To the bottom half of persons in America who pay zero taxes, the truth is that the gov't money is free. To students who borrowed money and got degrees in worthless unemployable subjects, they are hoping the money is free.
Note: This is an election year phenomenon. Believe me, students.
The problem with gov't is they have no financial discipline. Jabba the Hutt never weighed himself and didn't care how bloated he became. Same is true with the government.
1. The US Congress has only followed the mandated budget discipline 4 times since 1977. The rest is a series of omnibus bills and continuing resolutions. Zero accountability.
Any credible organization would fire employees with such a piss poor record.
If Congress fails to follow the rules in appropriations, how can we expect the executive branch to follow the rules in spending?
2. The US gov't has essentially no budget audit discipline. Money is appropriated. Money is spent. There is no discipline to see if the money was spent on the things for which it was appropriated.
The defense department has no idea of how much property it owns and where. Thre is probably a few trillion dollars of property paying no property taxes in the hands of government.
3. Gov't commingles current expenses and capital expenses. When you build a submarine, the money is allocated on an annual basis rather than being accounted for as a capital asset and having a job cost accounting and a depreciation schedule.
This single discipline - which is how the rest of the world accounts for things - would give some order to the budget.
4. Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican POTUS with a Dem Congress, balanced 8 straight budgets and championed the budget as his document. He exercised almost 200 vetoes of budget bills. Compare that to Obama who exercised 2.
Eisenhower was a serious leader who had experienced the serious work of defeating Nazi Germany and went toe-to-toe with Congress -- dominated by the Dems -- to pass that budget.
Eight straight balanced budgets!
It is impossible to manage a budget when there is no comprehensive document, but rather a series of CRs and Omnibus bills.
It is actually quite fixable, but it would take serious men and serious leadership.
I would make a law that no politician can stand for re-election if they failed to pass a balanced budget.
Understand your comment on zero taxes, but in fact, it is a tax on their future earnings as meager as they might prove to be, so there is a cost.
I think a lot of govt programs like Social Security could be fixed (ultimately ended and solved with private market solutions) if we had serious leadership
A very good example of how bad gov't budgeting and financial administration is is a recent 2024 DHS IG report that revealed FEMA has disaster declarations open that are more than a dozen years old.
There is still an unclosed disaster declaration -- and thus committed but unspent funds -- from Super Storm Sandy that carries more than $4.5B in "unliquidated, committed funds." That storm was more than a dozen years ago FFS.
There are some disaster declarations as old as 16 years.
The IG report identified approximately $9B in such committed, but unliquidated funds that could easily be closed and at least $8B could be returned to the FEMA Disaster Relief Fund (DRF) today. Meanwhile, Mayorkas is crying FEMA is out of money.
This is particularly galling since the gov't fiscal year just started 6 days ago.
The reason many of these funds are not closed and liquidated is because the lefties have set up and peopled administrative bodies that continue to supposedly deal with these matters. These are really just political warehouses for "their" people.
You want evidence of the Deep State? There it is. Ratholing money for purposes that are not longer necessary whilst pleading for more funding.
In today’s weird world, if you tell a central-planning advocate that ‘there is no such thing as a free lunch,’ there is a very good chance he will attempt to redefine things and instead offer a ‘free breakfast’ or a ‘free dinner’ and tell you that ‘this time it will be different.’
The Constitution does not have any provision allowing for a federalized police force, so the FBI and the ATF must both be abolished. There's no provision for federalized schools, so the DEA must be abolished.
The Dept. of Education needs to be abolished because all schools are local. There’s zero federal responsibility and no federal schools.
Similarly, all disasters are local. For that main reason, FEMA should abolished, even though FEMA gives us more and more reasons to abolish it after each new disaster. Each state should have their own disaster funds funded by their citizens. No one ever takes responsibility for the way the Feds handle disasters. If the states handled their own disaster management there would be someone with skin in the game.
Cannot agree more on what you said. Harris believes govt is the answer. Reagan said it best when he said the most feared words you could ever hear was "I am from the govt and I am here to help". The Education Dept is where you start as well. Too bad Trump is running to lose this race. He needs to build a big tent and he is doing the opposite. The conspiracy theories on FEMA in North Carolina Republican areas was my last straw. Trump just needs to rail on FEMA being broke because they gave $750 to every illegal immigrant to enter this country but he goes off on stupid lies. Even the Republican governors are debunking his rants. My hope was we could have a guy like Musk dismantling bad govt for the next four years but my fear is the 30% of the GOP party who Trump calls RINOS are going to abstain from voting for a presidential candidate this year. We need to work on the Senate and House now as I fear the race is over at the Executive Branch now. Sorry....frustration rant again....
