Calvin Coolidge, the thirtieth president of the United States, was known by both his political allies and political foes as a man of principal. Whether those who worked with him, or in many cases against him, agreed with his economy and federalism or not, all understood clearly the principles he lived by, and by which he tried to govern a nation. The extent of his commitment to the founding principle of federalism was tested in the floods of 1927.
Mississippi suffered a devastating flood and the affected area's representatives in congress tried to pressure President Coolidge into supplying federal monies to aid the stricken area. Coolidge and his administration had worked hard for years to trim the federal budget, which lead to lower spending when he left office than when he entered and a smaller national debt. A feat that has not been achieved again in the ensuing 85 years since Silent Cal left office.
One Mississippi representative smugly stated that the president would surely open the spigot of federal dollars if his home state of Vermont had been the victim of nature's wrath. Later in the year that representative's supposition was tested when Vermont was inundated with flood waters that damaged whole towns and displaced hundreds of thousands of residents. True to his federalist beliefs, Calvin Coolidge did not open up the federal vault and start shoveling money to flood ravaged areas.
Calvin Coolidge knew, as the Founders knew who proceeded him by 150 years, that once the federal government had the authority to distribute taxpayer dollars to special interests, even if those special interests were areas of the country affected by natural disasters, then the limiting factor written into the constitution meant nothing. Mr. Coolidge suffered the slings and arrows of myopic politicians of his day who wanted to garner the votes and adulation of their constituents using federal taxpayer money. It was this kind of myopia that would drag the United States into the inescapable cavern of debt in which we currently find ourselves.
I was reminded of Calvin Coolidge's probity and adherence to his principles this week when House republicans showed just the opposite characteristics in passing a spending bill that will fund the federal government through September of 2015. A cowardly piece of budgetary legislation in which the issue of executive amnesty and the yoke of ObamaCare around the necks of the American people were absent without leave.
Some defenders of Speaker Boehner and the rest of his support staff for the Obama agenda may point to the fact that Harry Reid and the Democrats still control the senate until the Republicans officially take control next month. That is true, but the Republican leadership in the House would not even allow the hint of standing on principle with their refusal to bring Representative Nick Mulvaney's amendment to the floor for a vote. An amendment that would send a strong signal to President Obama that this is still a nation of laws, laws created by the people's representatives in congress and enforced by the executive branch.
I fear for our nation, not because of what a rouge president is doing to it, but because those who should be in opposition have become silly excuse machines that continually spew reasons why they can not achieve. Meanwhile the ghost of Calvin Coolidge haunts the corridors and alcoves of the capital and rattles the chains of moral rectitude and adherence to principles. Unfortunately there seems to be no one left with ears to hear, nor the courage to take up the challenges of true leadership.
Showing posts with label Federal Budget Issues. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Federal Budget Issues. Show all posts
Saturday, December 13, 2014
Thursday, August 28, 2014
Why A Deputy Press Secretary?
Nancy Pelosi once said that Mother Hubbard's cupboard is bare and there is nothing left to cut from the federal budget. The incomprehensible dishonesty of this statement illustrates in stark terms the utter contempt that Democrats have for the American public, a public they think has the combined intelligence as low as the combined honesty of congressional Democrats. Anyone with a sixth grade education knows that it can not possibly take almost 4 trillion dollars to run the United States government. And anyone who has looked at the budget for this country would immediately notice the literally hundreds of departments and programs that are mere duplicates of each other.
I heard a news report recently that is just one small example of what is wrong with the federal government. The deputy press secretary defended President Obama's never ending round of golf by saying that sports and leisure activities are a good way to "clear the head" and "relieve stress." Beyond the stress of playing bad golf, I am not sure what stress the president has, and if his head was any clearer we would be able to see through it.
Putting aside the deputy press secretary's high schoolish statement is the fact that it came from the Deputy Press Secretary. Is the job of press secretary really that tough, the whole hour a day he has to brief the White House press corpse, that he needs a deputy? I know that the Press Secretary probably does more than brief the media everyday, but still, is the position's responsibilities so great that the taxpayers of this nation must shell out their hard earned dollars for a Deputy Press Secretary?
