Moving toward a limited and cost-effective federal government

March 18, 2025

Our country is currently experiencing many problems, and some are quite serious. As President Donald Trump’s opponents constantly remind us, he has not yet corrected these problems, even though he has been in office for almost two months.

But seriously, folks, we do have some real problems. And what the most serious of them is depends to a large degree upon whom you ask about that. Some of them are: the national debt, inflation and the resulting high prices, illegal immigration, military strength, big government.

But in whatever order you rank these problems, none of them can be cured overnight; they will all take time to be worked out. That amount of time will be shortened if everyone involved will work together for that purpose. And perhaps that is the most complicated problem of all.

Of those many problems, one that has attracted much attention, and one that is actively being addressed, is the size, cost, and activities of the federal government. Due to the way things have been going for decades, we have become saddled with a national debt of $35.46 trillion, as of fiscal year 2024, and this figure is rising every second. As of last week, it was $36.22 trillion. And the impact of that is enormous: the interest on the national debt is billions of dollars per day.

Our government is too big, it costs too much to operate, its reach has grown far too broad, and it has expanded its power and authority well beyond its originally designed limits. Almost every year the government has a sizeable budget deficit, which adds more to the national debt.

And not only are we spending far too much, billions of those dollars are being spent improperly. Many decisions on spending are being made not by Congress, as is the constitutional process, but by unelected bureaucrats, many with partisan motives.

The entire operation of the government and its spending practices are currently being examined by the newly created and temporary Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Despite the fact that the people pay taxes on what they earn, on what they spend, annually on property they own, and the Social Security payments they receive, and businesses pay taxes on their operation, the country still spends more than it takes in.

In 1789, several years after the creation of the country, there were only three federal departments: State, War, and Treasury. Today, there are 15 departments. The government has five times the departments it had in the early years. And there are fair points being made that we don’t need some of them, and that others need to be downsized and/or merged.

One example of this is that we don’t need USAID, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and that its work can be done by the State Department. Another is the Department of Education. Its job can be done by the individual states, who handled it before the department was created in 1979.

Liberal criticism of the Trump administration contains the scare tactic that Trump wants to create a dictatorship. That would mean a government that controls everything. But that situation has been building for many years, as evidenced by the increase of government departments and the authority they now exercise.

And what Trump is aiming for is reducing the size, cost and broad authority of the federal government. This is being done by DOGE and other efforts of the administration.

With our oversized federal bureaucracy, we are dependent upon other countries for some of the goods that our people need and want the most. And some of them are things that were once produced here, or that could be.

Due to various causes, many of those things were moved out of the U.S., and for the most part, the reason is that government interfered with domestic production by increased regulations that made production more difficult and more expensive. This caused production of some to be moved to other countries, and made foreign products more necessary.

Why shouldn’t a country as great as America not produce the things its people need and want at home? Why should we be at the mercy of other countries, some of whom love to make us suffer, when we can reorganize our country to produce nearly all of the things we need and want?

By appealing to companies that have moved out of the U.S. and encouraging them to return, and by attracting companies that have not been located here to move here, great things will happen. Thousands of new jobs will be created, and the prices on many items will be better. 

We can act to make domestic products more desirable than foreign made products, if some of them are threatening our own products.

Imagine a country that has an abundance of good jobs creating needed and wanted products. And one with a balanced budget, enough income to allow lowering the national debt, and with national spending low enough to allow a tax system with low tax rates that enable the people to keep more of their earnings.

All of this is possible. But the road to that future is not an easy one.

Donald Trump, DOGE and Elon Musk are not the real problems

February 18, 2025

Things have certainly been active lately, especially since November 5th, and even more so since January 20th.

President Donald Trump and his administration are getting started doing the things he campaigned on. And the opposition party is quite active in objecting to, and opposing virtually everything Trump and his administration are doing to drain the swamp and restore the government to its proper role and size.

The newly formed temporary agency, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), is at the center of the controversy, with the socio-liberal faction freaking out at new levels. 

The leftists, whose previous actions to get Trump disqualified and jailed did not succeed, are vocally livid. They don’t complain about the misuse of billions of taxpayer dollars, they are angry at the investigators.

Some comments appearing in The Hill: “’He’s pushing the boundaries of a system as far as they can go,’ said one Democrat who works for an outside organization planning to take action as part of the burgeoning new resistance.”

“’This guy is doing some crazy [expletive deleted],’ added a second Democrat who is also involved in planning efforts. ‘This isn’t jamming through a nominee. This is when it starts to be alarming.’” 

“While Elon Musk is pouring gasoline and dropping lit matches across the federal government, voters don’t want their elected representatives acting like deer in the headlights,” said Karthik Ganapathy.

Discussing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez D-N.Y., Ganapathy said: “AOC in particular is modeling what effective, clear leadership looks like. Making sense of the chaos and helping people understand what they can do to make a difference. We need more members following her lead.”

From Politico: “Ocasio-Cortez urged Democrats to ‘blow this place up.’ ‘We should not comply in advance,’ she said. ‘We should not make it easy for them to do what they need to do if they’re going to do it anyway. Make them do it anyway, but not with our help.’

