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. Here are a few more I just emailed to him myself at 6:47am CST on May 4, 2011.
For those who take issue with any of the spending cuts I have proposed, I have two requests:
First, if you believe a particular program should be exempt from these cuts, I challenge you to find another place in the budget where the same amount can feasibly be cut and we can replace it.
Second, consider this: Is any particular program, whatever its merits, worth borrowing billions of dollars from foreign nations to finance programs that could be administered better at the state and local level, or even taken over by the private sector?
The mere existence of the Department of Education is an overreach of power by the federal government. State and local governments, parents, and teachers are far better equipped to meet the needs of their students than this redtape laden department, which benefits teachers’ unions more than pupils. However, Pell Grants will be preserved in this proposal.
The Department of Education has increasingly meddled with the more traditional idea of education being tailored to the needs and requirement of communities and states. The growth in education spending at the federal level has gone from nearly $53 billion in 2001 to an estimated $95 billion in FY2011 – an 80 percent increase. When the federal government spends money, those are resources that are drained from the state, diluted by way of large Washington bureaucracy, and sent back to the school districts with red tape and strings attached.
During the first half of the past century, America ranked among the most educated population in the world. Since that time, the role of the federal government in education has expanded significantly, at one point (FY2009) accounting for 10 percent of all government spending. The expansion of the role of the federal government in education has been detrimental, as the U.S. now ranks far below other economically developed countries. In December 2010, the OECD reported that the U.S. ranked 14 th in reading skills, 17th in science, and 25th in mathematics (considered below average) out of 35 developed nations.
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. Here are a few more I just emailed to him myself at 3:30pm CST on May 3, 2011.
Examples of federal waste are more abundant than ever. For example, the Department of Energy’s nuclear-weapons activities should be placed under the purview of the Department of Defense. Many of its other activities amount to nothing more than corporate handouts. It provides research grants and subsidies to energy companies for the development of new, cleaner forms of energy…
The Commerce Department is another prime example. Consistently labeled for elimination, specifically by House Republicans during the 1990s, one of Commerce’s main functions is delivering corporate welfare to American firms that can compete without it. My proposal would scale back the Commerce Department’s spending by 54% and eliminate corporate welfare.
My proposal would also cut wasteful spending in the Defense Department. Since 2001, our annual defense budget has increased nearly 120%. Even subtracting the costs of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, spending is up 67%. These levels of spending are unjustifiable and unsustainable. Defense Secretary Robert Gates understands this and has called for spending cuts, saying “We must come to realize that not every defense program is necessary, not every defense dollar is sacred or well-spent, and more of everything is simply not sustainable.”
Similar to sections of the EPA, the Forest Service has been on the Government Accountability Office’s “high-risk” list for waste, fraud, and abuse. In recent years, Congress has provided the Forest Service with a nearly blank check to address forest fire issues. A strong step for reform would be to eliminate the federal forest subsidies and to start turning many of these forests over to the states or private interests. These states could maintain control over their forests, using them for timber, conservation, or recreation based upon the needs of the environment.
Commerce
Agency/Program Funding Level Savings % Decrease
Commerce $6.178 B $5.322 B 54%
The Department of Commerce has consistently been labeled for elimination, specifically by House Republicans during the 1990’s. Aside from a few research programs, the department’s main functions are associated with wasteful corporate welfare. The proposal would scale back the Department of Commerce by 54 percent, including additional cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the elimination of a large portion of corporate welfare.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: Reduce 36 Percent
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was formed in 1970 to serve as both a physical and atmospheric science agency, as well as for the purpose of commercial fishery conservation. Yet according to the NOAA website, “Approximately 25 % of NOAA’s annual budget was committed to making progress in understanding the link between our global economy and our planet’s environment.”
NOAA, like most government agencies, has become bloated and its breadth and scope has broadened over the years. It is time for agencies to focus on the priorities for which they were intended.
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. Here are a few more I just emailed to him myself at 3:30 pm CST on May 2, 2011.
Add to that my proposed reductions in international aid, the Departments of Health and Human Services, Homeland Security and other federal agencies, and we arrive at over $500 billion.
My proposal, not surprisingly, has been greeted skeptically in Washington, where serious spending cuts are a rarity. But it is a modest proposal when measured against the size of our mounting debt. It would keep 85% of our government funding in place and not touch Social Security or Medicare. But by reducing wasteful spending and shuttering departments that are beyond the constitutional role of the federal government, such as the Department of Education, we can cut nearly 40% of our projected deficit and at the same time remove thousands of big-government bureaucrats who stand in the way of efficiency.
Examples of federal waste are more abundant than ever. For example, the Department of Energy’s nuclear-weapons activities should be placed under the purview of the Department of Defense. Many of its other activities amount to nothing more than corporate handouts. It provides research grants and subsidies to energy companies for the development of new, cleaner forms of energy. This means nearly all forms of energy development here in the U.S. are subsidized by the federal government, from oil and coal to nuclear, wind, solar and biofuels. These subsidies often go to research and companies that can survive without them. This drives up the cost of energy for all Americans, both as taxpayers and consumers.
Per the CATO Institute: “Most American industries fund their own research and development programs. The agriculture industry is a notable exception. USDA spends about $3 billion annually on agricultural research, statistical information services, and economic studies.”
Agriculture, like all other industries can perform its own research and development without the use of federal subsidies to do so. The research done by USDA is there to keep the status quo.
