, this change has allowed NASA scientists the free time to help Toyota figure out their brake problem. Ah, I can just image all the kids with dreams of being astronauts and rocket scientists.