In an interview, AOC said this: “This is not business as usual, and Senate Democrats should not be treating this as business as usual. We need to see a halt on all Trump nominees.”

“Some Democrats have tried to capture a sudden wave of activism that has popped up over the past week as Trump and Musk’s assault on the federal bureaucracy has come into focus. [N.Y. Sen. Chuck] Schumer, for instance, was among several Democratic lawmakers who protested Musk’s moves outside the Treasury Department on Tuesday.

“He led a boisterous crowd of lawmakers and supporters in chanting, ‘We will win.’ The crowd immediately followed by chanting, ‘Shut down the Senate.’”

Some comments made on Fox News: "[Expletive deleted], ‘shut down the Senate!’ Rep. LaMonica McIver, D-N.J., said during an anti-DOGE protest in Washington, D.C., Tuesday. ‘We are at war!’"

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., commented: "We are going to fight it legislatively. We are going to fight it in the courts. We're going to fight it in the streets." 

Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, said at a protest over DOGE and its chair, Elon Musk, earlier this month, "We are gonna be in your face, we are gonna be on your [expletive deleted], and we are going to make sure you understand what democracy looks like, and this ain’t it."

And Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J. said: "We will fight their violation of civil service laws. We will fight their violation of civil rights laws. We will fight their violations of separation of powers. We will fight their violations of our Constitution of the United States of America. We will not shut up. We will stick up. We will rise up." 

There are some obvious problems with some of these comments. But the main problem is that these people either think this process is not legal or constitutional, or they know that it is legitimate, and are just saying it isn’t to get their base angrier.

In organized protests some participants were carrying signs that said things like, “Elon Musk was not elected!” That is true. But Alejandro Mayorkas was not elected. Nor was Merrick Garland, Anthony Blinken, Anthony Fauci, or the bureaucrats who mis-spent billions of dollars at the USAID. All of them were appointed or hired through proper means, as was Musk.

DOGE is not a cabinet agency, it is a temporary administrative agency created by Trump’s executive order. The president has the authority and the duty to control administrative agencies and departments. Cleaning up messes like wasteful spending and improper actions is precisely what a president should do.

DOGE did not have to be approved by Congress. And, as an appointed government official, Musk does not require Congressional confirmation and has legitimate authority.

So, what the country now faces has two parts. One is a legitimate effort to clean up inefficient government agencies and departments, curb wasteful spending and eliminate excessive regulations.

The other is a politically-oriented opposition effort highlighted by adolescent behavior and vile discourse attacking the administration, and thereby creating anger among its followers, increasing the risk of lawlessness and violence.

In the efforts to prevent the correction of their mechanisms of inappropriate government actions and improper spending of taxpayer money, the leftists are the ones endangering “our democracy.”

Trump faces many serious problems, and tremendous obstacles

December 10,2024

As January 20, 2025 — the day of inauguration — approaches there is much talk about what things Donald Trump will do as the new President.

Among the serious problems facing the country and the Trump administration are: the federal government’s size and exorbitant operation; straightening out the military; and the National Debt.

The federal government has become a place where unelected bureaucrats make decisions with the force of law and impose penalties and fines without congressional approval.

Back in June the U.S. Supreme Court rendered a decision that addressed this problem. Kentucky Republican Representative James Comer, Chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, issued this statement about this decision.

“Today’s Supreme Court decision stops the unelected, unaccountable federal bureaucracy’s aggressive regulatory overreach. This is a win for the American people, small businesses, and our Constitutional Republic. For far too long, the administrative state has been able to wield unchecked power and act as legislators by issuing major regulations that have driven up costs for Americans, stifled innovation, and micromanaged nearly every aspect of Americans’ lives. This decision rightfully hands the power back to Americans’ elected representatives in Congress to write our nation’s laws and to the courts to interpret them.”

This is a good development, but more can and must be done. 

There is a crisis within our military. Some in its leadership have become terribly confused in terms of understanding the requirements for and critical job of the military. Foolish and non-productive ideas like DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) have replaced merit in determining job assignments, recruitment processes and promotions. 

Last year the Army, Navy, and Air Force failed to reach their recruiting goals by 41,000 recruits. That means that in 2023 we had the smallest active-duty force since 1940. 

Some other factors in this recruitment failure are: a smaller eligible population, Gen Z has a low trust in institutions, and follows traditional life and career paths much less than previous generations. Another factor is that the military, due to recent changes in operations and philosophy, does not have the strong appeal it once had.

The military’s role is to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic, and maintain, by timely and effective military action, the security of the United States, its possessions and areas vital to its interest.

We need to increase funding for defense to strengthen and grow our military forces.

The National Debt has grown beyond all reason and is dangerously high. This problem has been going on for many years and has increased recently, as the following data shows: 1974 - $475 billion; 1995 - $4.9 trillion; 2005 - $7.9 trillion; 2015 - $18.2 trillion; 2020 - $26.9 trillion; 2024 - $36.2 trillion.

The current total works out to $107,169 for every person in the country.

Decades ago our largest budget deficits were brought on by national emergencies like the Great Depression and World War II. More recently, the government has simply spent more money than taxation provides, and on inappropriate things. This causes huge deficits, and huge interest payments on our debt.