National Institute of Food and Agriculture: Eliminated
National Institute of Food and Agriculture is the parent agency to the Agriculture Research Service. NIFA is essentially the communications arm to spread ARS information to the public. The department’s main area of study is responding to “quality-of-life problems” – (1) Improving agricultural productivity, (2) Creating new products, (3) Protecting animal and plant health, (4) Promoting sound human nutrition and health, (5) Strengthening children, youth, and families, (6) Revitalizing rural American communities.
When looking at their main focus issues, we can see that like ARS, government and its subsidiaries are in the business of keeping the status quo and stifle real research and development.
This issue is best left up to the states to determine what the best way is to preserve and protect their environment.
The balance of using the resources available for production, conservation, and recreation is best decided by from people in the region.
Foreign Agricultural Services: Eliminated
Originally, this agency was created to manage our agricultural trade agreements and the daily/weekly prices of agriculture commodities across the globe. In a world of constant information, we do not need this program putting out daily reports regarding the fluctuations of commodity prices.
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. Here are a few more I just emailed to him myself at 9am CST on May 1, 2011.
After Republicans swept into office in 1994, Bill Clinton famously said in his State of the Union address that the era of big government was over. Nearly $10 trillion of federal debt later, the era of big government is at its zenith…
Last month I introduced legislation to do just that. And though it seems extreme to some—containing over $500 billion in spending cuts enacted over one year—it is a necessary first step toward ending our fiscal crisis.
“The law is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense. It is the substitution of a common force for individual forces. And this common force is to do only what the individual forces have a natural and lawful right to do: protect persons, liberties, and properties; to maintain the right of each and to cause justice to reign over us all.”
–Frederic Bastiat
The court systems in the U.S. provide an important and necessary function of providing checks and balances, as well as providing a means of enforcing justice. Providing funding levels that are sufficient for the Judicial Branch to carry
out their important task is essential. However, since 2001 funding has increased nearly 30 percent faster than the rate of inflation. The integrity of our justice system becomes vulnerable if the integrity and strength of our government becomes weakened, a situation that is currently developing with the unsustainable amount of spending, deficit, and debt.
Strengthening our fiscal situation and promoting smaller government will require the need for every agency at every level of government to make sacrifices, but ultimately, a more accountable and fiscally responsible government will increase our liberty and the rule of law. This proposal suggests taking the Judicial Branch back to FY2008 spending levels.
Thomas P. “Boston” Corbett (1832 – presumed dead 1894) was the Union Army soldier who shot and killed Abraham Lincoln‘s assassin, John Wilkes Booth. He disappeared after 1888, but circumstantial evidence suggests that he died in the Great Hinckley Fire in 1894, although this remains impossible to substantiate.
Corbett was born in London, England. His family emigrated to New York City. He became a hatter in Troy, New York. It has been suggested that the fumes of mercury used in the hatter’s trade caused Corbett’s later mental problems.[1]
Corbett married, but his wife died in childbirth. Following her death, he moved to Boston, and continued working as a hatter. He joined the Methodist Episcopal Church and changed his name to Boston, the name of the city where he was converted.[2] In an attempt to imitate Jesus, he began to wear his hair very long.[3] On July 16, 1858, in order to avoid the temptation of prostitutes, Corbett castrated himself with a pair of scissors. He then ate a meal and went to a prayer meeting, before going for medical treatment.[4]
In April 1861, early in the American Civil War, Corbett enlisted as a private in Company I of the 12 Regiment New York Militia. He was discharged in August, at the end of the regiment’s 3 month enlistment. Corbett re-enlisted in September 1863 as a private in Company L, 16th New York Cavalry Regiment. Captured byConfederate Colonel John S. Mosby‘s men at Culpeper, Virginia on June 24, 1864, Corbett was held prisoner at Andersonville prison for five months, when he was exchanged.[2] On his return to his company, he was promoted to sergeant. Corbett would later testify for the prosecution in the trial of the commandant of Andersonville, Captain Henry Wirz.[5][6]
Corbett was a member of the 16th New York Cavalry Regiment sent, on April 24, 1865, to apprehend John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of Abraham Lincoln, who was still at large. Two days later the regiment surrounded Booth and his accomplice, David Herold, in a tobacco barn on the Virginia farm of Richard Garrett. The barn was set on fire in an attempt to force them out into the open. Herold surrendered, but Booth remained inside. Corbett was positioned near a large crack in the barn wall. He saw Booth moving about inside and shot him with his Colt revolver despiteSecretary of WarEdwin M. Stanton‘s orders that Booth should be taken alive. Booth was struck in the neck, the bullet severing his spinal cord, and he died a little more than three hours later.
Boston Corbett
Corbett was immediately arrested for violation of his orders, but Stanton later had the charges dropped. Stanton remarked, “The rebel is dead. The patriot lives.” Corbett received his share of the reward money, amounting to $1,653.84.[7]
In his official statement, Corbett claimed he shot Booth because he thought Lincoln’s assassin was preparing to use his weapons. This was contradicted by the other witnesses. When asked later why he did it, Corbett answered that “Providence directed me”.[8]
After his discharge from the army in August 1865, Corbett went back to work as a hatter, first in Boston, later in Connecticut, and by 1870 in New Jersey. His life was marked by increasingly erratic behavior. In 1875, he threatened several men with a pistol at a soldier’s reunion in Caldwell, Ohio. In 1878, he moved to Concordia, Kansas.
