Editorial -- A Deathbed Conversion?

The Inflation Reduction Act, which is a watered down version of the Build Back Better Act that the Democrats touted when they first took power, miraculously passed the Senate recently. It is expected to pass the House and be signed into law. It will create incentives to fight climate change through clean energy tax credits, a green bank, and incentives to plug methane leaks. 

There will also be healthcare reforms in the measure. Protecting human lives is always a good thing. And there will be measures in it to reduce the deficit, important since inflation, although it has eased recently, is still there and gas prices are still too high.

No, the Democrats did not just save civilization. But they finally, belatedly, woke up and realized that there was more to life than just sticking it to the Russians.

We’re all called to stewardship of God’s resources. You can’t love the creator and hate the creation. If you hate the creation, then you hate the creator who made it. Jesus’ parables made consistently clear time and time again that we would be judged based on how well we were stewards of his creation. So anything that helps prevent the planet from overheating is a good thing. 

This measure will undoubtedly help the Democrats at the polls this year. But will it help enough? 

The problem with the bill is that it doesn’t go far enough. Last year, the International Energy Agency said fossil fuel development must stop in order to meet emissions targets. The bill will allow more oil and gas lease sales on public lands and waters. This means more spills and accidents waiting to happen on fragile ecosystems that cannot afford it.

The positive side of this bill is that maybe the Biden Administration, for once, is on to something – you’re much more likely to get meaningful legislation passed by carrots and not sticks. Maybe we could apply this to other issues. On abortion, for instance, maybe we could focus on passing legislation that helps make every child a wanted child and that rewards motherhood; after all, Missouri has a near total abortion ban, but women can still go to other states to get one.

And maybe the way to conduct diplomacy is through carrots and not sticks. Ever since Russia began its “Special Military Operation” on February 24th, the US policy has been to try to stick it to the Russians. That hasn’t worked. All that has happened is that Putin has dug his heels in and is more entrenched in power than ever. If sanctions were an effective tool, we would have resolved the North Korea conflict decades ago.

You have to be careful in how you go about transitioning to a green economy. The danger is that many jobs will be lost and many families destroyed, many more women will get abortions, and many communities decimated if it is not done right. However, it turns out that, according to a working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research published this month that green jobs are frequently created in counties that have high shares of employment in fossil fuel extraction. Green jobs are also created in occupations that are about 21% higher paying than average. 

On the healthcare side, there are some meaningful measures passed as well. One of the most obvious measures, one of the most common sense, and consequently, one most strenuously resisted in Washington is the notion that Medicare should be able to negotiate prescription drug prices. That measure is finally on the books. Other measures on the Inflation Reduction Act include limiting Medicare drug price growth to inflation, and limiting commercial drug price growth to inflation.

About $125 billion in taxpayer money would be raised though improving tax compliance. The IRS would be funded by $80 billion over the next ten years, which, according to the CBO, would result in an additional $204 billion over the next 10 years. The CBO estimates every dollar spent to reduce the tax gap would generate $2.50 of revenue.

On July 29th, the Penn Wharton Budget Model came out with an estimate saying that the Inflation Reduction Act would reduce non-interest cumulative deficits by $248 billion over the budget window. 

More work needs to be done. Much of the social spending in the original BBB Act that Joe Manchin tanked – child tax credits, universal pre-K, and more – would have helped with the goal of making every child a wanted child. That is well worth the price of investment and one likely to give a big return.

Opinion: America's March of Folly

By Dr. Marvin Folkertsma

The budget deficits from the first two years of the Obama administration are of sufficient magnitude to spring Dr. “Billions and Billions” Carl Sagan from his grave. Sagan could sue for copyright infringement for misuse of astronomical numbers.

On second thought, the figures now being bandied about are in the trillions, which no doubt would send the venerable atheist skulking back, perhaps muttering something about the “unsustainability” of it all.

Sagan would not be alone. Multi-trillion dollar deficits that generate debt obligations in the hundreds of trillions of dollars cannot continue even in the short run, at least not without that Fifth Horseman of Apocalypse—picture Darth Vader toting a wheel barrow filled with worthless script—showing up to hiss questions about the insanity of those who led America on its “March of Folly.”