All that really needs to happen is for governors - whose executive power exceeds that of the federal government in almost all areas - to force the feds back into their Constitutional powers box, and enforce 10A. How to do that? Two ways:
1. Sue the feds every time anyone in their state is impacted by the feds coloring outside the Enumerated box.
2. Refuse to tax their citizens to fund unconstitutional activities of the feds. How to do this and not fall afoul of 16A? Easy. The governor reviews the federal budget each Oct 1, strikes everything unsupported by the enumerated powers, divides the remainder by the number of taxpayers, nationally, applies that number to the taxpayers of his/her state, collects that amount using the taxation policies of that state and forward a single check - along with the taxpayer ID info of each taxpayer - to the IRS and says, "That's all you get, we are NOT funding illegal activities of the federal government." 16A is preserved - the federal government is taxing the citizens, and the Constitution is preserved - the feds are kept in their Article 1, Section 8 box. If the feds do not pass the constitutionally- and statutorily-required budget by the defined date - no taxation, as it is impossible to define what is and is not a constitutional spend.
As to the vaunted "Supremacy Clause," that applies ONLY to powers granted the federal government when in conflict with state legislation. Why? Because - other than the enumerated powers - the feds HAVE no authority for which they can claim "supremacy."
What areas are causing ALL of our social unrest? Areas NOT within federal authority: Abortion, marriage, sports, "general police powers," bathrooms, foreign aid, education, housing, healthcare.....
-->Vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz fawns over China, saying “everyone is the same and everyone shares.”<--
There's a screw loose in that construction. Millions of Chinese have emigrated overseas, especially to the US. Why is that, Tim? Another instance of who ya gonna believe, me? Or your lyin' eyes?
The gist of this is if we continue to teach the same garbage, differently stated, but same principles, as radical extremist ideologies, we are royally F'ed as a nation.
It is disgusting what is permitted and encouraged in academia and other fields of "Wokie-Ology".
Sensibility has left the building and theory is more important than practicality.
There is a very real chance of a qreturn to The Mason-Dixon line of years ago.
Will that be a precursor to Civil War 2? Probably, as we're a relatively young nation and many of our politicians lack realistic vision, acceptance of outcomes and consequences, and an unwillingness to admit they've been wrong and change is needed.
Sad state of affairs. If Harris takes over, look out. Most dangerous major party candidate of our lifetimes.
Another satisfying rant. If you just go by the political proclivities of the youth, who by and large have been educated out of their innate common sense, in the medium term, it would seem we are well and truly doomed.
"There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch."
The ghost of the great and prescient Milton Friedman has entered the chat.
Great observations Mr Carter! The truly sad part of your article is that it needs to be written...
To the bottom half of persons in America who pay zero taxes, the truth is that the gov't money is free. To students who borrowed money and got degrees in worthless unemployable subjects, they are hoping the money is free.
Note: This is an election year phenomenon. Believe me, students.
The problem with gov't is they have no financial discipline. Jabba the Hutt never weighed himself and didn't care how bloated he became. Same is true with the government.
1. The US Congress has only followed the mandated budget discipline 4 times since 1977. The rest is a series of omnibus bills and continuing resolutions. Zero accountability.
Any credible organization would fire employees with such a piss poor record.
If Congress fails to follow the rules in appropriations, how can we expect the executive branch to follow the rules in spending?
2. The US gov't has essentially no budget audit discipline. Money is appropriated. Money is spent. There is no discipline to see if the money was spent on the things for which it was appropriated.
The defense department has no idea of how much property it owns and where. Thre is probably a few trillion dollars of property paying no property taxes in the hands of government.
3. Gov't commingles current expenses and capital expenses. When you build a submarine, the money is allocated on an annual basis rather than being accounted for as a capital asset and having a job cost accounting and a depreciation schedule.
This single discipline - which is how the rest of the world accounts for things - would give some order to the budget.
4. Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican POTUS with a Dem Congress, balanced 8 straight budgets and championed the budget as his document. He exercised almost 200 vetoes of budget bills. Compare that to Obama who exercised 2.
Eisenhower was a serious leader who had experienced the serious work of defeating Nazi Germany and went toe-to-toe with Congress -- dominated by the Dems -- to pass that budget.
Eight straight balanced budgets!
It is impossible to manage a budget when there is no comprehensive document, but rather a series of CRs and Omnibus bills.
It is actually quite fixable, but it would take serious men and serious leadership.
I would make a law that no politician can stand for re-election if they failed to pass a balanced budget.
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
Understand your comment on zero taxes, but in fact, it is a tax on their future earnings as meager as they might prove to be, so there is a cost.
I think a lot of govt programs like Social Security could be fixed (ultimately ended and solved with private market solutions) if we had serious leadership
A very good example of how bad gov't budgeting and financial administration is is a recent 2024 DHS IG report that revealed FEMA has disaster declarations open that are more than a dozen years old.
There is still an unclosed disaster declaration -- and thus committed but unspent funds -- from Super Storm Sandy that carries more than $4.5B in "unliquidated, committed funds." That storm was more than a dozen years ago FFS.
There are some disaster declarations as old as 16 years.
The IG report identified approximately $9B in such committed, but unliquidated funds that could easily be closed and at least $8B could be returned to the FEMA Disaster Relief Fund (DRF) today. Meanwhile, Mayorkas is crying FEMA is out of money.
This is particularly galling since the gov't fiscal year just started 6 days ago.