In 1887, because of his fame as Booth’s killer, Corbett was appointed assistant doorkeeper of the Kansas House of Representatives in Topeka. One day he overheard a conversation in which the legislature’s opening prayer was mocked. He jumped to his feet and brandished a revolver. No one was hurt, but Corbett was arrested and sent to the Topeka Asylum for the Insane. On May 26, 1888, he escaped from the asylum. He went to Neodesha, Kansas, and stayed briefly with Richard Thatcher, whom he had met when they were both prisoners of war. When he left, he told Thatcher he was going to Mexico.[9] His “madness” may have been the result of exposure to mercury, an element commonly used in hat manufacturing. It is so well known for this side effect that it has given rise to the expression “mad as a hatter“.
Rather than going to Mexico, Corbett is believed to have settled in a cabin he built in the forests near Hinckley, Minnesota. He is thought to have died in the Great Hinckley Fire of September 1, 1894. Although there is no proof, the name “Thomas Corbett” does appear on the list of dead and missing.[10][11]
In 1958, Boy Scout Troop 31 of Concordia, Kansas built a roadside monument to Boston Corbett. It is on Key Road in Concordia. A small sign also was placed to mark the dug hole where Corbett for a time had lived.[12]
The disagreement is over the solutions — on what spending to cut; what taxes to raise (basically none ever, according to Boozman); whether or not to enact a balanced budget amendment (Boozman says yes; Pryor no); and on what policies would promote the kind of economic growth that would make this a little easier.
In Feb of 1983 Milton Friedman wrote the article “Washington:Less Red Ink (An argument that the balanced-budget amendent would be a rare merging of public and private interests),” and here is a portion of that article:
Here, for their consideration, are my answers to the principal objections to the proposed amendment that I have come across, other than those that arise from a desire to have a still-bigger government:
**6. The key problem is not deficits but the size of government spending.**
My sentiments exactly. Which is why I have never supported an amendment directed solely at a balanced budget. I have written repeatedly that while I would prefer that the budget be balanced, I would rather have government spend $500 billion and run a deficit of $100 billion than have it spend $800 billion with a balanced budget. It matters greatly how the budget is balanced, whether by cutting spending or by raising taxes.
In my eyes, the chief merit of the amendment recommended by the Senate Judiciary Committee is precisely that it does limit spending. Section 1 requires that statement outlays be no greater than statement receipts; section 2 limits the maximum increase in statement receipts; the two together effectively limit statement outlays. Moreover, if in any year Congress manages to keep statement receipts and outlays below the maximum level, the effect is to lower the maximum level for future years, thus fostering a gradual ratcheting down of spending relative to national income.
A further strength of the amendment is the provision for approving an exceptional increase in statement receipts (hence in statement outlays). The spending-limitation amendment that was drafted by the National Tax Limitation Committee required a two-thirds majority of both houses in order to justify an exceptional increase in outlays. The amendment passed by the Senate requires only “a majority of the whole number of both houses of Congress.” However, the majority must vote for an explicit tax increase. I submit that it is far easier to get a two-thirds majority of Congress to approve an exceptional increase in spending than to get a simple majority to approve an explicit increase in taxes. So this is a stronger, not a weaker, amendment.
Section 6 proposed by Senator Armstrong in the course of Senate debate, makes the debt ceiling permanent and requires a supermajority vote to raise it. That provision was approved by a narrow majority composed of a coalition of right-wing Republicans and left-wing Democrats–the one group demonstrating its hardcore conservatism, the other seeking to reduce the chances of adoption of the basic amendment.
I do not favor the debt-limit provision. Its objective–to strengthen pressure on Congress to balance the budget–is fine, and it may be that it would do little harm. But it seems to me both unnecessary and potentially harmful. I trust that it will be eliminated if and when the amendment is finally approved by Congress. I shall favor the amendment even if the debt-limit provision is left in, but less enthusiastically.
Weichmann was born in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of German immigrants. The family surname was originally Wiechmann, but as in the case of many who emigrated to the United States, the name underwent several phonetic spelling changes. His father Johann was a Lutheran, and his mother Maria was a Catholic. Johann Weichmann was a tailor by trade, and he moved with his wife and their five children first from the vicinity of Baltimore to Washington D.C., and later to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where Louis attended Central High School. He wrote in his autobiographical work A True History of the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln and of the Conspiracy of 1865, that he desired to pursue a career as a pharmacist, but at the behest of his mother he reluctantly agreed to study for the Roman Catholic priesthood. At the age of seventeen he entered the seminary at St. Charles College in Maryland. There he met and befriended a fellow seminarian, John Surratt, Jr. This friendship was to later have profound consequences for both of them.
