Senator Mark Pryor wants our ideas on how to cut federal spending. Take a look at this video clip below:
Senator Pryor has asked us to send our ideas to him at cutspending@pryor.senate.gov and I have done so in the past and will continue to do so in the future.
On May 11, 2011, I emailed to this above address and I got this email back from Senator Pryor’s office:
Please note, this is not a monitored email account. Due to the sheer volume of correspondence I receive, I ask that constituents please contact me via my website with any responses or additional concerns. If you would like a specific reply to your message, please visit http://pryor.senate.gov/contact. This system ensures that I will continue to keep Arkansas First by allowing me to better organize the thousands of emails I get from Arkansans each week and ensuring that I have all the information I need to respond to your particular communication in timely manner. I appreciate you writing. I always welcome your input and suggestions. Please do not hesitate to contact me on any issue of concern to you in the future.
Therefore, I went to the website and sent this email below:
Reform entitlements. Spending cannot be restrained without reforming entitlements, which comprise two-thirds of all federal spending and threaten the country’s long-term finances. (See Chart 2.) These programs are projected to grow by 6 percent annually for the next decade. Table 1, which displays the spending restraint needed to balance the budget by 2014, shows that all scenarios to balance the budget by 2014 require reducing the 6 percent annual growth rate of mandatory spending. Lawmakers seeking to rein in spending should put all entitlement spending on the table, including the 2003 Medicare drug bill and the 2002 farm bill.
From 2000 to 2010, real federal spending will have increased from $21,875 per household to $30,543 per household.
In 2010, the federal government will spend $30,543 per household, collect taxes of $17,879 per household, and run a budget deficit of $12,664 per household.
Under President Obama’s budget, deficits from 2010 through 2020 would total $82,219 per household.
Surging Social Security, Medicare, and net interest costs are set to crowd out spending on other programs.
Why not pass the Balanced Budget amendment? As you know that federal deficit is at all time high (1.6 trillion deficit with revenues of 2.2 trillion and spending at 3.8 trillion).
On my blog www.HaltingArkansasLiberalswithTruth.com I took you at your word and sent you over 100 emails with specific spending cut ideas. However, I did not see any of them in the recent debt deal that Congress adopted. Now I am trying another approach. Every week from now on I will send you an email explaining different reasons why we need the Balanced Budget Amendment. It will appear on my blog on “Thirsty Thursday” because the government is always thirsty for more money to spend.
Marco Rubio is one of your fellow citizens and he noted:
A balanced budget amendment would be a necessary step in reversing Washington’s tax-borrow-spend mantra. It would force Congress to balance its budget each year – not allow it to pass our problems on to the next generation any longer.
The Balanced Budget Amendment is the only thing I can think of that would force Washington to cut spending. We have only a handful of balanced budgets in the last 60 years, so obviously what we are doing is not working. We are passing along this debt to the next generation.
Thank you for this opportunity to share my ideas with you.
In my two short months in office, it has become clear to me that the spending problem in Washington is far worse than many of us feared. For years, politicians have blindly poured more and more borrowed money into ineffective government programs, leaving us with trillion dollar deficits and a crippling debt burden that threatens prosperity and economic growth.
In the Florida House of Representatives, where a balanced budget is a requirement, we had to make the tough choices to cut spending where necessary because it was required by state law. By no means was this an easy process, but it was our duty as elected officials to be accountable to our constituents and to future generations of Floridians. In Washington, a balanced budget amendment is not just a fiscally-responsible proposal, it’s a necessary step to curb politicians’ decades-long penchant for overspending.
Several senators have proposed balanced budget amendments that ensure Congress will not spend a penny more than we take in, while setting a high hurdle for future tax hikes. I am a co-sponsor of two balanced budget amendments, since it is clear that these measures would go a long way to reversing the spending gusher we’ve seen from Washington in recent years.
During my Senate campaign, while surrounded by the employees of Jacksonville’s Meridian Technologies, I proposed 12 simple ways to cut spending in Washington. That company, founded 13 years ago, has grown into a 200-employee, high-tech business, and the ideas I proposed would help ensure that similar companies have the opportunity to start or expand just like Meridian did.