The reason many of these funds are not closed and liquidated is because the lefties have set up and peopled administrative bodies that continue to supposedly deal with these matters. These are really just political warehouses for "their" people.
You want evidence of the Deep State? There it is. Ratholing money for purposes that are not longer necessary whilst pleading for more funding.
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
Galling! Did you seecwhat Open The Books just found? FEMA is such a cluster you know what they are still trying to sort out stuff from 2012
In today’s weird world, if you tell a central-planning advocate that ‘there is no such thing as a free lunch,’ there is a very good chance he will attempt to redefine things and instead offer a ‘free breakfast’ or a ‘free dinner’ and tell you that ‘this time it will be different.’
'This time it'll be different' is another entry on the list of greatest lies.
-The check is in the mail.
-I'll respect you in the morning.
-We're from the government and we're here to help.
It's a long list...
95% of Federal law is unconstitutional.
The Constitution does not have any provision allowing for a federalized police force, so the FBI and the ATF must both be abolished. There's no provision for federalized schools, so the DEA must be abolished.
“The Congress shall have Power To”
https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/article-1/#article-1-section-8
AND THAT’S ALL!!!
The Dept. of Education needs to be abolished because all schools are local. There’s zero federal responsibility and no federal schools.
Similarly, all disasters are local. For that main reason, FEMA should abolished, even though FEMA gives us more and more reasons to abolish it after each new disaster. Each state should have their own disaster funds funded by their citizens. No one ever takes responsibility for the way the Feds handle disasters. If the states handled their own disaster management there would be someone with skin in the game.
Cannot agree more on what you said. Harris believes govt is the answer. Reagan said it best when he said the most feared words you could ever hear was "I am from the govt and I am here to help". The Education Dept is where you start as well. Too bad Trump is running to lose this race. He needs to build a big tent and he is doing the opposite. The conspiracy theories on FEMA in North Carolina Republican areas was my last straw. Trump just needs to rail on FEMA being broke because they gave $750 to every illegal immigrant to enter this country but he goes off on stupid lies. Even the Republican governors are debunking his rants. My hope was we could have a guy like Musk dismantling bad govt for the next four years but my fear is the 30% of the GOP party who Trump calls RINOS are going to abstain from voting for a presidential candidate this year. We need to work on the Senate and House now as I fear the race is over at the Executive Branch now. Sorry....frustration rant again....
Keep em coming. Rant at your friends so they rant
All that really needs to happen is for governors - whose executive power exceeds that of the federal government in almost all areas - to force the feds back into their Constitutional powers box, and enforce 10A. How to do that? Two ways:
1. Sue the feds every time anyone in their state is impacted by the feds coloring outside the Enumerated box.
2. Refuse to tax their citizens to fund unconstitutional activities of the feds. How to do this and not fall afoul of 16A? Easy. The governor reviews the federal budget each Oct 1, strikes everything unsupported by the enumerated powers, divides the remainder by the number of taxpayers, nationally, applies that number to the taxpayers of his/her state, collects that amount using the taxation policies of that state and forward a single check - along with the taxpayer ID info of each taxpayer - to the IRS and says, "That's all you get, we are NOT funding illegal activities of the federal government." 16A is preserved - the federal government is taxing the citizens, and the Constitution is preserved - the feds are kept in their Article 1, Section 8 box. If the feds do not pass the constitutionally- and statutorily-required budget by the defined date - no taxation, as it is impossible to define what is and is not a constitutional spend.
As to the vaunted "Supremacy Clause," that applies ONLY to powers granted the federal government when in conflict with state legislation. Why? Because - other than the enumerated powers - the feds HAVE no authority for which they can claim "supremacy."
What areas are causing ALL of our social unrest? Areas NOT within federal authority: Abortion, marriage, sports, "general police powers," bathrooms, foreign aid, education, housing, healthcare.....
Yes! Federalism
-->Vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz fawns over China, saying “everyone is the same and everyone shares.”<--
There's a screw loose in that construction. Millions of Chinese have emigrated overseas, especially to the US. Why is that, Tim? Another instance of who ya gonna believe, me? Or your lyin' eyes?
The gist of this is if we continue to teach the same garbage, differently stated, but same principles, as radical extremist ideologies, we are royally F'ed as a nation.
It is disgusting what is permitted and encouraged in academia and other fields of "Wokie-Ology".
Sensibility has left the building and theory is more important than practicality.
There is a very real chance of a qreturn to The Mason-Dixon line of years ago.
Will that be a precursor to Civil War 2? Probably, as we're a relatively young nation and many of our politicians lack realistic vision, acceptance of outcomes and consequences, and an unwillingness to admit they've been wrong and change is needed.
Sad state of affairs. If Harris takes over, look out. Most dangerous major party candidate of our lifetimes.
I don’t think the point that leftist politics is based largely on envy gets enough discussion.
Another satisfying rant. If you just go by the political proclivities of the youth, who by and large have been educated out of their innate common sense, in the medium term, it would seem we are well and truly doomed.
VCs, including those on the right, love bailouts and subsidies too! See: SVB