Say Anything Blog

I suggest we cut taxes in order to pay for them.
All in favor say I.

“We have a dollar that’s adjusting and I am for a strong dollar.....
Our dollar doesn’t buy as many barrels of oil as it used to and so therefore it’s more expensive for the American people”..... Bush 3/12/08

I say we cut taxes and forget the Dem’s domestic agenda.

The war against illegal plunder has been fought since the beginning of the world. But how is… legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. Then abolish this law without delay … If such a law is not abolished immediately it will spread, multiply and develop into a system.

Frédéric Bastiat, The Law

Rob’s recently listened-to songs:

"Democrats” ... “Disgusting” ... and “Spending” all in the same headline.  Yep, that election last November sure helped to drain the swamp, didn’t it?

“Poverty of goods is easily cured; poverty of the mind is irreparable.”

This doesn’t sound like a waste of money:

And governors are pressing for $745 million to address a shortfall in the State Children’s Health Insurance Program that threatens to deny health coverage for about 500,000 children in 14 states.

Plus-ups have their faults, but they do provide a flexible mechanism for emergency spending.

As to having the full congress vote on it… as to the details of a given package, do you really think that everybody in Congress is savy enough to know what is or isn’t right for somebody in Minot?  Isn’t this just another version of centralized control?

As I’ve pointed out now a semi-infinite number of times, the real budget crisis in this country is over entitlement programs.  While I would like to see better oversight mechanisms, there are actually budgetary mechanisms in place on plus-ups, and, as you’ve pointed out yourself the amounts of these bills totals to about 1% of the total budget.

Removing them won’t fix anything and to the degree that they do some good, may actually cause more harm.

Putting it in an authorization bill doesn’t get the money spent, it has to be appropriated first.  And there are limits that are set state-by-state by the Congress critters for how much total appropriations in each category of spending.  So what happens in the appropriations phase is the projects for a given state get triaged, the important ones get funded, and others that are deemed less important end up not getting funded. They become elements of law that have no effect.

I think the real problem with this type of spending is it opens itself up for kickbacks to wealthy contributors and other forms of corruption.  If there were an oversight mechanism that included greater transparency, OMB review for conflicts of interest, and a more formalized budget mechanism to prevent these from breaking the bank, really I think ear-marks and other plus up spending would be a strength of our distributed system of government, not a weakness.

do you really think that everybody in Congress is savy enough to know what is or isn’t right for somebody in Minot?  Isn’t this just another version of centralized control?

I’m convinced that a lot of the legislators don’t even read all of the bills they’re voting on now.  As for central control, the money is coming from the central government.  It doesn’t get any more centrally controlled than that.  I know you think some of these “pork” projects are legitimate, and so do I, but I don’t see the problem in putting them to a full vote of Congress.  First it would slow down the number of projects proposed (you have to admit that there are too many) and second it would prevent legislators from sneaking crap through by attaching it to more necessary legislation.

As I’ve pointed out now a semi-infinite number of times, the real budget crisis in this country is over entitlement programs.

And I’ve agreed with you, but that doesn’t mean we can’t spare any criticism for this pattern of events.  Plus, let’s not forget that funding isn’t the only thing that gets attached to these things.  McCain got his torture legislation passed by attaching it to every bill that came through the Senate.  I don’t like the idea of bills passing just because they’re attached to more necessary legislation.  I think that everything which gets passed should have the full scrutiny and legitimacy of a vote on its own merits.

The war against illegal plunder has been fought since the beginning of the world. But how is… legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. Then abolish this law without delay … If such a law is not abolished immediately it will spread, multiply and develop into a system.

Frédéric Bastiat, The Law

Rob’s recently listened-to songs:

Rob:

.As for central control, the money is coming from the central government.  It doesn’t get any more centrally controlled than that.

My point about central control is who makes the decision.

If your congressman drafts a spending bill for your states, that is much more regionalized control than if a committee with no members from North Dakota were to draft a similar spending bill.  Clearly having your congress person crafting the bill for your state has a much stronger linkage between the voters concerns in that state, and the person (who hopefully is familiar with the problems of his own state) who is drafting legislation to meet those concerns.

The central-committe approach gives you the one-size fits all version of governance, which typically meets the needs of the highly urbanized area, but ignores the problems in more rural ones.

Clearly the two alternatives are very different in terms of how centralized the decision making is, and most non-grandstanding congress people will tell you that allowing plus-ups gives them greater flexibility for addressing the problems of your state.

For example, a few years ago, one of Trent Lott’s staffers did a study on Mississippi roads (which have the highest mortality rate per mile driven of any roads in the US).  As you would expect, the problem came down to lots of narrow curvy roads with no road markings, and often with no margins. This has been addressed by earmarking some of the funds coming to Mississippi to go towards road widening, straightening and improvement of signage and road markings.  Pretty boring stuff, but it translates into saving lives and improving the .

Good luck getting a committee chaired by Senator Schumer of NY to even be aware there was a problem, let alone come up with a solution that wouldn’t force e.g. North Dakota to undertake unneeded road improvements and in general cost the federal government much more than the earmarked version would cost.

You make good points Carrick, but you have to admit that there is also a problem with unprincipled politicians slipping nonsense legislation, spending and otherwise, into unrelated must-pass bills.

I wonder if there isn’t a way to compromise on this?  Some change in the procedure that would keep federal money flowing to necessary federal projects while simultaneously providing more transparency and less sneakiness in the process.

For me, it sticks in my craw that there is legislation that sneaks through congress and isn’t necessarily passed because of its merits.

The war against illegal plunder has been fought since the beginning of the world. But how is… legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. Then abolish this law without delay … If such a law is not abolished immediately it will spread, multiply and develop into a system.