To be clear, our unsustainable debt and deficits are threatening companies like Meridian and impeding job creation. In addition to proposing a balanced budget amendment, I recommended canceling unspent “stimulus” funds, banning all earmarks and returning discretionary spending to 2008 levels.
Fortunately, some of my ideas have found their way to the Senate chamber. The first bill I co-sponsored in the Senate was to repeal ObamaCare, the costly overhaul of our nation’s health care system that destroys jobs and impedes our economic recovery. Democratic leaders in the Senate have expressed their willingness to ban earmarks for two years after the Senate Republican conference adopted a moratorium. I have also co-sponsored the REINS Act, a common-sense measure that would increase accountability and transparency in our outdated and burdensome regulatory process. These bills, along with a balanced budget amendment, would help get our country back on a sustainable path and provide certainty to job creators.
While Republicans are proposing a variety of ideas to rein in Washington’s out-of-control spending, unfortunately, President Obama’s budget for the upcoming fiscal year proposes to spend $46 trillion, and even in its best year, the deficit would remain above $600 billion. Worst of all, the President’s budget completely avoids addressing the biggest drivers of our long-term debt – Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
Rather than tackle these tough, serious issues, President Obama is proposing a litany of tax hikes on small businesses and entrepreneurs, to the tune of more than $1.6 trillion. These tax increases destroy jobs, make us less competitive internationally and hurt our efforts to grow the economy and get our fiscal house in order.
A balanced budget amendment would be a necessary step in reversing Washington’s tax-borrow-spend mantra. It would force Congress to balance its budget each year – not allow it to pass our problems on to the next generation any longer.
Marco Rubio
Marco Rubio, a Republican, is a U.S. senator from Florida and former speaker of the Florida House of Representatives.
He talks about “rebuilding America,” but his ideas will do nothing of the sort.
Last night, Van Jones launched what he’s calling the “American Dream Movement.” Jones, as you may remember, was President Obama’s Green Czar before he resigned amidst controversy. He was hired last year by Princeton University as a visiting lecturer in the Center for African American Studies.
In his almost two-hour, live-streamed event launch—which was heavily promoted by the liberal group MoveOn.org—Jones laid out the liberal vision for America. He called the simple truth that our country has a major debt and deficit problem “a dangerous lie” and led the crowd in chants of “America is not broke!”
In one particularly shocking part of his speech, Jones seemed to compare conservatives to terrorists, saying, “Paul Ryan’s budget would knock out more critical American infrastructure than our sworn enemies ever dreamed of knocking out.” This is specially dangerous territory for one such as Jones, who has found himself in trouble before for signing a petition suggesting that America was at fault on 9/11 or complicit in al-Qaeda’s attacks on our nation—the so-called truther movement.
Jones ended by questioning the patriotism of the Tea Party movement. With a nod to Vice President Joe Biden, he discussed the patriotism of paying higher taxes and took to calling his fellow progressives the “deeper patriots,” as if patriotism is determined by how much of other people’s money you can spend.
But perhaps the major conceit in Jones’s address was the notion that the economy is a zero-sum game where the success of one person hinders your ability to succeed. If you’re not doing well, it’s because someone else is getting ahead at your expense. “We’re not broke,” Jones said early on in his presentation, “We’ve been robbed.”
As Rachel Weiner over at The Washington Postnotes, this isn’t the first attempt at a sort of anti–Tea Party, and not even the first attempt by Jones:
A coalition of liberal and civil-rights groups united under the “One Nation” banner last year and held a rally on the National Mall in October. After the election, the group—in which Van Jones was involved—fizzled.
We will see in the coming weeks whether this newest movement fares any better. But ultimately, it’s doomed to fail. There’s a reason the Tea Party movement wasn’t launched with a slick website or a webcast. The Tea Party was the result of a growing feeling in this country that things aren’t on the right track, that we weren’t being told the truth by our leaders.
The Tea Party is the small business owner struggling under the weight of more and more regulations, the senior citizen wondering how the government can possibly afford to keep its promises, the parents concerned that their child will be worse off than they. In short, the Tea Party is a selfless movement driven by the desire to save our country before it’s too late.