In 1862, a year after the outbreak of the American Civil War, both Louis Weichmann and John Surratt left the seminary without becoming priests. Weichmann went to Washington, D.C., where he taught school for two years at St. Matthew’s Institute for Boys. After leaving this position in 1864, he became a clerk in the Department of War, headed by Secretary Edwin Stanton. Surratt had in the meantime become a courier and agent for the Confederacy. As a result of his earlier friendship with John Surratt, Weichmann took lodgings in the boarding house of Surratt’s mother, Mary Surratt, in Washington D.C. This happenstance brought him into contact with the major conspirators involved in Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. According to Weichmann’s testimony at the trial of the conspirators, John Wilkes Booth, David Herold, Lewis Payne,George Atzerodt, John Surratt Jr., and others continually met at Mary Surratt’s boarding house. Weichmann testified that on the day Abraham Lincoln was shot, April 14, 1865, he accompanied Mary Surratt to her other property in Surrattsville, (now Clinton, Maryland), where she delivered items that Booth later retrieved after the assassination. He further testified that Mary Surratt met with John Wilkes Booth no less than three times on that fateful day. Dr. Samuel Mudd, who treated Booth’s broken leg on the night Lincoln was killed, and claimed to have no knowledge of the conspiracy, was linked by Weichmann’s testimony to the events for which he was tried and found guilty as well. Augustus Howell, a blockade runner who worked with John Surratt, claimed during the trial that Weichmann had provided classified information obtained by his position at the War Department over to the Confederates. He supposedly was hoping to obtain a better job from the Confederate government at Richmond in exchange for his services; however, these accusations were never substantiated.
In his later years Weichmann moved to Anderson, Indiana, where he opened a business school. One of his brothers, a Catholic priest, and two of his sisters had moved and settled there. Because of some lingering doubt as to the truth and motives of his testimony, Weichmann became a controversial and somewhat ostracized figure by many people. That Mary Surratt was the first woman tried and executed for a capital crime by the federal government caused a backlash against him. There also were strong anti-Catholic elements that attempted to link Lincoln’s death to aCatholic conspiracy. Partially because of this he swore out an affidavit, shortly before his death, reaffirming that all his testimony concerning Abraham Lincoln’s assassination was totally and completely true. He died a few days later in Anderson, and is buried there at St. Mary’s Cemetery. In spite of using the spelling Weichmann at the conspiracy trial, in all his official correspondence, and as the author of his book, the original family spelling of Wiechmann appears on his tombstone.
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. Here are a few more I just emailed to him myself at 11pm CST on April 30, 2011.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, this will be the third consecutive year in which the federal government is running a deficit near or greater than $1 trillion. The solution to the government’s fiscal crisis must begin by cutting spending in all areas, particularly in those that can be better run at the state or local level.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, this will be the third year in a row in which the U.S. Government runs a budget deficit near – or greater-than $1 trillion. These deficits are far greater than what is economically sustainable, and far outpaces the political duty to produce budgets that are economically responsible. The solution to the government’s fiscal crisis needs to begin by cutting spending at the heart of the problem – right here, on Capitol Hill.
This proposal would be to cut the Legislative Branch by 23 percent or $1.283 billion in FY 2011.
Consistent with many of the spending cuts included in this proposal, the Legislative Branch is taken back to FY2008 levels, and includes the elimination of an outdated agency, the Government Printing Office [GPO].
Government Printing Office: Eliminated
The advancement in technology and innovation has brought about the electronic age, an era that includes very little reason for the government to continue printing large amounts of documents, most of which can be found and read on the internet. In addition, the waste at GPO is incessant. In 2010 alone, GPO spent nearly $30 million in taxpayer dollars to provide Congressional offices with the rarely read Congressional Record, and in September they released their first-ever comic book, “Squeaks Discovers Type,” meant to teach children “why printing is important.”
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Lincoln Assassination Witness appears on I’ve Got a Secret
At age five, Seymour’s godmother, Mrs. George S. Goldsboro, had taken him to see Our American Cousin. He claimed the two sat in the balcony on the side opposite Lincoln’s box. Seymour reported that ” I complained tearfully that I couldn’t get out of the coach because his shirt was torn-anything to delay the dread moment-but Sarah (nurse Sarah Cook) dug into her bag and found a big safety pin .”, I shook so hard from fright (earlier seen men with guns and seemed they were all pointed at him) (in Washington), it caused Sarah to accidentally stab him with the pin. he hollered “I’ve been shot! I’ve been shot!”.[citation needed] once in the theater Seymour settled down, saw the President across the balcony as he was waving and smiling at people, Seymour said ” I began to get over the scared feeling I’d had ever since we arrived in Washington, but that was something I never should have done. all of a sudden a shot rang out-a shot that always will be remembered-and someone in the Presidents box screamed. I saw Lincoln slumped forward in his seat”. Seymour did not actually see the assassination but did witness Lincoln’s assassin John Wilkes Booth jump off the balcony and break his leg. In fact, he revealed that because he did not know Lincoln was shot or that Booth had shot him, his real concern was for Booth breaking his leg.(Fact|date=February 7, 1954 American weekly Magazine Section-New York Journal-American)
Two months before his death at age 96, he appeared on the CBSTVquiz showI’ve Got a Secret as a mystery subject, in an episode in which Lucille Ball made an unusual appearance as a guest panelist. Seymour died ninety-one years to the day of Lincoln’s assassination. Died at the home of Mrs. Irene (Horn)Hendley, his daughter in Arlington, Va. He had been in failing health since February when he fell in a New York City hotel while preparing to appear on I’ve Got A Secret. He came on the show with his left eye swollen. Gary Moore had suggested he not appear, but Seymour insisted.
I really did like Robert Redford’s movie “The Conspirator” and I have enjoyed looking that the historical figures pictured in the movie.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS – DIGITAL VE / SCIENCE FACTION / CORBIS
The first man to kill an American President was chased with all the wrath of a wounded nation. After the April 14, 1865, assassination of Abraham Lincoln, Booth left Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., via the stage door — appropriate for an actor — and then fled south on horseback through Maryland, assisted by accomplices along the road. Troops flooded the state’s swamps in search of Booth, who secretly crossed the Potomac into Virginia on April 21, the same day the funeral train bearing Lincoln’s body left Washington for its westward procession. Thanks to intelligence tip-offs and the confessions of accomplices, Booth was tracked to the Virginia farm of Richard H. Garrett, and on April 26 he was shot and killed by Union soldiers who had set the barn he was in on fire. Booth died on the farmhouse porch, defending his actions to the last.