The waste of government is further exemplified by lower level bureaucrats having their own speech writers. In fact, the federal government employs, using taxpayer money, hundreds of speech writers that are at the disposal of bureaucrats, some of which may only give one speech a year. Our first president, George Washington, wrote his own speeches or had Congressman James Madison write them for him, without the use of public funds. If the federal government is hiring managers who can not express themselves in front of a group of people without having a highly paid speech writer put words in their mouths, maybe the nation can survive without their "management skills."
Speech writers may only add millions to the budget, but there are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of items in the federal budget just as wasteful. And millions of dollars turn into billions and hundreds of billions of dollars poured down the bottomless sewer of government waste. In fact, I contend that at least twenty five percent of the federal government can be eliminated without the slightest disruption to the citizens of this great nation, and in many ways the lives of the citizenry would improve immeasurably.
The expansion of the federal government has taken place from the top down. George Washington had four members in his cabinet, today there are 16. Each cabinet level secretary has a department with thousands of employees and multi-billion dollar budgets. So when Nancy Pelosi says there is nothing to be cut from the federal budget, she is either being disingenuous, dishonest, obtuse, or all of the above. And when the Deputy Press Secretary says anything at all, I have to question why the Press Secretary can not say it, or better yet, give those duties to the Vice President. Not only would it save the taxpayers money, but it would provide some very humorous entertainment indeed.
I heard a news report recently that is just one small example of what is wrong with the federal government. The deputy press secretary defended President Obama's never ending round of golf by saying that sports and leisure activities are a good way to "clear the head" and "relieve stress." Beyond the stress of playing bad golf, I am not sure what stress the president has, and if his head was any clearer we would be able to see through it.
Putting aside the deputy press secretary's high schoolish statement is the fact that it came from the Deputy Press Secretary. Is the job of press secretary really that tough, the whole hour a day he has to brief the White House press corpse, that he needs a deputy? I know that the Press Secretary probably does more than brief the media everyday, but still, is the position's responsibilities so great that the taxpayers of this nation must shell out their hard earned dollars for a Deputy Press Secretary?
The waste of government is further exemplified by lower level bureaucrats having their own speech writers. In fact, the federal government employs, using taxpayer money, hundreds of speech writers that are at the disposal of bureaucrats, some of which may only give one speech a year. Our first president, George Washington, wrote his own speeches or had Congressman James Madison write them for him, without the use of public funds. If the federal government is hiring managers who can not express themselves in front of a group of people without having a highly paid speech writer put words in their mouths, maybe the nation can survive without their "management skills."
Speech writers may only add millions to the budget, but there are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of items in the federal budget just as wasteful. And millions of dollars turn into billions and hundreds of billions of dollars poured down the bottomless sewer of government waste. In fact, I contend that at least twenty five percent of the federal government can be eliminated without the slightest disruption to the citizens of this great nation, and in many ways the lives of the citizenry would improve immeasurably.
The expansion of the federal government has taken place from the top down. George Washington had four members in his cabinet, today there are 16. Each cabinet level secretary has a department with thousands of employees and multi-billion dollar budgets. So when Nancy Pelosi says there is nothing to be cut from the federal budget, she is either being disingenuous, dishonest, obtuse, or all of the above. And when the Deputy Press Secretary says anything at all, I have to question why the Press Secretary can not say it, or better yet, give those duties to the Vice President. Not only would it save the taxpayers money, but it would provide some very humorous entertainment indeed.
Friday, December 13, 2013
The Lowdown On Shutdowns
Two recent examples of Republicants' irrational fear of government shutdowns revealed themselves to me in the last couple of days. The first was from Congressman Paul Ryan, Chairman of the House Budget Committee, who used his fear of shutdowns as a reason to compromise his fiscal conservatism by lending his name and support to the budget he authored with Patty Murray, Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. The second example was from Bill Bennett, host of Morning In America and former cabinet member for both Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. Mr. Bennett proclaimed on his show that shutdowns of the Federal government are always blamed on Republicants, and subsequently hurt them politically.