This new effort by Van Jones is something else entirely. It’s supported by those who, like AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, know they have a vested interest in keeping government big and are trying to convince the rest of us that we do, too. This “American Dream Movement” is about fostering jealously and class warfare to justify expansive social programs and bigger government in order to, as President Obama explained, “fundamentally [transform] the United States of America.”
There are two important lessons from Jones’s presentation for conservatives.
First, conservatives need to keep educating the public, because we have real solutions to the nation’s most pressing issues. The left knows they have to do something because, as Charles Krauthammer explained earlier this year, “they’ve lost the American people” and are struggling with serious Tea Party envy. After all, liberals control the Senate. They control the White House. But they know they’re losing the public.
Secondly, while we explain the importance of reducing government and righting our fiscal house, we can’t forget to explain the other half of our message—how taking these steps not only keeps us from going off the cliff but can help stimulate growth and create jobs. In one of the videos played during the event, a woman says, “The American dream is worth fighting for.” Heritage agrees, which is why we launched an actual plan to preserve that dream and ensure that it exists for future generations. We call it “Saving the American Dream,” and you can learn about it here.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) came to Washington as the a tea-party conservative with the goal of fixing the economy, addressing the debt crisis and curbing the growth of the federal government. It’s an uphill battle for the youngest member of the U.S. Senate, but one he’s prepared to fight.
In the days following Obama’s speech to Congress, Lee sharply criticized the president’s ideas for raising taxes and hiking spending to spur economic growth. As he explained to us, “We need to not be doing more of the same things that made the problem worse. We need to refocus on getting the federal government out of the way rather than making the federal government part of the problem.”
Our long-run outlook is grim, but at least we still have time to reform the entitlement programs and save America from Greek-style fiscal collapse.
The conventional wisdom among economists is that a nation gets in deep trouble when government debt reaches 90 percent of GDP. That’s generally true, but it would be much more accurate to say that a nation gets in deep trouble when debt approaches 90 percent of GDP and the fiscal outlook shows even more red ink.
But this distinction doesn’t really matter much for the United States and Europe. Thanks to a combination of entitlement programs and aging populations, both face a bleak fiscal future. A 2010 study from the Bank for International Settlement shows that government debt in most industrialized nations will soar above 200 percent of GDP (in some cases, much higher) within the next few decades.
At some point, investors are going to realize that the United States is on an unsustainable path.
The only major difference is that European nations are farther down the path to fiscal collapse. The welfare state was adopted earlier in Europe and government spending among euro nations now consumes a staggering 49 percent of economic output. This heavy fiscal burden, especially when combined with onerous tax systems, helps explain why growth is anemic.
But the United States is only a couple of decades behind. According to long-run forecasts from the Congressional Budget Office, the burden of federal spending will reach European levels as the baby boom generation retires.
At some point, investors are going to realize that the United States is on an unsustainable path. Whether that’s 10 years from now or 20 years from now is anybody’s guess.
Daniel J. Mitchell is a top expert on tax reform and supply-side tax policy at the Cato Institute.
What we do know, however, is that Greece, Portugal, and Ireland already have stuck their snouts in the bailout trough, and it’s probably just a matter of time before Italy, Spain, and Belgium are in the same category. Heck, they’re already receiving indirect bailouts from the European Central Bank, which is buying up their dodgy debt in hopes of postponing the day of reckoning.
The one silver lining to this dark cloud is that the United States still can turn things around. Greece, Italy, and other welfare states have probably passed the point of no return, but it’s still possible for American lawmakers to fix the entitlement crisis by turning Medicaid over to the states , modernizing Medicare into a premium-support system, and transitioning to a system of personal retirement accounts for younger workers.
If those reforms don’t take place, the consequences won’t be pleasant. To be blunt, there won’t be an IMF to bail out the United States.
In a interview with Chicago’s Don Wade & Roma radio show this morning, Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky claimed that Americans aren’t entitled to all of their own money.
Toward the end of a wide-ranging interview, the hosts played a clip from this week’s Republican Presidential Debate where California teenager Tyler Hinsley asked, “Of every dollar that I earn, how much do you think I deserve to keep?” Co-host Don Wade asked Schakowsky to answer the same question.
After some initial back-and-forth, she replied, “I’ll put it this way, you don’t deserve to keep all of it. It’s not a question of deserving, because what government is, is those things that we decide to do together.”