Barbara Tuchman wondered the same thing in a book published with that name, in which she probed the mentalities and policies of political leaders who led their countries to destruction—and here’s the kicker—fully aware of what they were doing but not willing to stop themselves from doing it. More specifically, averred Tuchman, to qualify as “folly” a policy: 1) “must have been perceived as counter-productive in its own time, not merely by hindsight;” 2) “a feasible alternative course of action must have been available,” and; 3) that alternative must have been in existence beyond the life of a single individual and recommended over time by significant political opposition.

By these criteria, the Renaissance popes, British government during the American Revolution, American presidents during the Vietnam War era, and several others as well, all get skewered, and rightly so. Their failures can all be explained by their “perverse persistence in a policy demonstrably unworkable or counterproductive.” To put the matter more colorfully, the leaders that Tuchman covered were lamentably immersed in “wooden-headedness, the source of self-deception.”

Echoes of wooden-headedness resound throughout history, from Trojans taking the wooden horse within their walls to current administration officials who continue to insist that the stimulus worked, the country is on the road to economic recovery, and Americans will learn to love a 2,300-page piece of legislation that few read and nobody understands. Lest Republicans feel too smug about Democrats’ current discomfort, they should be reminded that one of their own, George W. Bush, put his signature to a law roughly half that size—the 2003 Medicare Drug Benefit—and even that most iconic of Republican leaders, Ronald Reagan, still failed to produce a balanced budget, even during times of prosperity.

Which means that wooden-headedness transcends time, place, and partisanship, and further that if “eating crow” means being forced to acknowledge one’s own errors, then that repulsive bird should replace bean soup on the Senate’s famed menu, at least until members of both parties in each chamber acknowledge that they have often marched on the road of folly holding each others’ hands, and that we’re all in this together.

Indeed, all Americans have to be, if one is to take recent CBO estimates seriously, which mean that unless America stops its march of folly, federal government spending will go beyond that region where even the expression “out of control” still makes any sense. The CBO March 2011 report indicated that for the 40 years prior to Obama’s election, federal deficits averaged around 35 percent of the country’s annual GDP; that number rose to 62 percent by the end of 2011, the highest level since the end of World War II. Absent significant policy changes, that percentage will climb to 87 percent over the course of the next decade, reflecting an additional $9.5 trillion in debt.

Certainly the attention devoted to this subject over the past few years has been huge, but as Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff point out in their excellent treatment, This Time It’s Different, these numbers reflect conditions that kill countries. Indeed, instead of treating the greatest country on earth like a pampered and suicidal adolescent, American leaders must grasp that nations crumble under such debt; nations and empires and entire civilizations. Further, viable alternatives have been offered as well, including those advocated by a bipartisan Senate group as well as those from the president’s own debt commission, and most recently, by Congressman Paul Ryan.

So, what is the solution? Honesty and courage. Honesty on the part of our political leaders to explain America’s perilous situation and courage to do something about it, regardless of consequences to their own political careers, or even to their lives. Both traits were illustrated in a marvelous vignette recounted by Joseph Ellis in his Founding Brothers. After signing the document that pitted the newly proclaimed country against the most formidable world power the world had ever known, Benjamin Harrison quipped to Elbridge Gerry that his size and weight gave him a greater advantage over his smaller colleague, in that when they were all hung for treason, the corpulent Mr. Harrison “would die in a few minutes,” whereas the lighter Mr. Gerry would “dance in the air an hour or two before [he is] dead.”

These men were honest about the stakes involved, which they faced with resolution and courage and, if necessary, their lives. Today’s circumstances require no less.

— Dr. Marvin Folkertsma is a professor of political science and Fellow for American Studies with The Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College. The author of several books, his latest release is a high-energy novel titled "The Thirteenth Commandment."