Mr. Bennett and other modacans (my term for moderate Republicans) continue to make the error in judgment of accepting every premise that the Democrat party and the rest of the Left proffers as being gospel. The modacans have said for years that the Newt Gingrich-lead shutdown in 1995 was a political disaster for Republicants, simply because that was the narrative advanced by the Democrat party and the main stream media. The fact is that the 1995 shutdown forced President Clinton into a balanced budget and welfare reform, among other legislative victories for the people of the United States. And five years after the shutdown, George W. Bush was elected for his first of two terms as president. The political failures that Republicants have had since, have been because of their own unwillingness to stand on their principles like the Gingrich House did in '95.
The even more blatant example of Republicants snatching defeat from the jaws of shutdown victory, is the recent shutdown over de-funding ObamaCare. This was an example of an issue where the vast majority of Americans were behind the Republicants. But weak Republicant leadership in the House abandoned not only their prinicples, but the American people, by letting their fear of what the media was saying about them guide their decision to allow a Democrat victory. The American people were not angry at the Republicants for shutting down the federal government, but shutting down the backbone of their courage.
If one were to eliminate the issue of the shutdown from recent polling, and only asked respondents if they supported the Republicants position which pushed the Democrats to shutdown the government, the polling would show majority support for Republicants. The weak-kneed Republicants allowed themselves to be intimidated by the false narrative of the Left, and now use it as a reason to engage in more government spending through the Ryan/Murray budget. The reason that Paul Ryan and other Republicants voted yesterday to increase spending through the passage of the Ryan/Murray budget, and are still able to consider themselves conservatives, is easy. They look around a Washington that has become dominated by statists and Leftists of every stripe, and they see themselves as comparatively conservative. But an orange stick placed next to a white stick does not make it green simply by virtue of it not being white.
Forcing the Democrats into a partial shutdown of the federal government as a means to save the country from financial ruin is not simply a political parlor trick, but a moral imperative. There was a time when Republicants understood moral imperatives and exhibited clarity of constitutional purpose. But those days have been supplanted by fear, politics, and the worship of approval from a Washington power structure intoxicated by the ever-increasing influx of hard-earned taxpayer dollars.
Mr. Bennett and other modacans (my term for moderate Republicans) continue to make the error in judgment of accepting every premise that the Democrat party and the rest of the Left proffers as being gospel. The modacans have said for years that the Newt Gingrich-lead shutdown in 1995 was a political disaster for Republicants, simply because that was the narrative advanced by the Democrat party and the main stream media. The fact is that the 1995 shutdown forced President Clinton into a balanced budget and welfare reform, among other legislative victories for the people of the United States. And five years after the shutdown, George W. Bush was elected for his first of two terms as president. The political failures that Republicants have had since, have been because of their own unwillingness to stand on their principles like the Gingrich House did in '95.
The even more blatant example of Republicants snatching defeat from the jaws of shutdown victory, is the recent shutdown over de-funding ObamaCare. This was an example of an issue where the vast majority of Americans were behind the Republicants. But weak Republicant leadership in the House abandoned not only their prinicples, but the American people, by letting their fear of what the media was saying about them guide their decision to allow a Democrat victory. The American people were not angry at the Republicants for shutting down the federal government, but shutting down the backbone of their courage.
If one were to eliminate the issue of the shutdown from recent polling, and only asked respondents if they supported the Republicants position which pushed the Democrats to shutdown the government, the polling would show majority support for Republicants. The weak-kneed Republicants allowed themselves to be intimidated by the false narrative of the Left, and now use it as a reason to engage in more government spending through the Ryan/Murray budget. The reason that Paul Ryan and other Republicants voted yesterday to increase spending through the passage of the Ryan/Murray budget, and are still able to consider themselves conservatives, is easy. They look around a Washington that has become dominated by statists and Leftists of every stripe, and they see themselves as comparatively conservative. But an orange stick placed next to a white stick does not make it green simply by virtue of it not being white.
Forcing the Democrats into a partial shutdown of the federal government as a means to save the country from financial ruin is not simply a political parlor trick, but a moral imperative. There was a time when Republicants understood moral imperatives and exhibited clarity of constitutional purpose. But those days have been supplanted by fear, politics, and the worship of approval from a Washington power structure intoxicated by the ever-increasing influx of hard-earned taxpayer dollars.