Despite the hosts’ persistence, Schakowsky declined to answer what percentage of a person’s income they deserved to keep. “I pay at a 35% tax rate, happy to do it,” she explained when the hosts persisted with their question. She again declined to say how much more she would personally be willing to pay.
But Rep. Schakowsky is not alone. Her views are sadly typical of a liberal worldview that sees a person’s earnings as belonging first to the state. In fact, the left is now doubling down on this misguided belief, with the President pushing for more stimulus spending despite the failures of earlier “stimulus.”
But while the left continues to promote the same failed policies—more taxes, more regulation, more big government—conservatives need to trumpet the benefits of low taxes, sensible regulations, and small government. As Heritage’s Dubay explains:
The best way to grow revenues is to promote faster economic growth, which will increase the number of taxpayers and taxable income more rapidly. Tax hikes—whether through higher tax rates or slashing credits, deductions, and exemptions without offsetting reductions elsewhere—will not do the job. Under President Obama’s current policies, spending will continue to grow at a faster rate than can be paid for by tax hikes—even assuming the huge tax increases the President insists upon. To add insult to injury, as history has shown, tax hikes would slow economic growth and make it even harder for unemployed Americans to find a job.
In the debate of job creation and how best to pursue it as a policy goal, one point is forgotten: Government doesn’t create jobs. Government only diverts resources from one use to another, which doesn’t create new employment.
Video produced by Caleb Brown and Austin Bragg.
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It seems that liberals will never wake up. Over and over they have tried stimulus plans but they don’t work. Take a look at this excellent article from the Cato Institute:
Lawmakers are considering extending temporary payroll tax cuts. But the policy is based on faulty Keynesian theories and misplaced confidence in the government’s ability to micromanage short-run growth.
In textbook Keynesian terms, federal deficits stimulate growth by goosing “aggregate demand,” or consumer spending. Since the recession began, we’ve had a lot of goosing — deficits were $459 billion in 2008, $1.4 trillion in 2009, $1.3 trillion in 2010, and $1.3 trillion in 2011. Despite that huge supposed stimulus, unemployment remains remarkably high and the recovery has been the slowest since World War II.
Policymakers should ignore the Keynesians and their faulty models, and instead focus on reforms to aid long-run growth…
Yet supporters of extending payroll tax cuts think that adding another $265 billion to the deficit next year will somehow spur growth. That “stimulus” would be on top of the $1 trillion in deficit spending that is already expected in 2012. Far from helping the economy, all this deficit spending is destabilizing financial markets, scaring businesses away from investing, and imposing crushing debt burdens on young people.
For three years, policymakers have tried to manipulate short-run economic growth, and they have failed. They have put too much trust in macroeconomists, who are frankly lousy at modeling the complex workings of the short-run economy. In early 2008, the Congressional Budget Office projected that economic growth would strengthen in subsequent years, and thus completely missed the deep recession that had already begun. And then there was the infamously bad projection by Obama’s macroeconomists that unemployment would peak at 8 percent and then fall steadily if the 2009 stimulus plan was passed.
Some of the same Keynesian macroeconomists who got it wrong on the recession and stimulus are now claiming that a temporary payroll tax break would boost growth. But as Stanford University economist John Taylor has argued, the supposed benefits of government stimulus have been “built in” or predetermined by the underlying assumptions of the Keynesian models.
Policymakers should ignore the Keynesians and their faulty models, and instead focus on reforms to aid long-run growth, which economists know a lot more about. Cutting the corporate tax rate, for example, is an overdue reform with bipartisan support that would enhance America’s long-run productivity and competitiveness.
If Congress is intent on cutting payroll taxes, it should do so within the context of long-run fiscal reforms. One idea is to allow workers to steer a portion of their payroll taxes into personal retirement accounts, as Chile and other nations have done. That reform would feel like a tax cut to workers because they would retain ownership of the funds, and it would begin solving the long-term budget crisis that looms over the economy.
