United Liberty

The Senate passed Porkulus III by a vote of 70-28 with 13 Republicans demonstrating their party’s new found fiscal conservatism by crossing over to vote with every Democrat present for the bill. Like the first Porkulus signed by George W. Bush in 2008 and the Porkulus II passed last year, Porkulus III forks over billions of borrowed dollars to fund various special interest projects and tax gimmicks in the name of “creating jobs”.

The gimmicks funded in this lastest round of Porkulus include a tax holiday for the remainder of the year on Social Security payroll taxes, but only if the company hires someone out of work for more than 60 days. In addition, Porkulus commits to billions in in more mass transit spending and more highway projects (ie. more pork barrel spending).

The Senate’s version of Porkulus must be sent over to the House where it must be reconciled with the House’s much more expansive $154 billion Porkulus bill. However, the Senate plans to pass more items in the House’s bill one at a time so that Senate Majority Harry Reid and other Democrat leaders can find out how much the prices of the votes of “fiscally conservative” Republicans are.

Included are proposed Senate bills giving away corporate welfare to ethanol producers, which is expected to be supported by farm state Republicans. In addition, there is another planned Senate bill to keep Americans out of work longer by extending unemployment benefits and COBRA.

The RINOs who supported Porkulus III today are:

On Thursday, the US Senate voted to restore pay go rules on a party line vote. President Obama praised the restoration of the PAYGO rule. Obama supporter Andrew Sullivan used the vote as a club to attack Republicans. Republicans opposed the restoration of pay go calling it a backdoor attempt to raise taxes. However, the PAYGO rule is at best a dual edged sword. While PAYGO is an excellent for controlling and limiting deficit spending, it does very little to limit the size and growth of the Federal government.

The PAYGO or “pay as you go” rule simply calls for any increase of mandatory spending or reduction in revenue (ie. taxes) must be offset by decreases in discretionary spending or increases in revenue (taxes). Mandatory spending is things like Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, pay for Federal employees, paying debt, and other welfare programs such as Food Stamps and Veterans benefits. Mandatory spending is nearly 60% of the Federal budget. Discretionary spending is everything that Congress has to pass legislation to authorize.

How PAYGO Is Fiscally Responsible:

Politico is reporting that President Barack Obama will call for a freeze on non-defense discretionary spending in the run up to his State of the Union address to Congress on Wednesday:

President Obama plans to announce a three-year freeze on discretionary, “non-security” spending in the lead-up Wednesday’s State of the Union address, Hill Democratic sources familiar with the plan tell POLITICO.

The move, intended to blunt the populist backlash against Obama’s $787 billion stimulus and an era of trillion-dollar deficits — and to quell Democratic anxiety over last Tuesday’s Massachusetts Senate election — is projected to save $250 billion, the Democrats said.

The freeze would not apply to defense spending or spending on intelligence, homeland security or veterans.
[…]
The move would likely be welcomed by Blue Dog Democrats and deficit hawks, but party liberals would likely bridle at baselining a wide array of popular domestic spending programs.

It sounds like a big deal, but this will only save $250 billion over the next 10 years. Non-defense discretionary spending makes up only a small portion of the overall annual budget. In the $3.5 trillion FY 2010 budget, only $477 billion is non-defense discretionary spending. That’s around 14% of total spending and less than half of total discretionary spending (including defense).

This freeze would not effect “mandatory spending,” including Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, which accounts for over $2 trillion in spending.

At the White House website, the biography of Bill Clinton illustrates the successes of his administration, most notably:

During the administration of William Jefferson Clinton, the U.S. enjoyed more peace and economic well being than at any time in its history.

It’s true. The Clinton years were some of the most prosperous years that the United States has ever seen. Was that the result of massive government spending and initiatives? Of course not. Clinton’s first major initiative - health care reform - failed, resulting in a Republican takeover of Congress and Clinton shifting to rhetoric such as ”the era of big government is over.”

