Tag: spending

From the AP

  The House on Thursday voted to allow the government to go $1.9 trillion deeper in debt -- or about $6,000 more for every U.S. resident. The measure, approved 217-212, would raise the cap on federal borrowing to $14.3 trillion. That's enough to keep Congress from having to vote again before the November elections on an issue that is feeding a sense among voters that the government is spending too much and putting future generations under a mountain of debt to do it.

    Already, the accumulated debt amounts to roughly $40,000 per person. And the debt is increasingly held by foreign nations such as China.

    Passage of the bill would send it to President Barack Obama, who will sign it to avoid a first-ever, market-rattling default on U.S. obligations.

    "I can't think of a more reckless or irresponsible act. Defaulting is not an option," said Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass. "If the United States defaults, investors will lose confidence that the U.S. will honor its debts in the future.

    Democrats barely passed it through the Senate last week over a unanimous "no" vote from GOP members present.

I've said for almost four years that the Republican Party is at a crossroads, mainly due to fiscal issues. It can follow the lead of the Republican Study Committee, Mike Pence, Jim DeMint, and Jeb Hensarling in its opposition to deficit spending, or it can follow the lead of Ted Stevens, George W Bush, and Charlie Crist in their support for big spending policies. The choice made here, will determine whether the GOP can take the house back in 2010, and the senate back in 2012 or 2014. It will also determine if Obama will be a one-termer. The bailout in 2008 turned the election from a close race to an ass kicking. The fiscal policies in 2006 caused an ass kicking. Democrat-lite policies from the GOP do not work. Why vote for democrat-lite when the real thing is always available.

While I understand that what works in one community does not always work in another, basic principles should always apply, and that they should be less government and more freedom.

Many in the GOP are starting to get that message again with Obama's radical leftism, Mike Pence having a more visible role, Ted Stevens being defeated, and George W Bush being gone. Starting being the operative word. There's still a lot of trust that needs to be earned, and nobody trusts the government right now. That's why we have the tea parties. That's why the calls are flooding the offices. That's why people are involved in politics who have not been involved.

Detroit is in the eye of the storm...

Few government reformers have taken on a more impossible task than Detroit Public Schools Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb, who is trying to restore fiscal and functional sanity to the national disgrace that is the Detroit Public Schools. Now, Bobb is being sued by a defiant Detroit School Board determined to protect the status quo that they created and have benefited from.

Kudos to Attorney General Mike Cox, who will defend Bobb against the School Board's retaliatory suit.

Detroit Mayor Bing, meanwhile, is facing a fierce, daily battle with Detroit's unionized city employees, who believe they should be immune from the City's 22% unemployment rate, plummeting population, and evaporating tax base. These unions are more highly compensated than employees in similar cities (according to a Detroit Free Press study), but they won't concede a penny in adjusted benefits or pay.

Meanwhile, in the suburbs...

As you know, the Michigan Legislature this week approved the governor's Executive Order to resolve a deficit of more than $1 billion for the current fiscal year. This is only the first step in addressing our state's overarching budget crisis.

Be ready.

To the thousands of people across Michigan who attended the Tea Parties on April 15 - be ready.  Despite the fact that the mainstream media under-reported your passion for smaller, more reasonable government, you know who you are.  Standing on the steps of Michigan's Capitol, I felt the passion of your convictions. You came to the Capitol not to rally against anyone, but to stand up for an idea - that government must live within its means.  Now I encourage you to be ready to put your convictions to work and encourage a new direction for our state government.

For example, you say the roads are in rough shape? Cushingberry has a solution: Hike the gas tax by 50 cents per gallon. The state has a spending problem? George cosponsored a Constitutional amendment to repeal the ban on a graduated income tax.

But Cush may want to think twice about his latest idea, imposing a tax on doctors who refuse to take Medicaid patients, as reported in the May 5 MIRS newsletter (subscription required). They refuse because the state pays only 60-cents on the dollar compared to the price-controlled Medicare rates, which supposedly reflect market rates. Also, getting paid for Medicaid patients is a huge administrative hassle.

But taxing those M.D. "slackers" would likely drive more docs out of business or out of the state, adding to a growing state physician shortage that's already a huge problem according to a report from the Michigan Department of Community Health, coincidentally released the day before Cush spoke the T-word to doctors.

The title of the report says it all: "Michigan Faces Serious Shortage of Physicians." Among other things the press release accompanying the report notes, "The number of new primary care physicians has just barely kept pace with the number of primary care physicians leaving the workforce in the past few years," and "just 47 percent of active physicians plan to practice medicine for one to 10 more years, compared to 41 percent of physicians surveyed in 2007."

The Detroit News reports this morning that a new stimulus bill was introduced yesterday in DC by Macomb County's own Candice Miller, this one designed to give every man, woman and 16 year old in America anywhere from $5,000 to $7,500 in free cash if they'll buy a new car and provide a gas-guzzling trade-in.  

The bill proposes giving consumers vouchers to buy new, more fuel-efficient vehicles in exchange for turning in vehicles at least eight years old. The program is dubbed the Consumer Assistance to Recycle and Save bill, or CARS Act.

Quick aside... that right there is a piece of fine acronyming.  CARS.  Get it?  Sorry... back to your regularly scheduled clip...

...60 percent of vehicles in the United States are old enough to qualify. The bill would award higher vouchers for vehicles assembled in North America -- up to $5,000 -- versus up to $4,000 vouchers for vehicles assembled outside North America, and would not apply at all to vehicles made outside North America. The proposal was endorsed Tuesday by Detroit's Big Three automakers and the United Auto Workers.

Ah, winners and losers and the government that picks them.  But that's a minor complaint, or is it?  If you're one of those squishy economics students who believes a little government stimulus can go a long ways this might not be such a bad idea.  If you'd rather the government stay the heck out of the market no matter the conditions then this will have you seeing red (or green, if you want to take advantage of the program when no one's looking).

If you're Congress and you're spending money like its free then I'll go ahead and say this qualifies as one of your better cash-burning ideas, at least from where I sit here in the state that put the world on wheels.  It's a stimulus that actually lands in consumers pockets (as opposed to the Obama administration's hundreds of millions in bonuses for AIG executives), that helps the Big 3, Michigan companies, but isn't a straight give-away and maybe most importantly, it will directly and could substantially decrease our dependence on terrorist states for fuel.

Call it the national security stimulus plan.  Or call it another example of an out-of-touch federal government spending like drunken sailors.  But call it something.  What do YOU think?

I've come to understand that whenever Obama promises something, it is time to expect the opposite. Nowhere is that more apparent than when it comes to fiscal responsibility. This budget does not deliver whatsoever when it comes to that. I knew it was a joke when he talked about slashing the deficit in half in four years. That's unacceptable. It needs to be balanced. Period. This is going in the opposite direction.

From the AP

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama is sending Congress a "hard choices" budget that would boost taxes on the wealthy and curtail Medicare payments to insurance companies and hospitals to make way for a $634 billion down payment on universal health care.

Obama's first budget, which will top $3 trillion, predicts the deficit for this year will soar to a whopping $1.75 trillion, according to administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity before the public unveiling of the budget Thursday. The huge deficit reflects the massive spending being undertaken to battle a severe recession and the worst financial crisis in seven decades.

As part of the effort to end the financial crisis, the administration will propose boosting the deficit by an additional $250 billion this year, enough to support as much as $750 billion in increased spending under the government's financial rescue program. That would more than double the $700 billion bailout effort passed by Congress last October.