In 2023, the federal government spent $658 billion on interest costs. That was 2.4 percent of the GDP (gross domestic product). 

While the June Supreme Court decision was a step in the right direction, the federal government still needs much corrective work. There are several departments, agencies, offices, etc. that are not necessary or useful.

Government employees are often not living up to their duties. Many of them work remotely, not at their duty station, a situation that evolved during the COVID pandemic, and which has not been remedied. 

A report found that only 6 percent of federal workers report in-person on a full-time basis. And, almost one-third of federal workers are remote full-time, which is a big difference from before the pandemic when only 3 percent worked remotely. This negatively affects the efficient and proper functioning of many areas of government.

There are at least three federal departments that need to be eliminated: The Departments of Commerce, Education, and Energy. These are among the most frequently mentioned for elimination, with the Department of Education leading the list. 

Having only been around since President Jimmy Carter signed it into law in 1979, the Education Department unnecessarily interferes with the efforts of the individual states to serve their citizens’ needs, a federal department which states did without for two hundred years.

And, as these items are addressed, other critical problems exist. We must repair the open borders of the Biden administration and get control of the illegal aliens now in the country, restore our position of energy independence, and fix the horrible Biden inflation that has made life so difficult for so many.

The Trump administration has a wonderful opportunity to begin to restore the federal government to a reasonable size and reach, to get government spending under control and make some headway toward reducing the National Debt.

That is a substantial challenge under the best of circumstances. And with the Democrat/liberal mindset that is so subversive to the American ideals our Founders established, it will be much more difficult. 

Our government spends too much, and taxes the people too much

April 7, 2024

Several weeks ago, as the April tax filing deadline neared, Facebook featured some comments about how Americans feel about taxes.

Among those comments were these: 

** The biggest scam in life: Paying taxes on money you make; taxes on money you spend; and taxes on things you own that you already paid taxes on with already taxed money.

** Paying taxes in the USA is like having a never-ending car payment on a car that won't run.

** If your country has enough money to give to illegals, your taxes are too high.

** If they can pay all these student loans, they can stop taxes on seniors!

Clearly, taxes are not popular with the American people, despite the need for the government to collect taxes to pay its bills.

Founder Benjamin Franklin in the very early days of the republic said the only two certainties in life are death and taxes. But he wasn't talking about income taxes, because they did not exist then.

In order to help pay for the Civil War, the United States government imposed its first personal income tax, on August 5, 1861, as part of the Revenue Act of 1861. Tax rates were 3 percent on income exceeding $600 and less than $10,000, and 5 percent on income exceeding $10,000. But this tax didn’t last very long. There were other income taxes of short duration.

The income tax we pay today came into existence in 1913 when the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution made the income tax a permanent fixture in the U.S. tax system. It was a tax on incomes of both individuals and corporations. 

As much as people dislike the taxes they must pay, they generally understand that taxes are necessary for governments at the federal, state, and local levels to operate. And here in America, with our commitment to personal freedom, those governments are expected to be lean, efficient, not overbearing, and not overly expensive.

On the federal level, those characteristics are not being followed as our Founders expected.

USA Facts tells us that the “federal government collected nearly $4.5 trillion in revenue in fiscal year 2023 (FY2023). About half was collected through individual income taxes, while 37 percent was through payroll taxes. Other revenue sources included corporate income taxes, customs duties, and sales taxes.”

However, the report continues, the “federal government spent almost $6.2 trillion in FY 2023, including funds distributed to states, Medicare, Social Security, defense and veterans, transfers to states, interest on the debt, and aid to individuals such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and refundable tax credits accounted for 90 percent of spending.”

Worldometer online said that “the current population of the United States of America is 341,531,428 as of Sunday, May 5, 2024.” That’s about $13,000 in federal income collected per person. Spending, however, ran up to more than $18,000 per person.

Today, the National Debt stands at roughly $34 trillion. In 2006 the National Debt was around $8 trillion. A steady increase put it at about $23 trillion in 2020. And then the government stepped on the gas and the National Debt soared by $11 trillion in just 4 years to today’s $34 trillion. As a result, the per person amount to clear the National Debt today is more than $99,500.

The federal government is not as designed: small and limited in function. Today, it is too big, too expensive, not very efficient, and often quite over-bearing.

There are 15 executive departments and hundreds of federal agencies and commissions, employing approximately 1,427,700 federal employees, not including the military. Given the limited government philosophy of the Founders, many/most of these are not appropriate.

Which ones are needed? Here are a few of those executive branch departments that are sensible and needed: Department of Justice, Department of Defense, Department of State, and Department of the Treasury. While others may function well and sometimes provide positive guidance, are they really appropriate under the founding principles?

Why do we need a federal Department of Education to tell states how to educate the young? Why do we need the Environmental Protection Agency to tell private land owners what they can and cannot do with their own property? Why do we need a Department of Labor to tell businesses how they must operate? Under our system of federalism, these and other functions should be under control of the states, not the federal government.

In many of these departments, agencies or commissions unelected bureaucrats set rules in place with the force of law, complete with penalties. However, they are not approved by Congress, the law-making body. These bureaucrats tell the people that they work for, and who pay their salaries, what they can and cannot do, and can render punishment for them if they do not comply.

