Follies from Jackass Bend on the Potomac

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I’ve been screening the headlines since Friday.  Obama set a deadline for raising the debt limit.  The House passed a bill to raise the debt limit.  It also contained a Constitutional amendment to require a balanced budget. That item is known as Cut, Cap and Balance.

The House and Senate dems screeched and declared it dead.  BO said that 80% of Americans want taxes increases.

Well the first may be true.  As long as the dems hold the majority of the Senate and toe the party line, the House bill will die.  The second however is another Obama lie. 

Editorial: No, Americans Don’t Want Higher Taxes

 Posted 07/15/2011 06:57 PM ET
Budget: Four of five Americans are “sold” on higher taxes to solve the deficit impasse, according to President Obama. Either he’s deceiving himself or he completely misunderstands how the public really feels.
The president on Thursday cited a recent Gallup poll that purportedly shows, in his words, “80% want higher taxes” as part of a deal to slash the deficit. “The American people are sold,” he said. “The problem is members of Congress are dug in ideologically.”
In fact, a quick look at the polling data referenced by the president shows this isn’t true. Not even close.
Gallup itself breaks it out: Those who say they want the deficit reduced “only/mostly with spending cuts” total 50% of those polled. Those who say they’d like it done “only/mostly with tax increases” total 11%. That’s not 80%.
Americans aren’t fools. Democrats just think they are. Whether its a $4 trillion “grand bargain” or a smaller $2.4 trillion cut in the expected $10 trillion in deficits over the next decade, if tax hikes are part of the deal it will sink the economy. Tax hikes are a nonstarter.
Americans see the explosion of $1 trillion-plus deficits stretching for decades to come, $107 trillion in unpaid bills for entitlements and a failed two-year Keynesian experiment that has pushed up federal spending by 25%. They know taxes didn’t do this — spending did.
That’s why Republicans should ignore Obama’s demand for tax hikes. In our own IBD/TIPP Poll, 60% of Americans said they’d be “less likely” to vote for someone who supports increasing the debt ceiling without “major spending cuts.” Heck, 58% said they either “somewhat” or “strongly” oppose raising the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling at all.
In our June poll, 74% of Americans opposed tax hikes as a way of getting out of our economic mess, while 80% also opposed more government spending.

I think BO is a pathological liar. He lies when there is no need. But, be that as it may, I’m not confident the ‘Pubs have the moral fortitude to stand firm.

There is no need to raise the debt limit.  As has been documented here, there is sufficient continuing income to service our debt, SS, Medicare, Veterans and the Military.

Other government spending, however, would be affected.  But, if the administration chooses wisely—more likely forced by Congress, there is a plethora of discretionary spending that can be blocked. 

The Heritage Foundation has a proposal to cut $343 Billion from the budget.  It’d be a good start.
 