Before a flawless exchange of vows, a veiled Middleton wearing a laced dress with a long train, the first “commoner” to marry a prince in close proximity to the throne in more than 350 years, walked slowly through the 1,900-strong congregation.
As they met at the altar William, second in line to the throne, whispered to her, prompting a smile. The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams declared the couple married with the words: “I pronounce that they be man and wife together.”
Tens of thousands of people thronging the streets outside cheered when they heard the words, and again as the newlyweds left the abbey in a 1902 open-topped state landau carriage bound for Buckingham Palace, the queen’s London residence.
Prince William marries Kate in glittering ceremony
Britain?s Prince William and his wife Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, kiss as they stand on the balcony at Buckingham Palace after their wedding in Westminster Abbey, in central London
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Huge cheering crowds strained to catch a glimpse of the beaming couple as well as the military bands in black bearskin hats and cavalrymen in shining breastplates who escorted them to the palace where they were expected to kiss on the balcony.
Middleton’s dress, the subject of fevered speculation for months in the fashion press, was a traditional ivory silk and satin outfit with a lace applique and train.
It was designed by Sarah Burton of the Alexander McQueen label, named after the British designer who committed suicide.
The bride wore a tiara loaned by the queen and the diamond and sapphire engagement ring that belonged to William’s mother Princess Diana, who was divorced from Prince Charles in 1996, a year before her death in a car crash in Paris aged just 36.
Middleton, the 29-year-old whose mother’s family had coal mining roots, is a breath of fresh air for the monarchy, which has in the past been accused of being disconnected from ordinary Britons. She is seen as having the common touch.
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. Here are a few more I just emailed to him myself at 8 am CST on April 29, 2011.
By offering the momentary illusion of substance, U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor gave a vintage performance the other day at the Political Animals Club.
The first report I came across declared that Pryor had said he would not vote to raise the federal government’s debt ceiling unless that action was accompanied by real and significant spending cuts.
That sounded like the senator only to a limited extent, that being the extent to which he often propounds as much like a Republican as a Democrat and can be flat wrong…
Indeed, the next report I came across clarified the matter. Pryor had not declared that he would insist on real and meaningful spending cuts before he voted to raise the debt ceiling. He had declared only that he would insist on a real and meaningful “commitment” to debt reduction.
Commitment is not an empirical thing. It is of the heart, mind and soul, thus not visible to the naked eye. Pryor was not making his debt-limit vote contingent on actual reductions in spending. He was making the vote contingent on reading the minds of his colleagues.
That was more like the Pryor we know…
If he wanted to get his hands dirty on these issues, he might join the so-called Gang of Six, meaning three Democratic senators and three Republican ones who have been meeting privately to talk about real deficit-reduction by which each side would embrace some measure of that which it historically resists — cuts in entitlement spending for Democrats and tax increases for Republicans.
But Pryor’s style is to detach from such efforts and applaud them abstractly, pledging to give every serious due consideration to whatever might eventually get proposed.
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I do not agree with Brummett’s observations. It is obvious that federal spending is out of control and we must reduce it drastically. I do think that Senator Pryor sees the numbers that we all see. I recently heard Congressman Tim Griffin give a 45 minute talk on the problem of the national debt at a townhall meeting at the Shannon Hills City Hall.
Representative Griffin started off the meeting with this simple statement:
“We have a debt crisis facing our nation. We have a debt crisis because Washington spends too much, not because Washington taxes too little. The spending is driven by retirement and health security programs. The cost of doing nothing is unacceptable…Our nation’s debt is $14.1 trillion and that is $45,484 for every man, woman and child or $142,819 for the average American family.”
Congressman Griffin pointed out that because of growth of entitlement spending our discretionary side was of the federal budget has slipped from 58% in 1970 to 38% in 2011.
Rep. Griffin compared this to our household budgets. The fixed payments like rent have to be paid every month. However, the discretionary part of your budget may be changed from month to month. The problem with the federal budget is that fixed part of the budget is growing too rapidly. If nothing is done about entitlement spending then we will never balance the budget, and our country will go bankrupt eventually.
The chart “Deficits Under Obama Budgets” was the most alarming that Rep. Griffin presented. President Bush’s last three budgets produced budget deficits of 161 billion, 239 billion and 407 billion. President Obama’s first budget produced a budget deficit of 1.1 trillion dollars in 2010 and estimates for 2011 are around 1.65 trillion.
The last payment on September 30, 2008 that the Bush Administration made on the interest on the debt was $451 billion on the total amount of debt of $10,024,724,896,912.49. Now just two and half years later our debt is over 14 billion.
Immediately before the current recession, Washington spent $24,800 per household. Simply returning to that level (adjusted for inflation) would likely balance the budget by 2019 without any tax hikes.
There’s a 19 percent solution to our debt and deficit problems.
Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-KY) new budget plan cuts $500 billion from the federal budget this year. Paul proposes cutting defense spending by 6.5 percent, saving $47 billion. But will his fellow Republicans go along?
