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Poll: Most Only Want Foreign Aid Cuts

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Photo Credit: APOf 19 options for cutting government spending, only one — reducing foreign aid — was supported by more than 40 percent of Americans, according to a poll released Friday.

The widespread rejection of most ideas to slash spending in the poll from the Pew Research Center shows the difficulty of translating a popular GOP message — the federal budget needs to be shrunk down to size — into political reality. Even on foreign aid, only 48 percent want to cut, compared with 49 percent who want to increase funding or keep it at the same level.

It also displays the difficulty of replacing the $1.2 trillion in spending cuts scheduled to hit March 1. While both Republicans and Democrats say they want to avoid the across-the-board slashes in defense and domestic spending, negotiations are at a standstill and an agreement on replacement cuts could be elusive.

Decreasing funding for the State Department and cutting unemployment aid are both supported by around one-third of Americans. Cuts to the Defense Department and to aid for the needy in the U.S. are backed by about a quarter of Americans. Cuts in all other areas suggested by Pew, including energy, health care, entitlement programs, infrastructure, scientific research and combating crime, receive even less support.

For most categories, a plurality of Americans want to keep spending at the same level.
Even among Republicans, there’s majority support for only two cuts: foreign aid and unemployment assistance.

Read more from this story HERE.

America’s Last Chance

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Let’s expose presidential prevarication. Earlier this year, President Barack Obama warned that Social Security checks will be delayed if Congress fails to increase the government’s borrowing authority by raising the debt ceiling. However, there’s an issue with this warning. According to the 2012 Social Security trustees report, assets in Social Security’s trust funds totaled $2.7 trillion, and Social Security expenditures totaled $773 billion. Therefore, regardless of what Congress does about the debt limit, Social Security recipients are guaranteed their checks. Just take the money from the $2.7 trillion assets held in trust.

Which is the lie, Social Security checks must be delayed if the debt ceiling is not raised or there’s $2.7 trillion in the Social Security trust funds? The fact of the matter is that they are both lies. The Social Security trust funds contain nothing more than IOUs, bonds that have absolutely no market value. In other words, they are worthless bookkeeping entries. Social Security is a pay-as-you-go system, meaning that the taxes paid by today’s workers are immediately sent out as payment to today’s retirees. Social Security is just another federal program funded out of general revenues.

If the congressional Republicans had one ounce of brains, they could easily thwart the president and his leftist allies’ attempt to frighten older Americans about not receiving their Social Security checks and thwart their attempt to frighten other Americans by saying “we are not a deadbeat nation” and suggesting the possibility of default if the debt ceiling is not raised. In 2012, monthly federal tax revenue was about $200 billion. Monthly Social Security expenditures were about $65 billion per month, and the monthly interest payment on our $16 trillion national debt was about $30 billion. The House could simply enact a bill prioritizing how federal tax revenues will be spent. It could mandate that Social Security recipients and interest payments on the national debt be the first priorities and then send the measure to the Senate and the president for concurrence.

Read more from this story HERE.

Public Employee Unions Spending More on Lobbying as Membership Booms

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Unlike their private sector counterparts who have seen steady membership declines for several decades, federal career civil service employee unions are expanding their numbers even as they devote more dues money to lobbying Congress and the White House, often on issues only tangentially related to goverment workplace conditions, according to OpenSecrets.org’s Janie Boschma.

Approximately half of the federal government’s 2.1 million career employees are union members, and the largest of those unions is the American Federation of Government Employees, an AFL-CIO affiliate that saw a 43 percent increase in members to 282,535 last year, Boschma said. The increase came about “partly because AFGE began representing Transportation Security Administration employees last year.” she said.

The union “also increased its lobbying budget to $1.49 million last year, an increase of $190,000 over 2011, the biggest jump for federal unions in 2012. According to its fourth-quarter report, AFGE mostly lobbied budget and appropriations issues to secure funding for Customs and Border Patrol, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, for example.”