Over the decades the limited government philosophy of the Founders has fattened up and grown far beyond what it was designed to be, and what is needed and appropriate.

With every such step, the freedom of Americans becomes a little bit more limited. And if this concept continues much longer, America will no longer be the Land of the Free.

Government spending; what the ice says; and troubled democracies

The federal budget for fiscal year 2021 was $6.8 trillion, and revenue was only $4.05 trillion. That added nearly $3 trillion to the $29 trillion national debt.

Congress just passed an infrastructure bill with bipartisan support of $1 trillion. And the House recently passed the Democrats' sweeping $1.9 trillion budget reconciliation package, which still needs Senate approval. Both of these spending packages will add nearly $3 trillion more to the national debt.

A meme on Facebook asked that we consider how long 1 trillion seconds is. One million seconds equals: 16.67 billion minutes; 277.8 million hours; 11.6 million days; and 23,800 years, counting leap years.

Then, it said, think about money. So, what can $1 trillion buy? 1 million houses that cost $1,000,000; 2.86 million houses at $350,000; 16.7 million cars that cost $60,000; 40 billion hours of labor at $25/hour, or a year’s wages for 19,200 people at $25/hour.

At the rate that the Democrats are spending money we don’t have, pretty soon, we will be talking about real money.

At some time, we must address this gargantuan debt, and start spending only what we collect, and that spending must include paying down the debt.

* * *

A recent emailed video contained a presentation from several years ago by Jorgen Peder Steffensen, Professor of Physics - Ice, Climate and Earth, at the Niels Bohr Institute.

In the presentation, Steffensen said that the NorthGRIP (Northern Greenland Ice Project) was reopened to drill the last few meters through the ice sheet to the rock beneath the ice station.

“The ice core, over 3 kilometers in length, has been hauled up to the surface piece by piece, and holds important data on the history of the climate of the Earth,” he said. “It bears the fingerprints of climactic conditions for more than 120,000 years.”

Steffensen used a chart showing the temperature changes in the ice core over a period of 8,000 years. The temperature changes are shown on a chart using 4 gradations, top to bottom, with 4.0 being the warmest, and 0.0 being the coldest. Remember, ice forms at 0 degrees Celsius and 32 degrees Fahrenheit.

The warmest temperatures are 3.7 on the 4-gradation scale starting 7,500 years ago, lasting until about 4,800 years ago. At that time a long period of cooling began, ending roughly 2.6 gradations cooler 2,100 years ago. The temperature at that time was at 1.1 on the scale.

Then a warming period occurred, during which the temperature rose to about 2.5 on the scale about 1,000 years ago, which Steffensen identified as the Medieval Warm Period. That temperature was about 1.0 gradation warmer on average than today.

Other core samples from elsewhere in Greenland confirm that the Little Ice Age ended 140 or so years ago, Steffensen said, the coldest point in the last 10,000 years, at 0.6, near the bottom of the scale. 

So, the warmest temperatures detected by NorthGRIP were 3.7 on the scale, and the coolest temperatures were 0.6 on the scale, a difference of 3.1 units on the 4-gradation scale.

Steffensen said, “I agree completely that we have had a global temperature increase in the 20th Century. But an increase from what?” 

The answer: From the Little Ice Age’s 0.6 mark. From there to today’s 1.5 mark is an increase of 0.9, which is less than the rise during the Medieval Warm Period.

NorthGRIP showed that Earth was much warmer 8,000 years ago than it is today, and a good bit warmer during the Medieval Warm Period about a thousand years ago than today.

While Earth’s temperature has been rising since the start of the 20th Century, this warming follows the coldest temperatures in 8,000 years. And a warming period is a natural occurrence after a cooling period.

Perhaps the visions of climate catastrophe we see all around us are not really warranted.

* * *

The Washington Post reported last week on a report released by the Stockholm-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA). The report, the Global State of Democracy 2021, listed “back-sliding democracies,” and for the first time, the United States is on that list.

The Post quoted from the report: “The United States, the bastion of global democracy, fell victim to authoritarian tendencies itself, and was knocked down a significant number of steps on the democratic scale.”

The organization bases its analysis of about 160 countries, looking at 50 years of democratic indicators.

“The study, which analyzed trends from 2020 and 2021, found that more than a quarter of the world’s population now lives in democratically backsliding countries,” The Post wrote, “which International IDEA defines as nations seeing a gradual decline in the quality of their democracy.”

The International IDEA report said, “The world is becoming more authoritarian as non-democratic regimes become even more brazen in their repression and many democratic governments suffer from backsliding by adopting their tactics of restricting free speech and weakening the rule of law, exacerbated by what threatens to become a ‘new normal’ of Covid-19 restrictions.”

Along with the other disturbing news we are dealing with, this is especially disturbing for those of us living in the “land of the free.”

The infrastructure bill highlights what is wrong with Congress

The bill H.R. 3684, the Infrastructure Investments and Jobs Act, known simply as the “infrastructure bill,” has been a controversial product from day one. 

The Democrat majority attempted to get a vote to pass the bill before it was even fully written. Yeah, what a wonderful idea: let’s vote to approve a bill before it’s written. What could possibly go wrong?