McCaskill: We Need to Find Places to Cut at the Pentagon

In her first hearing as Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Readiness and Management Support, U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill pledged to focus her tenure at the helm of the subcommittee on finding efficiencies and rooting out duplicative programs that can be cut at the Pentagon. Today’s hearing was a review of military construction, base closures and environmental programs made as part of the FY2012 Department of Defense budget request. Administration officials from the Army, Air Force, Navy and Office of the Secretary of Defense answered questions about finding efficiencies in military construction.

“As far as I am concerned, however, every hearing that we hold will be an efficiencies hearing. Earlier this week, the Congressional Budget Office reported that the DOD budget has grown by 75 percent over the last decade – and that is the base budget, not including the cost of overseas contingency operations. I do not believe there is anything the Department is doing that we cannot do better, and I do not believe that there is any part of the budget that can be off limits as we look for savings,” McCaskill said in her opening statement.

Specifically, she asked questions on construction costs associated with a scheduled move of Marines and Naval facilities from the base in Okinawa to Guam, and whether a re-evaluation would take place in light of the recent earthquake in Japan. She also questioned whether permanent buildings were labeled temporary to avoid the oversight processes associated with permanent military construction projects and focused on finding efficiencies in military construction by drawing on examples at bases in Germany and San Diego.

“I just want to let the word go out that we’re going to look very carefully at all of this, because we want our men and women to have the best, particularly in terms of their safety and their ability to achieve their mission and a quality of life for them and their families, but we’ve got to be really careful about the expenditures and justifying them,” McCaskill said.

McCaskill also asked the witnesses to commit to returning money to the Treasury when projects come in under budget rather than repurposing the money for something else:

“The question is should bid savings be allowed to be reprogrammed or should bid savings be allowed to go back to the taxpayers to reduce the overall price tag since the savings belong to the taxpayers,” she said.

McCaskill pledged to focus her chairmanship on finding savings and eliminating wasteful spending in the Pentagon’s budget without interfering with military readiness. McCaskill, who has fought for an end to the earmark process since arriving in the Senate in 2007, also promised to not allow any earmark requests in legislation that comes before the Subcommittee.

Republican Weekly Radio Address by Congressman Tom Price -- "Spending binge has got to stop."

“Hello, I’m Congressman Tom Price and I have the privilege of working for the people of Georgia’s Sixth Congressional District. In addition to serving as the Chairman of the House Policy Committee, I’m a member of the House Budget Committee.

“And by now you’ve probably heard a lot of talk coming out of Washington about a so-called budget battle. We’ve even got some Democrats who run Washington threatening to shut down the government instead of listening to the American people and cutting spending. Right now, our focus should be creating jobs and getting our economy moving again.

“After all, the President promised that this would be the year that he got serious about the deficits and the debt hurting our economy. Instead, he started out by asking Congress to raise the debt limit, without any commitment to cutting spending at the same time. In his State of the Union address, he called for more ineffective ‘stimulus’ spending. And this week he submitted a budget for the next fiscal year that destroys jobs by spending too much, and borrowing too much, and taxing too much.

“Listen to economists, listen to the folks who create jobs in this country, and you’ll hear that we need to end Washington’s spending binge to reduce uncertainty, to boost confidence, and to encourage private investment in our economy. To help create a better environment for job creation in America, the spending binge has got to stop. Now with the support of Republican governors and our reform-minded colleagues in the Senate, the new House majority is working hard toward that goal.

“That’s why the House spent this past week working on a bill to cut discretionary spending by $100 billion over the last seven months of the current fiscal year. We’re not only living up to our Pledge to America, we’re exceeding it. And more cuts and more reforms are on the way.

“Now as part of our focus on job growth, committees in the House are combing through job-crushing government regulations, and conducting rigorous oversight of how the government spends the people’s time and your money. We’ll soon begin work on legislation to cut wasteful mandatory spending.

“In the spring, under the leadership of our Budget Chairman, Paul Ryan, we’ll put forth a budget for the next fiscal year that confronts the fiscal challenges facing our nation instead of ducking them. It’ll offer ideas for real entitlement reform so we can have a conversation with the American people about the challenges we face and the need to chart a new path to prosperity.