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) put forth a budget plan with $32 billion in spending cuts for fiscal 2011 last week, but even that plan let security spending grow.
Congressional Republicans say they’ll get around to holding a vote for the 2011 budget (the fiscal year started Oct. 1, 2010) during the week of Feb. 14. But as President Barack Obama and Congress start wrangling over raising the debt ceiling and hashing out budgets for 2011 and 2012, there’s really only one figure you need to keep in mind if you care about restoring the federal balance sheet to some semblance of sanity.
That figure is 19, which is the percentage of total economic activity or Gross Domestic Product (GDP) that the federal government can realistically plan on in terms of revenue.
Any budget plan that is predicated on the government raising more than 19 percent of GDP will only guarantee continuing annual deficits and out-of-control debt levels.
Federal debt held by the public, the amount the government owes to foreign and domestic creditors, has surged to $9 trillion, or roughly $29,000 per person. That amount doesn’t include the money the federal government has borrowed from other government accounts like Social Security or Medicare (that’s another $5 trillion). The speed of the debt increase is as dazzling as it is the product of bipartisanship. As George W. Bush took office, gross debt was $5.9 trillion and by the end of 2008, it was $10.6 trillion.
The mounting debt stems from massive spending increases and minimal tax receipts. In fiscal year 2010, which ended last September, the government spent $3.6 trillion while collecting $2.1 trillion, resulting in a $1.5 trillion deficit. As a percentage of the overall economy, spending equaled 25 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and the deficit came to 10 percent of GDP, figures not seen since World War II.
These trends are unsustainable and threaten to destroy not only any sort of near-term recovery but the long-term economic growth that increases standards of living.
What’s needed is a multi-year framework that will allow the government, taxpayers, and creditors alike to feel confident that change is both possible and deliverable.
As a first step, the president and Congress should consider a 10-year plan that will balance the budget in 2020 without raising taxes from their current rates, give representatives and taxpayers a say in what outlays should be cut, and still keep government outlays slightly higher as a percentage of GDP than they were in Bill Clinton’s last year in office.
There’s no secret to balancing a budget: You simply can’t spend more than you take in. Since 1950, revenue from all sources has averaged just below 18 percent of GDP. There are years where the number is higher — in 2000, revenues reached 20.6 percent of GDP — and years when it is lower — in 2010, revenues only amounted to 14.5 percent of GDP — but the average is tightly clustered around 18 percent of GDP. This level has been maintained despite all sorts of attempts to radically increase and decrease tax rates and other revenue mechanisms. Unfortunately, federal spending since 1950 has averaged just below 20 percent of GDP, which explains why our cumulative debt continues to grow.
The CBO projects that, if the current Bush tax rates, fixes for the alternative minimum tax, and other measures are kept in place, federal revenues will reach about 19 percent of GDP in a few years and then remain at that level. While that figure is a bit higher than the historical average, it is well within the bounds of reasonable expectations.
The CBO estimates that if spending isn’t cut, the federal budget will grow from $3.7 trillion this year to over $5 trillion in 2020 (all numbers are adjusted for inflation). However, the CBO says that total GDP in 2020 will be $19.5 trillion. That means that if the government wants to spend 19 percent of GDP, it should only spend about $3.8 trillion. So if we want to balance the budget in 2020, we need to cut about $1.3 trillion in projected spending (due to rounding, some of the figures don’t add up perfectly). If you spread that amount over 10 budgets, it comes to trims of $130 billion in each year of the next decade from projected spending increases (not from current spending levels).
For illustrative purposes, the following table spreads those cuts equally on a percentage basis over the six largest categories of federal spending. However, the cuts do not have to be spread across the board. Some categories could increase, while others are subjected to larger cuts. The table also shows what the total projected federal budgets would look if spending restraints are enacted.
Another appealing aspect of this plan — apart from its simplicity — is that it makes it very easy to design budget rules around it. The road is clear and Congress can adopt strict and credible budget caps for the next ten years that can’t be overridden without serious consequences.
David Osborne, the former head of Vice President Al Gore’s “Reinventing Government” task force, is a believer in what he calls “budgeting for outcomes.” As an advisor to various cash-strapped state and local governments, Osborne pursues a two-step strategy to fixing out-of-whack budgets. First, and most importantly, you set “the price of government.” That is, you figure out how much money you can spend in a given year. When it comes to the federal government, we have a strong sense of how much revenue will be available based on the past 60 years of experience and the CBO’s projection: It will be around 19 percent of GDP.
The next step is to clearly establish the top priorities of the government. In rank order, what are the most important things that the federal government needs to be doing and what are the things it can pull back from? For example, Sen. Rand Paul’s plan cuts federal education spending by 83 percent while cutting defense 6.5 percent. Do taxpayers share those priorities? The strength of Osborne’s approach is that it builds consensus even as it makes government decision-making more transparent.
Once the cost of government and its rank-ordered priorities are established, spending decisions become much easier both to make and to defend before a voting public. And the public isn’t shrinking from the conversation. Indeed, a January poll from CBS News found that 77 percent of Americans favor balancing the budget by cutting spending, compared to 9 percent who wanted to raise taxes. Majorities say they in favor of means-testing Social Security, reducing farm subsidies, and cutting defense spending. It’s time to those sentiments to the test. If we don’t, we’ll be facing higher taxes, higher spending, higher debt, and almost certainly higher interest rates and dollars that are worth less and less.