This situation is a serious contender for the dumbest idea dealing with pending legislation in our nation’s history.

Next, the bill is 2,702 pages long. Most books I read take many hours from start to finish, and most of them are not only a fraction of this bill’s length, usually 300 to 500 pages, but also have much smaller pages with fewer words.

The Christian Bible has about 1,300 pages and about 800,000 words. That makes this Democrat bill twice as long as the Bible. Another way of understanding how long this bill is: compare it to these weekly columns. Each weekly column word-count target is 858 words, give or take a few. Dividing 800,000 by 858 equals 932.4, or enough weekly columns to fill 17.9 years.

The International Christian College and Seminary tells us that it takes approximately 70 hours and 40 minutes to read the Bible. Extrapolating that to the infrastructure bill, someone who read the bill continuously from start to finish in one sitting would spend more than 140 hours, or six days, reading it. With time out to eat, sleep, visit the restroom, and other normal things, add more days. And experts tell us that reading federal legislation is a more difficult read than most books. It takes study time, in addition to reading time.

“These bills are not written for even the educated layperson, Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University, said. “They are written for specialists.” His comment was made back in 2009 when the Affordable Care Act and the Health and Education Reconciliation Act were under consideration. Those two bills dwarfed the infrastructure bill, adding up to 10,516 pages in the Federal Register.

This bill is simply way too big, in both length and dollars spent. It’s a safe bet that few if any of our representatives and senators will have personally read and studied the entire bill. Much of the work will be done by staff, and some topics may simply be accepted as good and proper without anyone actually reading or studying them. Is that really the best way to do things?

Furthermore, there is no emergency demanding that one ridiculously long bill that spends more than a trillion dollars be created and voted on. Truly important measures will have bipartisan support, and can be easily passed individually, or in small groups of two or three closely related topics, and a few dozen pages. 

Within its 2,702 pages the bill contains 10 divisions, and most of those could easily be, and should be, addressed as separate bills to be debated and voted on over time, rather than crammed through all at once.

One part of the bill proposes spending $110 billion for roads, bridges, and major projects. That’s a bunch of money. Will it all be spent on really needed projects? Or will some of it be used for pet projects that benefit some special interests?

Iain Murray of the Competitive Enterprise Institute addressed some specific features: “The bill also contains various faddish ideas like elements of the Green New Deal and ‘Buy American’ provisions, all of which will simply increase costs to American consumers for no discernible benefit. Many of my criticisms of the president’s infrastructure plan as being bloated and wasteful continue to apply to this bill.”

“Finally, several Democrats have made it clear that they view this as the first of a two-part package,” Murray’s evaluation continued, “the second being a budget reconciliation bill with $3.5 trillion of new spending and a variety of progressive wish-list items that would seek to turn the U.S. into a European-style social democracy, with a vastly expanded welfare state. Again, it appears that the plan is to rush this through on the back of the infrastructure bill without proper scrutiny.”

One feature of the $1.2 trillion bill that appears to breach President Joe Biden’s “red line” pledge not to raise taxes on anyone earning less than $400,000 a year is a “national motor vehicle per-mile user fee pilot program,” which would affect most drivers. Calling it a “fee” instead of a “tax” will do little to soothe the pain that drivers will have to endure when they drive to and from work or on vacation to help fund this massive spending plan.

And then we must ask, will there be the need for a “Mileage Czar” with a bloated staff to keep track of these taxes?

There is a need to address real infrastructure issues in the country. But the most important, the most critical area of need today, is securing the southern border. Thousands of illegal aliens, many of whom are gang members, drug dealers, and Covid-infected, enter this country every week. This bill does not address that. Congress needs to address the criminal nature of the border crisis first.

Opportunism is alive and thriving among Democrat politicians

“Some things never change” is a comment we hear when something negative occurs, yet again. The onset of the coronavirus has turned the country upside down, put millions in jeopardy of one sort or another, and created a situation where national, state and local officials felt the need to enforce behavioral restrictions on citizens.

With that tumult, perhaps that phrase was brought to mind from the fact Congressional Democrats remain undeterred by the pandemic, and are dutifully pursuing their regressive goal of “progressivism.”

Senate Democrats on Thursday stalled the passage of a $250 billion relief package designed to aid small businesses. Trying to speed up the passage of the needed funding, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, called for a vote by unanimous consent.

But rather than pass a measure nearly all senators supported, Democrats requested protections for minority-owned businesses and additional aid to local health care providers, blocking the measure that was intended as an addition to the $350 billion Paycheck Protection Program, which gives forgivable loans to small businesses.

McConnell had said to the Senate Thursday morning, “Do not block emergency aid you do not oppose just because you want something more.” His words fell on deaf ears.

Following the failed vote, McConnell said he did not oppose the Democrats’ requests on principle, but that the Paycheck Protection Program needed urgent relief.

This effort to foul up the legislative process was not the first time Democrats had tried to force unrelated measures into a time-sensitive coronavirus support bill.

On Sunday, March 22, as the bipartisan agreement between the Democrat-controlled House and the Republican-controlled Senate reached over the weekend was about to come to a vote, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, showed up with a wish list of “progressive” goodies, among which were:

1. Union Giveaways:

• Nullifies the White House executive orders on federal collective bargaining and codifies taxpayer-funded union official time.