AFGE is the largest of the federal employee unions but it is not the biggest spending public employee union lobbyist. That distinction belongs to the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, also an AFL-CIO affiliate, which Boschma said spent $2.68 million on lobbying in 2012.

“According to its fourth-quarter report, AFSCME lobbied on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, as well as job creation bills, Hurricane Sandy relief and the fiscal cliff negotiations,” she said.

Read more from this story HERE.

The Spending Sequester Will Grow the Private Economy — Don’t Back Off

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Photo Credit: Tax CreditsYesterday’s report of a 0.1 percent GDP decline for the fourth quarter came as a surprise to most forecasters. But it actually masks considerable strength in the private economy. Namely, housing investment in the fourth quarter jumped 15.3 percent annually, business equipment and software spiked 12.4 percent, and real private final sales rose 2.6 percent. All in, the domestic private sector of the economy increased 3.4 percent annually — a very respectable gain.

And here’s one for the record books: Working ahead of year-end tax hikes, individuals shifted so much money to the fourth quarter at the 35 percent top rate that personal income grew by 7.9 percent annually — a huge number. And there’s more: In order to beat the taxman, dividend income rose 85.2 percent annually. You think tax incentives don’t matter? Guess again.

Now, all this private-sector strength occurred despite the fact that government spending — namely military spending — dropped 6.6 percent. Inventories also lost ground and the trade deficit widened.

But here’s a key point: Military spending has now fallen virtually to its lower sequester-spending-cut baseline. It did so in one quarter by about $40 billion. So the brunt of the impact over the coming years has already been felt. (Normally, as of recent years, military spending has been virtually flat.)

Read more on this story HERE.

False Fiscal Conservatives And Budget Crisis Realism

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Dear Socially Liberal Fiscal-Conservative Friend,

That’s pretty toothy, so I’m going to call you “Bob.” But whatever specific name you go by, Bob, you know who you are. You’re the sort of person who says to his conservative friends or co-workers something like, “I would totally vote for Republicans if they could just give up on these crazy social issues.”

When you explain your votes for Barack Obama, you talk about how Republicans used to be much more moderate and focused on important things such as low taxes, fiscal discipline, and balanced budgets.

When Colin Powell was on Meet the Press the other day, you nodded along as he lamented how the GOP has lost its way since the days when it was all about fiscal responsibility.

And, Bob, you think Republicans are acting crazy-pants on the debt ceiling. You don’t really follow all of the details, but you can just tell that the GOP is being “extreme,” thanks to those wacky tea partiers.

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Picking Fights Republicans Can Win: An Alternative to Debt Ceiling Showdown

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Watching the news media this weekend start the process of setting up Republicans for another losing fight has been depressing.

Congressional Republicans seem to be moving toward three decisions that are profoundly wrong.

Just listening this weekend some Republican leaders seem to be saying: They will fight over the debt ceiling; They are urging President Barack Obama to lead; They have come out of one failed cycle of secret negotiations with the White House and seem eager to start right back in on a new cycle of negotiations.

All three are demonstrably wrong.

The debt ceiling is a terrible place to fight when there is a Sequester bill and a Continuing Resolution available.

Read more from this article HERE.

Obama to Boehner: ‘We Don’t Have a Spending Problem’

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In an interview with Stephen Moore of the Wall Street Journal, newly re-elected House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) opened up about President Obama’s utter unwillingness to cut a single dollar from federal spending. In a stunning admission, Obama reportedly told Boehner, “We don’t have a spending problem.”

Boehner added that President Obama continues to maintain that America’s federal deficit is caused not by governmental overspending but by “a health-care problem.” Said Boehner, “They blame all of the fiscal woes on our health-care system.” Boehner told Obama, “Clearly we have a health-care problem, which is about to get worse with Obamacare. But, Mr. President, we have a very serious spending problem.” Obama eventually replied, “I’m getting tired of hearing you say that.”