It’s well past time that the same elected officials who got us into the budget mess not only join but lead the conversation on restraining spending. As they pursue a 19 percent solution to the nation’s budget problems, they can always point out that in 2000, a year most Americans remember fondly, the federal government was spending just 18 percent of GDP.
Nick Gillespie is editor in chief of Reason.tv and Reason.com. Veronique de Rugy is an economist at The Mercatus Center at George Mason University. A version of this article will appear in the upcoming March issue of Reason magazine.
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Prince William and Kate Middleton, the new duke and duchess of Cambridge, kiss on the balcony of Buckingham Palace after the wedding.
Guests at Wedding
Guests wait inside Westminster Abbey where Prince William and Kate Middleton will marry. (AP Photo/Dominic Lipinski/Pool)
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. Here are a few more I just emailed to him myself at 7:29 pm cst on April 28, 2011.
Pryor had not declared that he would insist on real and meaningful spending cuts before he voted to raise the debt ceiling. He had declared only that he would insist on a real and meaningful “commitment” to debt reduction.
Commitment is not an empirical thing. It is of the heart, mind and soul, thus not visible to the naked eye. Pryor was not making his debt-limit vote contingent on actual reductions in spending. He was making the vote contingent on reading the minds of his colleagues.
That was more like the Pryor we know.
He also told the political animals that Republicans who eschew all tax increases are wrong and that Democrats who insist that the nation’s budget problem can be solved solely by higher taxes on high incomes also are wrong.
Perhaps, then, you are waiting for his plan to reconcile these polarized views. You should feel free to keep waiting. Pryor was commenting, not advocating.
He said we need to fix this darned tax code. I would call that a euphemism except that I cannot say for what. Changing the tax code is a thousand contradictory and complex things. Pryor delved into only one of these specifics, saying he would not want to do away with the mortgage interest deduction.
“If you think you can solve this with bumper-sticker slogans, you’re wasting all of our time,” Pryor said.
He ought to know, wasting as he was about an hour that an assembly of political animals could never get back.
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I certainly do not think we have wasted our time taking time out of our busy schedules to give a US Senator suggestions concerning possible spending cuts when he personally asked for them. I have now emailed Senator Pryor on 32 occasions concerning spending cuts that should be made out of our wasteful federal spending.
I also lament the fact the federal government has grown so much in relation to the state and local governments where the people are closer to their representatives and can give more input. In 1902 the federal spending was only 2.6% of the Gross National Product (GNP), and the state and local governments’ spending made up 7.7% of GNP. Last year federal spending was 24.7% of GNP. Currently we are taxed at a rate of 14.5 % and the federal government is spending over 24.7%. That would give a budget deficit of 1.65 trillion a year!!!!!
Lawmakers diverted $13 million from Hurricane Katrina relief spending to build a museum celebrating the Army Corps of Engineers—the agency partially responsible for the failed levees that flooded New Orleans.
Medicare officials recently mailed $50 million in erroneous refunds to 230,000 Medicare recipients.
Audits showed $34 billion worth of Department of Homeland Security contracts contained significant waste, fraud, and abuse.
The Advanced Technology Program spends $150 million annually subsidizing private businesses; 40 percent of this funding goes to Fortune 500 companies.
The Conservation Reserve program pays farmers $2 billion annually not to farm their land.
Sources: On file at The Heritage Foundation.
Brian M. Riedl is Grover M. Hermann Research Fellow in Federal Budgetary Affairs in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.
Sir Elton John received an invitation to Prince William’s wedding. Elton John was a close friend of William’s mother, Princess Diana, and the singer-songwriter performed “Candle in the Wind” at her funeral. When asked by BBC Radio 2 whether he would be performing at the royal wedding, John joked, “I probably will. I’ll probably be busking outside.”
A car lies overturns and buildings destroyed in Tuscaloosa, Ala., Wednesday, April 27, 2011. A wave of severe storms laced with tornadoes strafed the South on Wednesday; buildings across swaths of the university town were damaged or destroyed
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – The death toll from severe storms that punished five Southern U.S. states jumped to a staggering 178 Thursday after Alabama canvassed its hard-hit counties for a new tally of lives lost.
Alabama’s state emergency management agency said it had confirmed 128 deaths, up from at least 61 earlier.
“We expect that toll, unfortunately, to rise,” Gov. Robert Bentley told ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
Mississippi officials reported 32 dead in that state and Tennessee raised its report to six from one. Another 11 have been killed in Georgia and one in Virginia.
The fierce storms Wednesday spawned tornadoes and winds that wiped out homes and businesses, forced a nuclear power plant to use backup generators and prompted the evacuation of a National Weather Service office.
The National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., said it received 137 tornado reports around the regions, including 66 in Alabama and 38 in Mississippi.
One of the hardest-hit areas was Tuscaloosa, a city of more than 83,000 and home to the University of Alabama. The city’s police and other emergency services were devastated, the mayor said, and at least 15 people were killed and about 100 were in a single hospital.
April 27, 2011 Close Range Mississippi Tornado!
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. Here are a few more I just emailed to him myself at 7:26 am CST on April 28, 2011.
Is Mark Pryor sincere in his pledge to cut wasteful spending? John Brummett suggests he is not. I am hopeful that he is.
By offering the momentary illusion of substance, U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor gave a vintage performance the other day at the Political Animals Club.
The first report I came across declared that Pryor had said he would not vote to raise the federal government’s debt ceiling unless that action was accompanied by real and significant spending cuts.