The actual successes of the Clinton years were very right wing ones - welfare reform, free trade agreements and a robust innovative economy fueled by the ingenuity of software entrepreneurs. Spending was down, and Bill Clinton left office with a huge surplus. This was certainly the result of a lack of spending from the federal government, a foreseeable result of having two diametrically opposed political parties in power at once. The fact that the low-spending Clinton years (years in which the government actually shut down for nearly two months) resulted in economic prosperity, while high deficit eras like the pre-war terms of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Bush-Obama years resulted in depression and recession, makes one of the strongest cases for libertarianism.

It’s the last day of 2009. We made it through a crazy year that saw liberty put at risk on an all to regular basis. We decided the best way to recap the year was to take ten of 2009’s biggest stories and write a blurb about each one of them (we tried to keep it short and to the point).

Before you continue on, each of us here at UL want to thank you for a great 2009. We appreciate you reading. We’re planning for world domination in 2010 and hope that you’ll join in the fun.

So, here they are in no particular order, United Liberty’s Top 10 Stories from 2009.

Tea Party Movement (Brett Bittner): The wave of “hope” and “change” that swept Barack Obama into the Presidency of the United States closed out 2008 and opened the door to a new movement in American politics, the Tea Party movement.  I believe that his election was merely a catalyst for many groups of a conservative nature and strong views on limited government to unite to form one voice to stand up to the political status quo, calling out Democrats and Republicans alike for their affinity to grow the size of government to a breaking point.

The folks over at Campaign for Liberty show us the explosion in government spending in the last two years, from spending just over 30% of gross domestic product (GDP) at all level of government combined to 40%.

With that, 19% of federal government employees make $100,000 a year or more, according to an article in USA Today, and that’s up 5% in the last 18 months.

While the economy continues to perform poorly and job losses are still racking up, the federal government continues to grow and consume more resources.

Yesterday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told reporters that the House version of the health care legislation will cost under $900 billion and reduce the deficit, claiming to have estimate from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

The CBO, in its score of ObamaCare in the Senate and in previous preliminary scores, pointed out any budgetary savings aren’t a given:

The net cost of the coverage expansions would be more than offset by the combination of other spending changes that CBO estimates would save $404 billion over the 10 years and other provisions that JCT and CBO estimate would increase federal revenues by $196 billion over the same period. In subsequent years, the collective effect of those provisions would probably be continued reductions in federal budget deficits. Those estimates are all subject to substantial uncertainty.

Uncertainty or skepticism over projected budget savings is entirely reasonable because history shows these estimates to be entirely inaccurate, at the Wall Street Journal points out:

Interestingly, government intervention in the 1960s introduced a third party (insurance co/HMO/PPO, etc) into the one-on-one relationship between doctor and patient. Prior to that, people paid premiums for medical insurance policies designed to cover catastrophic medical events like cancer, serious accidents and the like, NOT for physicals, check ups or routine visits. Instead, the DOCTOR and the PATIENT negotiated a rate for services based on the patient’s ability to pay on an individual case by case basis. The introduction of a third party shorts the doctor AND raises the costs for the the patient, as the third party must also be paid. Yes, health costs have soared, but further government intervention - especially a government takeover of a free market healthcare system - is NOT the answer.

When President Obama arrives in London this week he will meet with the leader of Germany, a nation where his election has brought newfound goodwill towards America; but will the goodwill be enough to force the hands of Germany to conform to Washington’s desires for additional stimulus and bailouts? If the latest media reports, which point towards an Administration attempting to dial down expectations, are any indication, then the answer is most likely a soft no.

The NYT is reporting that little ground is expected to be made in regards to additional German stimulus, with Chancellor Angela Merkel expected to cite fiscal discipline as a reason for German non-cooperation with President Obama’s Administration on the issue-

Taxes were very high, but no real revenue was coming in. That’s because the system of taxes at that time was an early form of income tax that centered on the government taking a large percentage of a farmer’s crops.

So Ching Ti did something bold and innovative: he cut taxes.

Overnight, taxes went from over 50% down to about 3%. Farmers, who had fled to the hills to escape draconian tax rates, now came home and began farming again. To make a long story short, Ching Ti’s greatest problem while governing was trying to keep all the grain in his barns from spoiling.

It seems that ancient Chinese history is good for more than just cutesy script on a fortune cookie.