Frédéric Bastiat, The Law

Rob’s recently listened-to songs:

Rob, most of the legislation that gets attached to congressional bills has been fully vetted within a congressman’s office by his staffers, and often vetted by the committee that is associated with the spending.  Almost any piece of legislation that gets attached to emergency bills has already gone through some type of internal review.

That doesn’t mean it’s all great legislation, but consider this: the Congressional leaders can limit debate if they so choose to prevent debate (and hence the attachment of other unrelated bills).  The fact they didn’t do so in this case probably shouldn’t be seen as particularly nefarious, but it is an option they have.

It could be as simple as the leadership knows that they won’t be taking up the general appropriations bill till later next summer, and that some funding situations may need more urgent response than that, like the Child’s Health Insurance system.

Further, in terms of “unprincipled legislators” ... isn’t that a bit redundant?

Anyway, if somebody were to attach a rider without leadership approval, it would generally not make it past Senate-House reconciliation.

But I agree 100% with this:

Some change in the procedure that would keep federal money flowing to necessary federal projects while simultaneously providing more transparency and less sneakiness in the process.

I fully support reforming the system so that what congress is doing is closer to what they say they are doing.  The current system is dishonest in so far as the stated purpose of a legislation is often put in grandiose terms to avoid a public debate on the merits of the legislation.

That is neither transparent nor honest.

If it weren’t for the abuses of earmark legislation (Ala Cunningham and Murtha) I wouldn’t oppose earmarks as long as they were somewhat controlled.

Barring the fact that they are all crooks I don’t see why the bureaucrats are any better deciding where the money goes than your congressman.  On the other hand, who says the bureaucrats are honest?

Rob said that he thinks a lot of Congressman don’t read the bills they vote on.  I don’t think it’s possible for any Congressman to read much less understand what they are voting on.  Have you ever tried to follow an amendment to a bill?  The text often goes to Delete the second sentence in public law $3.14159265979 and substitute the word require for the second word in the third sentence.

They should only pass laws they understand.

The Debate is over!  Global Whining has been confirmed.

Rob, most of the legislation that gets attached to congressional bills has been fully vetted within a congressman’s office by his staffers, and often vetted by the committee that is associated with the spending.  Almost any piece of legislation that gets attached to emergency bills has already gone through some type of internal review.

I understand that, but the money being spent belongs to all of us.  Not just the constituent of the Senator proposing the legislation, or the Senators reviewing it in committee.  Because that money belongs to all of us, because part of my money went to roads in Mississippi or part of your money goes to roads here in ND, shouldn’t all of our representatives in Congress get to consider the merits of a bill on its own?  Without having to decide between holding up more necessary legislation or passing something that isn’t quite as necessary.  Or is downright ridiculous (like maybe a million dollar bus stop in Alaska).

Congressional leaders can limit debate if they so choose to prevent debate (and hence the attachment of other unrelated bills).

Yeah, but in practice that never happens.  The party in power gets together and agrees on which bill they’re going to pork out, and then they do it.  And if the opposition party has a problem with it, they have to hold up the entire bill.

I fully support reforming the system so that what congress is doing is closer to what they say they are doing.  The current system is dishonest in so far as the stated purpose of a legislation is often put in grandiose terms to avoid a public debate on the merits of the legislation.

That is neither transparent nor honest.

Well, we’re on the same page as far as change being needed.  I guess it’s the nature of the change needed where we diverge.

Perhaps getting the chief executive involved is the solution (just throwing this out there).  The line-item veto where he simply crosses parts of legislation is out clearly unconstitutional, and I’ve been fairly underwhelmed by the amendments offered by Republicans earlier this year to give the President recission power over spending, but the clear answer to me would be to give the President back his power to impound funds.

You’ve seen me explain this before, I’m sure, but from Jefferson down through Nixon Presidents had the power to order the treasury not to issue money for appropriations made by Congress.  The loophole being that the constitution charges Congress with appropriating money, but doesn’t say that the money actually has to be spent.

Meaning that if the President spots a “bridge to nowhere” he can just order the Treasury to not fulfill that appropriation.

I, personally, like this decision.  It puts a nice balance between the President and Congress when it comes to spending.  Yeah, Congress can refuse to fund what the President wants (like Iraq War Fudning) but then the President can refuse to send funds to the appropriations Congress makes.  If either side wants to get things done they’ll have to find some common ground.

And since we’re all constituents of the President, he will be accountable to us for appropriations he fails to fund.

The war against illegal plunder has been fought since the beginning of the world. But how is… legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. Then abolish this law without delay … If such a law is not abolished immediately it will spread, multiply and develop into a system.

Frédéric Bastiat, The Law

Rob’s recently listened-to songs:

Rob as I understand it, both parties get together.  The “in power” party gets a bigger slice of the pie, but it is divvied up based on seniority and other factors.

As to having the President having a “no” in this, I’m not sure that makes a lot of sense. Speaking generically, why is he more authoritative than any congressman on what a particular district needs? 

If anything, you would get more political games when the President is more involved, than when he’s not.  For example, if a particular congressman votes against a measure the President desired, he can punish him by withholding funds for pet projects of the congressman.

I still say the better approach is to improve the transparency of the process, while having a mechanism for catching payoffs and kickbacks.  That latter is much more of a concern to me, than an idiot congressman potentially wasting $1,000,000 of his limited capital on a bus stop. 

In that respect, the current system has a correction factor, if you throw away your piece of the pie on frivolous stuff, you’re less likely to be reelected than if you spend it wisely.

While I appreciate the money belongs to all of us, do you really want me to be involved in dictating how North Dakota spends it’s share of the money.  Assuming you are adults and can take care of your own interests, why isn’t it better for me to stay out of your affairs?