Dan Mitchell discusses the effectiveness of the stimulus Uploaded by catoinstitutevideo on Nov 3, 2009 11-2-09 When I think of all our hard earned money that has been wasted on stimulus programs it makes me sad. It has never worked and will not in the future too. Take a look at a few thoughts from […]
Government Spending Doesn’t Create Jobs Uploaded by catoinstitutevideo on Sep 7, 2011 Share this on Facebook: http://on.fb.me/qnjkn9 Tweet it: http://tiny.cc/o9v9t In the debate of job creation and how best to pursue it as a policy goal, one point is forgotten: Government doesn’t create jobs. Government only diverts resources from one use to another, which doesn’t […]
In his recent article Ernie Dumas sticks to his guns that we should balance the budget without being forced to with a “Balanced Budget Amendment,” but I wonder how well that has worked so far? I have made this a key issue for this blog in the past as you can tell below: Dear Senator […]
(Picture from Arkansas Times Blog) When I think about all the anger and hate coming from the Occupy Wall Street crowd, I wonder if they have read this story below? Solyndra: Crooked Politics or Just Bad Economics? Posted by David Boaz Amy Harder has a good take on the Solyndra issue in National Journal Daily […]
Dear Senator Pryor, why not pass the Balanced Budget Amendment? (Part 13 Thirsty Thursday, Open letter to Senator Pryor) Office of the Majority Whip | Balanced Budget Amendment Video In 1995, Congress nearly passed a constitutional amendment mandating a balanced budget. The Balanced Budget Amendment would have forced the federal government to live within its […]
Andrew Demillo pointed this out and also Jason Tolbert noted: PRYOR OPPOSES THE OBAMA JOBS BILL THAT HE VOTED TO ADVANCE Sen. Mark Pryor has been traveling around the state touting a six-part jobs plan that he says “includes a number of bipartisan initiatives, is aimed at creating jobs by setting the table for growth, encouraging new […]
Is a lack of money the problem for our public schools? Everything You Need to Know About Public School Spending in Less Than 2½ Minutes Posted by Adam Schaeffer Neal McCluskey gutted the President’s new “Save the Teachers” American Jobs Act sales pitch a good while back, as did Andrew Coulson here. Thankfully, it seems […]
DES MOINES, IOWA– Ron Paul’s presidential campaign released a comparitvely edgy new ad Monday that will air on local and cable networks across Iowa and New Hampshire. The spot touts Paul’s call to cut a trillion dollars from federal budget in his first year in office.
Played over a rock track, a man’s voice in the 30-second spot asks, “What’s up with these sorry politicians? Lots of bark, but when it’s showtime, whimpering like little Shih Tzu’s. You want big cuts? Ron Paul’s been screaming it for years. Budget crisis? No problem. Cut a trillion bucks year one.”
It’s a far cry from the other campaigns’ ads, which have taken more careful, traditional approaches in the early states.
Paul placed second in the latest Des Moines Register poll of likely Republican Iowa caucus goers, and could be poised for a strong showing in the state’s Jan. 3 caucus vote.
Senator Mark Pryor wants our ideas on how to cut federal spending. Take a look at this video clip below:
Senator Pryor has asked us to send our ideas to him at cutspending@pryor.senate.gov and I have done so in the past and will continue to do so in the future.
On May 11, 2011, I emailed to this above address and I got this email back from Senator Pryor’s office:
Please note, this is not a monitored email account. Due to the sheer volume of correspondence I receive, I ask that constituents please contact me via my website with any responses or additional concerns. If you would like a specific reply to your message, please visit http://pryor.senate.gov/contact. This system ensures that I will continue to keep Arkansas First by allowing me to better organize the thousands of emails I get from Arkansans each week and ensuring that I have all the information I need to respond to your particular communication in timely manner. I appreciate you writing. I always welcome your input and suggestions. Please do not hesitate to contact me on any issue of concern to you in the future.
Therefore, I went to the website and sent this email below:
Freeze discretionary spending in 2005. Discretionary spending leaped 39 percent between 2001 and 2004. Even after excluding defense and costs related to September 11, discretionary spending is rising 7 percent annually. Do these agencies need yet another spending increase this year? Congress and the President should do what millions of families do: set priorities and balance each high-priority spending increase with a low-priority spending cut.
Why not pass the Balanced Budget Amendment? As you know that federal deficit is at all time high (1.6 trillion deficit with revenues of 2.2 trillion and spending at 3.8 trillion).