Table 1: Spending Cuts for FY 2012
(in millions of dollars)
Agriculture
$15,000
 Replace farm subsidies with Farmer Savings Accounts and improved crop insurance.
$2,033
 Eliminate the Foreign Agriculture Service.
$1,500
 Merge all four agriculture outreach and research agencies and cut their budget in half.
$1,000
 Fund the Food Safety and Inspection Service with user fees.
Commerce
$500
 Eliminate business subsidies from the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Community Development
$6,000
 Eliminate the Community Development Block Grant program.
$598
 Eliminate the Rural Utilities Service.
$523
 Eliminate the Economic Development Administration.
$480
 Eliminate NeighborWorks America (formerly the Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation).
$200
 Consolidate the Rural Housing and Development Programs and convert them into block grants.
$73
 Eliminate the Appalachian Regional Commission.
$48
 Eliminate the Denali Commission.
$31
 Eliminate the Minority Development Business Agency.
$8
 Eliminate the Delta Regional Authority.
Education
$8,000
 Return Pell Grants to their 2009 funding level of $24 billion, which is still double the 2007 level.
$2,000
 Trim Head Start by $2 billion and convert it into vouchers.
$2,000
 Scale back the Education Department bureaucracy.
$1,500
 Eliminate dozens of small and duplicative education grants.
$298
 Eliminate state grants for Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities.
Energy and the Environment
$6,500
 Reduce energy subsidies for commercialization and some research activities.
$600
 Block grant and devolve Environmental Protection Agency grant programs.
$200
 Restructure the Power Marketing Administrations to charge market-based rates.
$63
 Eliminate the Science to Achieve Results Program.
Government Reform
$44,000
 Halve federal program payment errors by 2012, especially by reducing Medicare errors and earned income tax credit errors.
Tighten oversight by spending $5 billion on new resources, such as updated computer systems, and then recover $49 billion in payment errors.
$20,000
 Rescind unobligated balances after 36 months.
$12,500
 Halve the $25 billion spent to maintain vacant federal properties.
$10,000
 Cut the federal employee travel budget to $4 billion (half of FY 2000 spending).
$3,000
 Freeze federal pay until it can be reformed.
$1,000
 Suspend acquisition of federal office space.
$600
 Trim the federal vehicle fleet by 20 percent (a reduction of 100,000 vehicles).
$300
 Cut the House and Senate budgets back to the 2008 level of $2.2 billion.
$215
 Eliminate the Presidential Election Campaign Fund.
$100
 Tighten controls on federal employee credit cards and cut down on delinquencies.
$70
 Require federal employees to fly coach on domestic flights.
Health Care
$6,200
 Reform Medigap.
$5,000
 Repeal Obamacare (larger savings in later years).
$3,700
 Require Medicare home health co-payments.
$673
 Eliminate the Maternal and Child Health Block Grant.
$414
 Eliminate Health Professions grants.
$327
 Eliminate Title X Family Planning.
$150
 Eliminate the National Health Service Corps.
$98
 Repeal Rural Health Outreach and Flexibility grants.
Homeland Security
$2,700
 Eliminate most homeland security grants to states and allow states to finance their own programs.
Income Security
$500
 Better enforce eligibility requirements for food stamps.
Interior
$1,500
 Open the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to leasing.
(The savings are leasing revenues, which are classified as negative spending in the federal budget.)
$200
 Suspend federal land purchases.
International
$2,636
 Eliminate the Development Assistance Program.
$625
 Eliminate the State Department’s education and cultural exchange programs.
$321
 Eliminate the International Trade Administration’s trade promotion activities or charge the beneficiaries.
$183
 Eliminate the Democracy Fund.
$68
 Eliminate the International Trade Commission and transfer oversight of intellectual property rights to the Treasury Department.
$56
 Eliminate the Trade and Development Agency.
$29
 Eliminate the Overseas Private Investment Corporation.
$19
 Eliminate the East–West Center.
$17
 Eliminate the United States Institute of Peace.
$2
 Eliminate the Japan–United States Friendship Commission.
Justice
$7,334
 Eliminate all Justice Department grants except those from the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the National Institute of Justice,
thereby empowering states to finance their own justice programs.
$398
 Eliminate the Legal Services Corporation.
$32
 Eliminate the Justice Department’s Community Relations Service.
$30
 Eliminate the duplicative Office of National Drug Control Policy.
$26
 Reduce funding for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division by 20 percent
because of its policy against race-neutral enforcement of the law.
$4
 Eliminate the State Justice Institute.
Labor
$4,300
 Eliminate failed federal job training programs.
$2,000
 Eliminate the ineffective Job Corps.
$576
 Eliminate the Senior Community Service Employment Program.
National Science Foundation
$1,700
 Reduce National Science Foundation funding to 2008 levels.
$86
 Eliminate National Science Foundation spending on elementary and secondary education.
Transportation
$45,000
 Devolve the federal highway program and most transit spending to the states.
$1,900
 Privatize Amtrak.
$1,009
 Eliminate grants to large and medium-sized hub airports.
$554
 Eliminate the Maritime Administration.
$125
 Eliminate the Essential Air Service Program.
Treasury
$26,646
 Eliminate the additional child refundable credit.
$103
 Eliminate the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund.
Veterans
$2,500
 Cap increases in Department of Veterans Affairs health care spending.
$1,930
 Reduce Veterans’ Disability Compensation to account for Social Security Disability Insurance payments.
Cross-Agency and Other
$60,000
 Repeal unspent stimulus spending.
$8,000
 Switch to using the “Superlative CPI” in funding calculations.
$6,000
 Repeal the Davis–Bacon Act.
$2,250
 Eliminate Federal Communications Commission funding for school Internet service.
$2,000
 Ban project labor agreements on all federally funded construction projects.
$1,000
 Eliminate the Small Business Administration, which unnecessarily intervenes in free markets.
$736
 Eliminate the National Community Service programs, such as AmeriCorps.
$253
 Eliminate the Institute of Museum Services and Library Services.
$140
 Eliminate the National Endowment for the Humanities.
$133
 Eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts.
$61
 Eliminate Army Corps of Engineers funding for beach replenishment projects.
$10
 Eliminate the Commission of Fine Arts.
$8
 Eliminate the National Capital Planning Commission.
$5
 Eliminate the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation.
Total
$343,207 million

Like I said, it’s a good start…but it’s just the start.                   

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