“Now as a doctor and as a parent, I find it astounding that the President has submitted a budget that ignores the recommendations of his own fiscal commission and it punts on all of the tough choices – including entitlement reform. Instead, he’s expanded entitlements through ObamaCare – a government takeover that will destroy 800,000 jobs, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, and will accelerate our path to fiscal ruin.

“This issue demands presidential leadership – something that the President so far just seems unwilling to offer.

“Now if we can find an upside, it’s that the President admitted that his budget fails to address our fiscal crisis. You see, some Members of Congress still won’t even acknowledge that there’s a crisis. One in particular, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, said not too long ago, and I quote, “Social Security is fine.” But you know it’s not fine. This year, for the first time, it will pay out more money than it takes in.

“And, with the wave of Baby Boomers starting to retire, there’s no way that we can protect programs like Social Security for the future and get our debt under control unless we begin to honestly address entitlements. Now for the President, leadership requires telling friends like Harry Reid the truth, even if it’s politically difficult.

“Now, our reforms will focus both on saving these programs for current and future generations of Americans and on getting our debt under control and our economy growing. By taking critical steps forward now, we can fulfill the mission of health and retirement security for all Americans without making changes for those in or near retirement.

“The new Republican majority will lead even as the Democrats who run Washington ignore their responsibilities.

“And if Senator Reid and President Obama change their minds, we’ll be ready to work with them. In the meantime, Republicans are focused on listening to the people, confronting our nation’s challenges, and helping our economy get back to creating jobs.

“Thanks for listening.”

Cut to the Chase: Spending Restraint, Not Tax Increases

SPENDING RESTRAINT, NOT TAX INCREASES

By Garrett Hawkins

On cold winter mornings it is tempting to press the snooze button on the alarm clock and stay in bed a few extra minutes. I am guilty of it every now and then. As a nation, though, we have not only hit the snooze button on our fiscal alarm in recent years, but we have covered our ears and ignored the blaring sound. It is time to wake up.

A few weeks ago our national debt surpassed $14 trillion (14 followed by 12 zeros), an unfathomable amount of money in my mind. Divided, it amounts to $45,474 of debt per American citizen or $127,543 per taxpayer according to USDebtClock.org.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the federal agency charged with providing economic data to lawmakers, projects our government will run a deficit of close to $1.5 trillion for 2011 if current laws remain unchanged. We accrued deficits of $1.4 trillion in 2009 and $1.3 trillion in 2010.

It is not uncommon for our federal government to spend more than it takes in on an annual basis. We were in the red in all but four of the last 30 years at the end of a fiscal year. The rate our nation has racked up debt in recent years is alarming. The CBO director recently testified before the U.S. Senate Budget Committee warning policymakers they will have to cut spending, raise revenues (taxes) or pursue a combination of the two to “prevent debt from becoming unsupportable.”

During his annual meeting address, American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) President Bob Stallman did not sugarcoat our nation’s fiscal woes and reminded farmers and ranchers of Farm Bureau’s responsibility and obligation to weigh in and help find solutions.

Two years ago a task force of Farm Bureau leaders from across the country spent months studying the federal budget deficit and debt, and developed recommendations for consideration by the organization’s members.

At the AFBF annual meeting last month, voting delegates reaffirmed policy stating the federal budget deficit should be reduced each year, reaching full balance and debt reduction by 2019. They also reaffirmed their belief that a balanced budget should be accomplished through spending restraint rather than tax increases.

In Washington, D.C. the president and congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle are signaling that fiscal order is needed. If we all agree current deficit and debt levels are a threat to our country’s security and economic prosperity, then we must stop ignoring the fiscal alarm ringing in our ears and wake up to the reality that tough decisions must be made.

Budget cuts will be painful, but it will pale to the pain felt by future generations if our fiscal mess is left to them.

(Garrett Hawkins, of Jefferson City, Mo., is director of national legislative programs for Missouri Farm Bureau, the state’s largest farm organization.)