On my blog www.HaltingArkansasLiberalswithTruth.com I took you at your word and sent you over 100 emails with specific spending cut ideas. However, I did not see any of them in the recent debt deal that Congress adopted. Now I am trying another approach. Every week from now on I will send you an email explaining different reasons why we need the Balanced Budget Amendment. It will appear on my blog on “Thirsty Thursday” because the government is always thirsty for more money to spend.
You asked for ideas to cut spending, but you voted for the 800 billion dollar stimulus that did not help the economy at all. I have included an article below that makes a very good point about the Balanced Budget Amendment and the stimulus:
Lee believes there are several key components to a balanced budget amendment which he outlines in his book, including making tax increases contingent on a two-thirds vote in Congress so that the option to increase taxes is not the default maneuver to balance a budget. He believes the amendment should require Congress spends no more than it takes in, and in fact should cap the spending at a fixed percent of GDP (the proposal submitted in the Senate caps it at 18 percent of GDP, just about the historical average). There would also be a supermajority vote required to raise the debt ceiling.
And for those who argue that stimulus packages wouldn’t have been possible under the amendment, Lee sees little difficulty responding.
“That’s exibit A for why we ought to have it,” Lee said of the Obama stimulus package.
As Washington spends the summer arguing over its spending addiction, GOP Sen. Mike Lee of Utah has a solution to help prevent the same crisis for future generations: a balanced budget amendment.
The House made news last week when, in the heat of negotiations over raising the debt ceiling, they announced a vote on a balanced budget amendment this Wednesday. Though the Senate GOP introduced a one earlier this year, President Obama has stated emphatically otherwise, telling Americans last week during a press conference that the country does not need a balanced budget amendment.
“Yes, we do,” Lee told Townhall when asked to respond to the president, adding later when talking about simultaneously raising the debt ceiling and cutting spending, “We can’t bind what a future Congress will do. We can pass laws that will affect this year, but there will be a new Congress that takes power in January of 2013, and then another new one that will take power in January 2015. And they will make their own spending decisions then — we can’t bind them unless we amend the Constitution to do so.”
Lee points out that the American people support the idea of a balanced budget – 65 percent, according to a Sachs/Mason Dixon poll from this year – but politicians have been reluctant to wade into the debate.
“The fact that we’re in this debate, the fact that we’re sort of deadlocked, or we’ve reached a point of gridlock in the discussions, is indicative of the problem that we have,” Lee said.
In fact, Lee thinks a balanced budget amendment is so important to the future of the country that he’s written a book on it: The Freedom Agenda: Why a Balanced Budget Amendment Is Necessary to Restore Constitutional Government.
Lee even takes the argument a step beyond fiscal issues, saying a balanced budget amendment safeguards individual liberties.
““The more money it [Congress] has access to, whether it’s through borrowing or through taxation, either way, that’s going to fuel Congress’ expansion, and whenever government acts, it does so at the expanse of individual liberty,” Lee said. “We become less free every time government expands.”
Lee believes there are several key components to a balanced budget amendment which he outlines in his book, including making tax increases contingent on a two-thirds vote in Congress so that the option to increase taxes is not the default maneuver to balance a budget. He believes the amendment should require Congress spends no more than it takes in, and in fact should cap the spending at a fixed percent of GDP (the proposal submitted in the Senate caps it at 18 percent of GDP, just about the historical average). There would also be a supermajority vote required to raise the debt ceiling.
And for those who argue that stimulus packages wouldn’t have been possible under the amendment, Lee sees little difficulty responding.
“That’s exibit A for why we ought to have it,” Lee said of the Obama stimulus package.
Lee also pointed out that his balanced budget amendment includes an exception to the spending restriction in time of war – “not a blank check, but to the extent necessary.” Congress would also be able to supersede the amendment with a two-thirds vote.
“We wanted to make it difficult, but not impossible, for Congress to spend more than it had access to,” Lee said, citing as an example a massive or immediate crisis created by a national emergency or natural disaster. “What this is designed to do is to make it more difficult – to make it impossible – for Congress to just do this as a matter of course.”
Elisabeth Meinecke
Elisabeth Meinecke is Associate Editor with Townhall.com
WLS 890 – Don Wade & Roma’s interview with Jan Schakowsky
The Daily Hatch 