• Requires a labor union representative on every airline’s board of directors.

• Multiemployer pension bailout lacking needed reforms.

• Permanently raises the minimum wage to $15 for any business that receives federal aid for COVID-19.

• Cancels all debt owed by the U.S. Postal Service to the Treasury.

2. Green New Deal priorities:

• Requires all airlines that receive assistance to offset carbon emissions for domestic flights by 2025.

• Includes a $1 billion “cash for clunkers” airplane program where the Transportation Department buys fuel-inefficient planes from airlines in exchange for agreeing to buy new ones.

• Includes expansive new tax-credit for solar and wind energy.

3. Student Loan Forgiveness:

• $10,000 blanket loan forgiveness.

4. Federalizing Elections:

• Mandates how states must run elections, including the nationalization of ballot harvesting, requiring early voting, same day registration, and no-excuse vote by mail.

• Puts states at risk of costly litigation if they are unable to implement these stringent mandates ahead of the 2020 election.

Fearing they might again lose an election to Donald Trump, presented with the opportunity provided by the coronavirus crisis, and bringing back the elements that didn’t get through in the stimulus bill to change the existing election process, House Democrats have created a measure mis-labeled as the “Take Responsibility Act.”

This recipe for Democrat victory calls for legislative changes to remove the ability of states to manage the “Times, Places, and Manner” of elections as called for in the Constitution’s Article I provisions.

Changes include:

• states must allow 15 consecutive days of early voting

• makes absentee voting universal

• prohibits “requiring identification to obtain an absentee ballot”

• allows “another person” to drop off absentee ballots and removes limits on how many can be delivered by one person

• ensures provisional ballots are always counted (rendering them no longer “provisional”) and provides “blank” (no printed name) absentee ballots to citizens and service members overseas 

Anyone see opportunities for fraud here?

In signing gun control bills into law last week, Virginia’s Democrat Governor Ralph Northam said, “We lose too many Virginians to gun violence.” Notice he didn’t say we lose too many Virginians to “guns,” he said, we lose too many Virginians to gun “violence.”

It is violence that costs too many Virginians their lives, so instead of laws against guns, why doesn’t the General Assembly pass, and the governor sign, laws against violence?

Oh, that’s right. We already have laws against violence, but those laws don’t encroach on citizens’ Second Amendment rights. But the new laws do. And anything Virginia Democrats can do to interfere with the Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms, they will do.

And to make the fairy tale complete, still seeking the dreamt of, and so-far elusive coup de grace: yet another investigation into Trump.

Pelosi made it official last week: House Democrats are opening yet another inquisition against Trump. The last dismal failure actually did accomplish something, however. It distracted the Congress and administration from the developing crisis of the Wuhan virus, which they then could — and did — twist into the charge that Trump did not act swiftly enough to protect the country, and now by golly, that needs to be investigated.

You have to admire the Democrats’ devotion to bring Trump down, so strong as to eclipse any other consideration, like the welfare of the country and their constituents.

Democrats’ strategy for 2020: Free stuff, fear, and gun control

The process of nominating a candidate for president is always a spirited affair. And with 24 people (so far) seeking the Democrat nomination – including a former Vice President, current senators, current and former representatives, some governors and mayors, and a billionaire – who range from well-known to unknown, the stage is set for a lively campaign.

It can get rough, as candidates tear down their rivals and at the same time try build up their own image in the eyes of voters. This year’s nomination process is even wilder than the Republican effort in 2016 when 17 candidates vied for the nomination.

Front-runner and former Vice President Joe Biden has been harshly attacked by several opponents in the first rounds of debates, as they work to claw their way to a respectable level in the polls.

No one is safe in this environment, not even the Democrats’ much-loved former President Barack Obama. As Obama’s VP, Biden opened the door to criticism of Obama’s immigration and health care policies.

Liberal MSNBC host Joe Scarborough said the "trashing Barack Obama's legacy” was “insanity.” "We were sort of in a Never-never land last night in that debate. It was bizarre," he said. 

Free stuff is a favored ploy among the candidates, along with dire predictions. In a recent opinion column John Stossel presented the shopping lists and total costs of free stuff offered by several of the candidates.

The list of free stuff contains many items, including:

·         More money for Title I schools

·         Universal pre-K

·         More psychologists and social workers in schools

·         Free college and free community college

·         More money for teachers

·         Forgiving all or some student debt

·         Universal child care

·         “Medicare for All”

·         The “Green New Deal”

·         A government job for everyone

·         Increases in several government assistance areas

Stossel’s major focus was on which items each candidate proposed and how much those items will add to taxpayers total costs.

In comparing the biggest spenders to President Donald Trump’s spending plan, which Stossel said totals $267 billion, he concludes: “We can’t afford it! The federal government is already $22 trillion in debt – $150,000 per taxpayer.”

Stossel continued, “While Trump’s $267 billion is bad, the Democrats’ plans are worse.” He counted $297 billion proposed by Biden, $690 billion from Mayor Pete Buttigieg, $3.8 trillion from Senator Elizabeth Warren, $4 trillion from Senator Bernie Sanders and $4.3 trillion from Senator Kamala Harris. “That would double what the entire federal government spends now. Senator Harris ‘wins’ the free stuff contest.”