Obama may be tired of hearing Boehner talk about a spending problem, particularly when Obama has been re-elected on the basis of ignoring government spending. Nonetheless, America does have a spending problem, which Obama is steadfastly ignoring. “He’s so ideological himself,” Boehner explained, “and he’s unwilling to take on the left of his own party.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Kicking the Can in 2013: Congress Doing What It Does Best

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It seemed like a good idea at the time. After Christmas, my wife, Betsy, and I planned to head south to this lovely barrier island in the South Carolina Lowcountry.

Our plan included celebrating New Year’s quietly with as many of our kids, their kids and our friends as possible and then returning to Virginia.

It was supposed to be the antithesis of Times Square. Like so many of the best-laid plans of mice and men, it didn’t turn out quite as expected.

Only six of our grandchildren made the trek south, because so many of them had this year’s version of Spanish influenza, bubonic plague or both. The kickoff for 2013 didn’t turn out much better for the rest of our countrymen. The new year is now under way — and if the next 51 weeks go anything like the first episode, this 13th annum of the 21st century is going to be a doozy.

As we kissed off 2012 with a sip of Champagne, the U.S. Congress was in the process of raising our taxes. Politicians from both parties in the House of Representatives and the Senate told us they were making “Bush-era tax cuts permanent” for “99 percent of Americans” while increasing taxes on “the top 1 percent.”

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The Fiscal-Cliff Mirage

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The politics of the “fiscal cliff” deal is debatable: On the one hand, Boehner got the “Bush tax cuts” made permanent for most Americans; Obama was forced to abandon his goal of increasing rates for those earning $250,000. On the other, on taxes Republicans caved to the same class-warfare premises (the rich need to pay their “fair share”) they’d successfully fought off a mere two years ago; while on spending the Democrats not only refused to make cuts, they refused to make cuts even part of the discussion.

Which of the above is correct? Who cares? As I said, the politics is debatable. But the reality isn’t. I hate to keep plugging my book After America in this space, but if you buy multiple copies they’ll come in very useful for insulating your cabin after the power grid collapses. At any rate, right up there at the front — page six — I write as follows:

“The prevailing political realities of the United States do not allow for any meaningful course correction. And, without meaningful course correction, America is doomed.”

Washington keeps proving the point. The political class has just spent two months on a down-to-the-wire nail-biting white-knuckle thrill-ride negotiation the result of which is more business as usual. At the end, as always, Dr. Obama and Dr. Boehner emerge in white coats, surgical masks around their necks, bloody scalpels in hand, and announce that it was touch and go for a while but the operation was a complete success — and all they’ve done is applied another temporary band-aid that’s peeling off even as they speak. They’re already prepping the OR for the next life-or-death surgery on the debt ceiling, tentatively scheduled for next Tuesday or a week on Thursday or the third Sunday after Epiphany.

No epiphanies in Washington: The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the latest triumphant deal includes $2 billion of cuts for fiscal year 2013. Wow! That’s what the government of the United States borrows every ten hours and 38 minutes. Spending two months negotiating ten hours of savings is like driving to a supermarket three states away to save a nickel on your grocery bill.

Read more from this story HERE.

Federal Spending Up 78% After Inflation Since 1998

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President Obama says he wants a “balanced” approach to the fiscal cliff. But critics argue the real problem is spending, which has far outstripped rising tax revenue as well as economic growth.

Federal government revenue rose from $1.7 trillion to $2.4 trillion from fiscal 1998 to 2012, slightly exceeding inflation. Revenue growth averaged 2.9% annually, despite two recessions, bear markets — and tax cuts.

But federal spending rose nearly twice as fast — 5.7% per year — surging from $1.6 trillion to $3.5 trillion over that same span.

The spending spike also exceeds growth in the population.

Some of the spending surge came during the Bush administration — the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, increases in non-defense discretionary spending and the creation of the Medicare prescription drug entitlement.

Read more from this story HERE.