That sounded like the senator only to a limited extent, that being the extent to which he often propounds as much like a Republican as a Democrat and can be flat wrong…
But this pronouncement didn’t sound like the senator in another respect, that being the one by which he appeared to be making a boldly declarative statement (even if wrong). Pryor’s style is the aforementioned momentary illusion of substance, meaning a statement that sounds real as the sound waves reach your ears, only then to drift away with the gentle breeze.
Indeed, the next report I came across clarified the matter. Pryor had not declared that he would insist on real and meaningful spending cuts before he voted to raise the debt ceiling. He had declared only that he would insist on a real and meaningful “commitment” to debt reduction.
Commitment is not an empirical thing. It is of the heart, mind and soul, thus not visible to the naked eye. Pryor was not making his debt-limit vote contingent on actual reductions in spending. He was making the vote contingent on reading the minds of his colleagues.
Washington spends $60,000 per hour shooting Air Force One photo-ops in front of national landmarks.
Congress has ignored efficiency recommendations from the Department of Health and Human Services that would save $9 billion annually.
Taxpayers are funding paintings of high-ranking government officials at a cost of up to $50,000 apiece.
The state of Washington sent $1 food stamp checks to 250,000 households in order to raise state caseload figures and trigger $43 million in additional federal funds.
Suburban families are receiving large farm subsidies for the grass in their backyards—subsidies that many of these families never requested and do not want.
Homeland Security employee purchases include 63-inch plasma TVs, iPods, and $230 for a beer brewing kit.
The National Institutes of Health spends $1.3 million per month to rent a lab that it cannot use.
Congress recently spent $2.4 billion on 10 new jets that the Pentagon insists it does not need and will not use.
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2010
With glossy waves and a rosy glow, Middleton announced her engagement to Prince William._______________________________________________________tvnewsblog.tkPrince William has spoken of his and fiancee Kate Middleton’s happiness, as the newly-engaged couple faced the cameras for the first time.The couple, both 28, will marry next spring or summer after he proposed while on holiday in Kenya in October.
In: Joss Stone
Joss Stone also made the cut—the English soul singer and songwriter performed at a memorial concert held at London’s Wembley Stadium on July 1, 2007, in honor of what would have been the late Princess of Wales’ 46th birthday. “We wanted to have this big concert full of energy, full of the sort of fun and happiness which I know she would have wanted,” said Prince William, who organized the event with his brother, Harry. The memorial concert was followed by a church service on August 31, the 10th anniversary of Diana’s death.
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Kate Middleton during a visit to Witton Country Park in Darwen, northwest England, on April 11, 2011.
CBS News’ royal contributor Victoria Arbiter gave Russ Mitchell a look into Prince William and Kate Middleton’s to do list as their royal wedding approaches.
Senator Mark Pryor wants our ideas on how to cut federal spending. Take a look at this video clip below:
Bradley R. Gitz wrote an excellent article about lawmakers that are not taking the debt serious. Here is a portion of the article “Heads in the sand,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, April 24, 2011:
With those grand hopes now crushed by hard budget realities, the embittered response to our budget crisis on the left is to deny that it even exists, or to claim that it is of such modest nature that it can be taken care of by raising taxes on “the rich” only—a proposition which no reputable economist agrees with. There is simply no serious discussion taking place at present on the left about how to prevent a looming national financial collapse. There is nodebate because there are no conceptual categories or even terminology in such quarters for dealing with such problems, only a mindset that says government must always do and spend more (which is, of course, precisely the mindset that brought us to our current impasse). Liberals cannot work in a bipartisan manner with Republicans to cut spending because it would mean abandoning their rationale for political existence. There are no takers for the Founders’ idea of “limited government” any longer among Democrats, only a powerful addiction that requires fixes in the form of new government programs and functions. The problem isn’t just that Democrats aren’t serious about the budget deficit. It is that they refuse to allow anyone else to be. Those proposing even modest budget cuts are said to be waging “war” on (take your pick) the poor, women, minorities, children, homosexuals, and the elderly, not to mention the environment and education and whatever else can be added to enhance the hysteria level. The real issue here, then, isn’t liberal demagoguery. That can always be expected. Rather, it is whether, as Democrats are betting, the American people are so dumb it will work. —––––– •–––––— Free-lance columnist Bradley R. Gitz, who lives and teaches in Batesville, received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois.
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. Here are a few more I just emailed to him myself at 8pm CST on April 27, 2011.
Congress recently gave Alaska Airlines $500,000 to paint a Chinook salmon on a Boeing 737.
The Transportation Department will subsidize up to $2,000 per flight for direct flights between Washington, D.C., and the small hometown of Congressman Hal Rogers (R–KY)—but only on Monday mornings and Friday evenings, when lawmakers, staff, and lobbyists usually fly. Rogers is a member of the Appropriations Committee, which writes the Transportation Department’s budget.
Washington has spent $3 billion re-sanding beaches—even as this new sand washes back into the ocean.
The Defense Department wasted $100 million on unused flight tickets and never bothered to collect refunds even though the tickets were refundable.
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Kate Middleton shakes hands with well-wishers following a visit with fiance Prince William to Darwen Aldridge Community Academy in Darwen, northwest England, April 11, 2011.
Kate Middleton was filmed doing some pre-wedding shopping at bargain stores in London. Royal watcher Victoria Arbiter dishes on the latest wedding details.
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