There is also a fear factor in campaign rhetoric, as candidates continue to predict global catastrophe if Americans do not make great sacrifices to save the world from climate change. The candidates predict we have only 10 years, or perhaps 12, to turn our lives upside-down in order to save humanity.

The recent hot spell gave a boost to the assumed urgency of this situation, and campaign rhetoric heated up correspondingly.

Contenders prefer various measures to bring a positive effect to the problem of carbon emissions. Biden wants a price on emission-producing materials and tariffs on foreign carbon products. Buttigieg, Gov. John Hickenlooper, Senators Kristen Gillibrand and Cory Booker prefer a tax, or carbon-price on certain products.

All candidates support the enormously expensive “Green New Deal” with all of its job-killing and severe lifestyle-changing requirements to transition to 100-percent clean energy in a decade. This despite the fact that the U.S. leads the world in carbon emission reduction, while other nations lag behind, are not reducing emissions at all, or are actually increasing emissions.

Democrats’ support for more and stricter gun control laws has been long and loud. Last weekend’s two horrible mass murder incidents in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio have added more urgency to the situation among gun control advocates.

Like the climate change issue, the gun control issue uses fear to attract support. Everyone abhors these senseless killings, and every candidate seeking the Democrat nomination preaches gun control as the solution.

Saturday’s El Paso shooting resulted in 20 deaths and injuries to nearly two-dozen others. The alleged shooter is also believed to have written a 4-page manifesto that provides insight into his motives.

Reason magazine described the manifesto: “The El Paso shooter’s alleged manifesto is racist, anti-corporate, anti-automation, and especially anti-immigrant, and it reflects a general hatred for many aspects of American society.”

It also urges any future mass murders to pick lightly guarded or unguarded target areas: “Remember: it is not cowardly to pick low hanging fruit. AKA Don’t attack heavily guarded areas to fulfill your super soldier COD (Call of Duty) fantasy.”

Any successful response to these horrific events must address soft targets where no defense against someone with evil intentions exists, and especially the mental condition and motivation of the people who carry out these acts.

Guns are inanimate objects. They are not evil; the people who misuse them are evil. Disarming or restricting law-abiding citizens’ gun purchases misses the point.

The most important word in the gun control discussion is “control,” a trait it shares with the climate change discussion. Control is a major aspect of socialism, which is openly advocated by several Democrat candidates.

The national debt is one big problem nobody’s doing anything about

The national debt currently is more than $22,000,000,000,000 – that’s 22 trillion dollars – and growing by the minute. No one in Washington seems very concerned about it. What’s worse is that this situation has existed for decades.

Data from the Office of Management and Budget shows that of the ten presidents who were in office when the debt grew the most, all but two were 1970 and after. In case you can’t call them to mind, they are, in order: Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump.

The four who ran the highest deficits, as reported by Kimberly Amadeo, writing in The Balance, are, from worst to least bad:

* Barack Obama, leading the pack with $6.785 trillion. 

* President George W. Bush is next, racking up $3.293 trillion.

* President Ronald Reagan added $1.412 trillion.

* President George H.W. Bush created a $1.03 trillion deficit in one term. 

However, Amedeo explains, blaming the president is too easy because other factors play a role. She listed the following:

1. The president has no control over the mandatory budget or its deficit. That includes Social Security and Medicare benefits. These are the two biggest expenses any president has. 

2. The Constitution gave Congress, not the president, the power to control spending. The president’s budget is just a starting point. Each house of Congress prepares a discretionary spending budget. They combine them into the final budget that the president reviews and signs. 

3. Each president inherits many of his predecessors' policies. For example, every president suffered from lower revenue.

4. Some presidents have to deal with catastrophic events. President Obama responded to the worst recession since the Great Depression. President Bush reacted to the 9/11 terrorist attacks and Hurricane Katrina. Their required responses came with economic price tags.

The point here is that every year since Nixon was elected president, except for four, there has been a budget deficit, and that is a serious problem that is not being addressed. The national debt is more than six times the annual federal revenues of recent years.

Justin Bogie, Senior Policy Analyst in Fiscal Affairs at The Heritage Foundation, addressed this problem in an article last month. “Despite the strong economy, the nation remains in a precarious and unsustainable budget position, just as it was last year,” he wrote. “Debt held by the public is set to rise to nearly one and a half times the size of the economy in the coming decades.”

Some want to blame the Trump tax cuts for causing the problem, or if not causing it, making it worse. Actually, despite the tax cuts, or as a result of the tax cuts, federal revenues have risen since 2017. 

The Congressional Budget Office shows that for 2017, before the tax cuts took effect, federal revenue totaled $3.316 trillion. After the tax cuts took effect revenue rose by $14 billion to $3.330 trillion in 2018, and the CBO projects revenue of nearly $200 billion more than 2017 at $3.511 trillion for 2019.

Federal tax collections were the highest in history in 2018 and 2019. So, the problem is not a revenue problem, because with sensible policies revenue can increase even beyond 2018 and 2019 levels. 

What we have is a problem of spending, further complicated by some slight of hand by Congress.

