THE BUDGET FIRE NEXT TIME

We have survived the Fiscal Cliff crisis, the Debt Limit debacle and now the “Sequester that ate the nation” and the nation is exhausted. This President apparently lives to inflict fear, anger, terror and anxiety on the old, the sick, the disabled, the poor and his favorite target the ever handy “middle class”.

On March 27 we will be facing the next attempt to grow government, tax us to perdition, destroy the GOP, the constitution, capitalism, and our defense and national security capabilities. It is called the renewal of the Continuing Budget Resolution which we have in lieu of a budget which the Senate under Harry Reid has refused for 5 years to pass although they are required by law to do so.

I predict that Barack Obama will have learned nothing from the Sequester and the propaganda in lieu of leadership will begin anew. He will once again fear monger and use character assassination while he flies around the country in perpetual campaign mode to scare the hell out of Americans who are sick and tired of an economy that has been deliberately sabotaged by this President.

He will begin again with his demands for more taxes from the ‘evil’ rich with their “tax loopholes” who don’t pay their fair share although roughly 50% of the public pay no income taxes at all. He calls this a balanced approach. What he means by this is that there can be no spending cuts that actually result in a shrinking of the deficit or the debt. In point of fact the bill he backed in the battle of the Sequester was a Senate Democratic bill that actually increased the deficit by $7.2 billion. Yes that’s right his preferred bill cutting spending actually made the deficit larger.

We must stop pretending that he really wants to fix the problems of our economy and see him realistically instead.…and be prepared for the budget fire next time.

First and foremost the budget of the Federal Government is rife with waste, fraud, overpayments, duplication of programs and incompetent management.

For example the “Waste Book 2012” compiled by Sen. Tom Coburn lists 100 questionable projects funded by you the taxpayer ( Robosquirrels… climate change musicals…food for men on Mars…cellphones for 16, 5000,000 people in 2012) which total $19 billion.

A 2011 GAO Report lists 1,362 duplicative programs funded by the Federal Government costing the taxpayers $364.5 billion annually. This includes 44 Job Training Programs…18 Nutrition Programs…82 Teacher quality Programs…56 Financial Literacy Programs and 20 programs for the Homeless. The estimated savings for eliminating and merging programs is between $100 billion and $200 billion.

A 2010 GAO Report also estimated $48 billion in Medicaid/Medicare fraud but Obama’s own AG Eric Holder estimates the level of fraud as high as $90 billion.

Fraud in the Food Stamp Program since the advent of the electronic cash card for participants is conservatively estimated at around 1% to 4% of the $50 billion program by The Cato Institute and others. This translates into a $750 million problem identified by the Obama administration and to a $2.7 billion problem by others.

The CBO has reported that government contractors are inappropriately overpaid by $115 billion.

The Project on Government Oversight or POGO reports that the Federal Government pays contractors 1.83 times more than the Federal Government pays federal employees and 2 times more than the total compensation in the private sector for comparable work. This strongly suggests that in a contracting universe costing $500 billion, savings as high as $250 billion may be possible.

Conversely, The Heritage Foundation found in 2010 that in 8 out of 10 comparable occupation groups shared by the private and federal sectors federal employees were overpaid by $47 billion.

The Public Interest Research Group or PIRG found $1 trillion in programs that don’t work or which have outlived their usefulness including 55,000 vacant Federally owned buildings costing the taxpayers $17 billion in maintenance annually and worth God knows what on the open market. Others programs they examined included Biodiesel @ $10 billion…modernizing federal computers @ $160 billion…crop insurance @ $77 billion and the over use of Air Force One @ $179,750 an hour.

Sen. Rand Paul submitted a list of where $85 billion could be cut during the Sequester debate. Those cuts not included in the items above, included $6.5 billion for attrition of federal workers…cutting federal travel 25% or $2.25 billion…confining Pentagon Research to Military applications for $6 billion and cutting foreign Aid by 50% for a cut of $20 billion. These cuts alone total $34.75 billion or nearly the estimated target cut of $44 billion for the 8 months remaining of 2013.

When you add these cuts and other deficit/debt cutting actions up you arrive at amounts between $1.373 trillion and $1.767 trillion which seem to be only the tip of the federal waste etc iceberg.

We are borrowing $ .35 for every $1 we spend and it cannot go on. To suggest however that the solution is more taxes on the rich will only serve to cheapen and distort the very real and candid dialogue needed to make the tax code more equitable and simpler and make more people pay tax even if it is a miniscule amount so they have skin in the game. We also must begin the critical job of reforming the entitlements in order to save them and thereby help bring the debt under control. Only then will the economy begin to grow in a healthy way allowing the debt to be reduced and controlled.

So in the 10 days to a week leading up to the deadline to renew the Continuous Spending Resolution remember that the above items need to be addressed before the tax payers are asked to contribute one cent more to a government that treats your hard earned money like a junkie on crack. Remember also that these addicts to your money believe that spending less than they project each year as the budget grows automatically due to base line budgeting, is to them and only them …a cut! 
ERLANDSSON