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
The Constitutional Disillusion Of Continuing Resolutions
The normal and regular budget process used by the federal government is a hammering out of the details that both houses of Congress can pass, and the president can sign. For the last four years the Democrat-controlled Senate and President Obama have intentionally short-circuited the federal budget by not passing one at all. This has given them the opportunity to create unnecessary crisis by having to pass what is called a "Continuing Resolution" every eight months or so. The continuing resolution is a fail safe instituted to fund essential functions of government when a situation arises whereby a budget is not passed before the fiscal deadline to do so. But President Obama and the Democrat Senate have been using the continuing resolution process to avoid their Constitutional duty to pass a budget at all and keep the country in a state of continual crisis.
The continuing resolution process allows the President to get additional spending through a sort of back door budget. The added spending is folded into the continuing resolution and is never given the proper evaluation it would if it had to pass through a normal budgetary debate. So President Obama can bully Republicants into passing additional spending by using his bully pulpit to convince the American people that Republicants want to shut down the federal government and starve little children and senior citizens. The Republicants, not having an effective PR machine of their own, always cave and pass the continuing resolution, allowing President Obama to continue his governing by crisis.
President Obama and the Democrat-controlled Senate ignore their Constitutional duty to pass a budget, which by the way the Republicant-controlled House has done every year since control of that body passed to the Republicants after the 2010 mid-term elections. The reason the President and the Democrat Senate are able to trample on the Constitution is because the Republicants are afraid to vote against the continuing resolutions. Their fear is rooted in the budget battle of 1995 when President Clinton and the the Republicant-controlled House came to a budgetary impasse and the government shut down for 28 days. The shutdown was used by Democrats to demonize Republicants, and today's Republicants think it is why they lost the 1996 Presidential election. But the government shutdown was a success for Republicants and the American people because it forced Bill Clinton into a balanced budget, and Republicants lost in 1996 because of their candidate, Bob Dole.
The Republicants should have never allowed President Obama the ability to run the government without a budget for the last four years. Granted, the first two years of his administration the President had super majorities in both houses. But since the Republicants have had control of the House Of Representatives they should have forced a shutdown in order to push the President into agreeing to a budget. But I fear that the scared little rabbits that run the Republicant party use their misinterpretation of the 1995 shutdown outcome to cloud their judgement about how to proceed towards fiscal sanity today. And every day that they do, is another day that President Obama and the Democrat Senate further dissolve the Constitution.
The continuing resolution process allows the President to get additional spending through a sort of back door budget. The added spending is folded into the continuing resolution and is never given the proper evaluation it would if it had to pass through a normal budgetary debate. So President Obama can bully Republicants into passing additional spending by using his bully pulpit to convince the American people that Republicants want to shut down the federal government and starve little children and senior citizens. The Republicants, not having an effective PR machine of their own, always cave and pass the continuing resolution, allowing President Obama to continue his governing by crisis.
President Obama and the Democrat-controlled Senate ignore their Constitutional duty to pass a budget, which by the way the Republicant-controlled House has done every year since control of that body passed to the Republicants after the 2010 mid-term elections. The reason the President and the Democrat Senate are able to trample on the Constitution is because the Republicants are afraid to vote against the continuing resolutions. Their fear is rooted in the budget battle of 1995 when President Clinton and the the Republicant-controlled House came to a budgetary impasse and the government shut down for 28 days. The shutdown was used by Democrats to demonize Republicants, and today's Republicants think it is why they lost the 1996 Presidential election. But the government shutdown was a success for Republicants and the American people because it forced Bill Clinton into a balanced budget, and Republicants lost in 1996 because of their candidate, Bob Dole.
The Republicants should have never allowed President Obama the ability to run the government without a budget for the last four years. Granted, the first two years of his administration the President had super majorities in both houses. But since the Republicants have had control of the House Of Representatives they should have forced a shutdown in order to push the President into agreeing to a budget. But I fear that the scared little rabbits that run the Republicant party use their misinterpretation of the 1995 shutdown outcome to cloud their judgement about how to proceed towards fiscal sanity today. And every day that they do, is another day that President Obama and the Democrat Senate further dissolve the Constitution.
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