“Congress utilizes a wide variety of gimmicks and accounting tricks to hide the true costs of legislation,” Bogie writes in another Heritage article. “This allows Congress to spend more and more — evading fiscal discipline and adding billions of additional dollars to the federal debt each year.”

Such tricks include: Timing Shifts - shifting in what year revenues or expenses may be reported; using Disaster and Emergency Spending to circumvent budget caps; double counting Federal Trust Fund savings; not accounting for interest costs in Legislative Cost Estimates, and other such deceptions.

Obviously, closing these loopholes should be a first step in restoring fiscal sanity to the budget process. But closing and/or consolidating government agencies to remove duplication of services; eliminating wasteful policies and programs, as well as ending overreaching and underperforming government programs; and general belt-tightening, not unlike businesses utilize, to stay in business can make a substantial difference.

These are common sense steps. But they go by the wayside in our gargantuan government that is infected by self-interest and political motivations, things elected officials and bureaucrats often put ahead of what’s best for the country and the citizens whose taxes pay their salaries, and fund this malfeasance.

The Government Accountability Office’s “Annual Report” lists steps to reduce costs, reduce fragmentation, overlap, and duplication within federal agencies and programs. When followed, they produced positive change in the past.

And, The Heritage Foundation has produced a report titled “Blueprint for Balance,” that “presents a holistic vision for how to rein in out-of-control government spending, create a more accountable and effective budget process, and balance the budget in 10 years.”

The Heritage blueprint outlines how government can cut $10.8 trillion over 10 years, extend the tax cuts, and eliminate deficits by 2029. 

It’s time to focus on this problem.

We have to stop deficit spending and lower the national debt

The national debt virtually doubled in the 8 years of President Barack Obama. From the $10.6 trillion debt when he took office in 2009 that was created by all the presidents before him, until the end of his terms in 2017, the debt grew to nearly $20 trillion. That was, of course, the largest increase under any president in history.

President Donald Trump claimed that in his first month in office he actually saved money, reducing the national debt by $12 billion. That is true, but is a mere pittance compared to the $20 trillion total. It was a baby step in the right direction, but it was also only a moment in time for a number that rises and falls month-to-month.

Campaigning in 2016, Trump promised voters he would balance the budget. His first budget does not accomplish that difficult task, and in fact, the budget for fiscal year 2019 is projected to add another trillion to the existing debt, contrary to his promise to voters.

Trump’s proposed spending plan is a $4.4 trillion monster for fiscal year 2019 that some describe as dangerously unbalanced. He still has some time to balance the budget, but what a great thing it would be if his first budget actually moved decidedly in that direction.

Everyone who manages a business or organization, or a home budget understands the situation: ideally, income exceeds expense. Historically, the federal government achieves surpluses only rarely, and a properly operated government shouldn’t produce large surpluses, or large deficits.

Our gargantuan national debt is the result of gross budgetary malfeasance, and it is at crisis proportions. The nation’s debt now exceeds its GDP, and net interest payments on the debt are estimated to be 6.8 percent of all federal outlays at $276.2 billion this fiscal year. That is enough to pay for all administrative office employees for this year.

A comparison of what the government is doing with what it is allowed to do by the U.S. Constitution needs to happen.

The Preamble to the Constitution lays out its purpose, in broad terms: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

James Madison, one of the Constitution’s creators, certainly can be cited as an expert on the document. “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined,” he wrote in Federalist No. 45, in 1788. “Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.”

But in direct opposition to this founding principle, phrases such as “promote the general Welfare,” have been expanded well beyond what the Founders intended, and contribute greatly to a government that has grown in size, control and cost beyond all reason.

The federal government has its nose and fingers in far too many areas of our lives. It should not regulate mud puddles or control education. It should not use its power against some legal businesses or organizations to the benefit of others. The federal government owns and controls 640 million acres of America’s land, about 28 percent of its total surface, the majority of it in western states. The list goes on.

Given the degree to which these improper activities have grown and are so much a part of life, it may not be possible to completely eliminate them, but there are certainly areas ripe for reduction.

As designed, the federal government should not require much money from citizens to operate, and the tax cuts that finally made it through Congress have been a boon to taxpayers and businesses. Businesses can expand, replace equipment, hire new workers and/or increase wages, and taxpayers will have more of their earnings at their disposal to buy things they need and want, which will increase spending in the private sector and increase tax collections.

And government positions left unfilled by the administration will provide some reduction in government spending. But even under the best of circumstances, these factors will not make a large dent in the deficit.

According to downsizinggovernment.org, “The federal government employs 2.1 million civilian workers in hundreds of agencies at offices across the nation. The federal workforce imposes a substantial burden on America’s taxpayers. In 2017 wages and benefits for executive branch civilian workers cost $276 billion.” And that does not count the courts, the Congress or postal workers.

Getting federal spending down to the balanced budget level requires drastic cuts in government, and will require closing some unnecessary administrative agencies, and reducing the number of federal workers in the remaining agencies. As Madison reminds us, the powers delegated to the federal government are few and defined, and the rest of the things needed are to remain the responsibility of the state governments.

One of Trump’s favored phrases in the campaign was “draining the swamp.” Getting government under control and reduced to its proper size and function has never been more important than it is today.