In offering himself as the next speaker of the House after last Tuesday’s sea-change election, Rep. John Boehner of Ohio penned a Wall Street Journalop-ed of about 800 words. The word “debt” is not one of them, nor does the concept appear. That’s a bit odd, no?
The debt is what the election was about: the growth-killing tab that runs up another $4 billion every day — even days when President Obama is not touring the Far East with 3,000 courtiers in his retinue. The debt, driven by unconstitutional and unsustainable federal intrusions into everything from how much carbon dioxide we emit to which light bulbs we use, is what in turn drives unemployment. The debt, coupled with government’s insatiable appetite for ever-greater control, is what impels the Obama campaign to tax every morsel of achievement, effort, and choice. As former Reagan official Peter Ferrara explains in President Obama’s Tax Piracy, a new pamphlet in Encounter’s Broadside series, production and employment have ground to a halt as a “natural result of the incentive effects” created by the swirl of confiscation and uncertainty.
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Yet, Mr. Boehner is focused like a laser on . . . earmarks. They are, he says, “a symbol of a broken Washington.” Okay, but they are also less than one 1 percent of our unfathomable $3.8 trillion budget. The problem is not the symbols, it is the broken Washington.
It took the United States over 190 years from the start of constitutional governance to accumulate $1 trillion in debt. We now add a tril every nine months or so. At the start of World War II, our public debt stood at about $43 billion. That averaged out to $370 per American. On Election Day last week, with a population nearly three times as large, each American’s share had exploded to $44,370 — and counting. Accumulated public debt now hovers near $14 trillion, and that’s only if we use the farcically forgiving math by which Washington insulates itself from the accounting rigors it foists on the real world.
Americans in the private sector (i.e., members of the public who create the value on which the “public servants” feast) get prosecuted for fraud when they doctor the books, even if it is to shroud an imperceptible fraction of what Uncle Sam hides: tens of trillions in unfunded liabilities that push into the hundreds of thousands of dollars the true per capita burden we bear, as will our children and our children’s children. Just ask any Bernie, from Ebbers to Madoff: If you fail to heed the SEC’s disclosure regulations, you go to jail. And what of the regs for government disclosure, like the Freedom of Information Act? Strangely enough, the Treasury Department is currently looking to hire FOIA experts with experience in using “exemptions to withhold information from the public.”
But let’s pretend that the debt is really only $14 trillion. Two-thirds of that staggering sum has been run up since 1991, when Boehner was first elected to the House. About half of it has been added since 2006, when Mr. Boehner became GOP leader. Obviously, Democrats have been running the show in Congress throughout Boehner’s leadership years, and they’ve controlled both political branches for the last two. The congressman doesn’t come close to making the Most Wanted list when it comes to assessing blame for our sorry condition. But neither do earmarks.
Mr. Boehner is focused like a laser on . . . earmarks
What arrogance.
We just threw out an entire oligarchy who promised that very thing, and were proven to be liars within weeks.
He's now anxious to be part of the problem. He's going to be proven a liar as well, insuring a massive loss back to the liberals in 2012.
They didn't vote for Republicans - they voted to get rid of the worst incumbents.
Andrew is by far the smartest guy here (although I know Ramesh gives him a run for the money). But you miss the point on earmarks - I'm not the first to say this, and I don't remember who even came up with this formulation - but earmarks are the "entry drug" for big spending. Its the bribe that these folks pay each other to get the really big projects through. Cut out the earmarks and you reduce the incentive that members have to vote for other projects...
While I agree with the thrust of what you're saying, I think stopping earmarks is a necessary first step to establishing a level of trust. By doing away first with spending that is, basically, for their own benefit, they can establish their seriousness and realiability on making the cuts that will affect others.
I disagree, getting rid of earmarks is pretty much the beginning.
Yes, the money involved in earmarks is chump change compared to the total budget. But as all sorts of good people keep pointing out, earmarks are the bribes that lawmakers take when selling their votes on the big-ticket items. Get rid of the earmarks, and fewer Congressmen will be willing to vote for the budget-busters.
Although the total dollar value of earmarks is low, don't they act as a sort of "political currency" to create a system of de facto bribery? This bribery then corrupts the legislative process and enables the passing of some very bad bills, including those that super-charge spending and debt. So, earmarks have a negative influence far beyond the pricetag of the earmarks alone.
But earmarks are symbolic of wasteful spending. Worse, earmarks are in reality just a corrupt practice for buying votes both in the districts and states but within Congress as well.
Just look at the number of candidates whose ads focused on who could better bring home the pork to their state or districts. And look how earmarks are used in Congress to pressure (buy) Representatives to vote a certain way.
OK, so it's only 1% of the budget. But that's a start and earmarks are wrong at every level, because such appropriations should be voted on.
And Boehner never said that earmarks were the central issue. He also wants to cut congressional salaries. That too is symbolic, although it is also corrupt since the pay raises are now automatic while the rest of the country suffers.
Boehner has also said that reducing the size of government was a priority and he has expressed his desire to cut in many areas.
I think belittling the elimination of earmarks is a cheap shot within the context of all the other cuts Boehner says that he would like to make.
And even if earmarks only cut the budget 1%, that is far more than any Democrat has proposed so far.
Frankly, Boehner can't do it by himself, and so I'm already working hard to give him some help in 2012.
Given the gargantuan waste and inefficiency that typifies our Federal government—one of the greatest engines for fiscal mismanagement ever devised by the wit of man—it would seem relatively easy for our elected representatives to identify real and significant ‘savings.’ Is there anyone familiar with the ways of Washington who believes that cutting our bloated national government by two percent a year for a decade would in some way harm the fortunes of the Republic? But instead, we are told that ‘earmarks’ are the problem. Mr. McCarthy is spot on. The focus on ‘earmarks’ is utterly beside the point. So the circus music plays on, with the elephants now in the center ring, and the debt climbing ever higher.
The whole point about earmarks isn't that they reflect a small portion of the budget or that they are 'symbolic.' The point is that they inherently corrupt the legislative process. That is the reason why they should be banned, not because of the direct savings.
There are plenty of examples. Most famously, special provisions for Louisiana and Nebraska induced senators from those states to vote for Obamacare.
While one may argue that those types of 'special provisions' are not earmarks in the sense that D.C. insiders understand the term, the effect is the same. If legislators have pet projects buried in a bill, they can be persuaded to vote for the bill not because of its merit, but because of that member's pet project.
While I appreciate Mr. McCarthy's take on the subject, it completely misses the point. Denigrating an earmark ban to state the completely obvious (that we need to reduce spending) is totally unhelpful.
I'm a sovereign risk analyst for a big institutional investor who studies the debt of foreign countries for a living. If we are not careful we will find ourselves in a debt trap similar to that currently afflicting the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain).
Whether a country's debt increases or decreases from year to year depends on nominal GDP growth, the size of the primary budget deficit and the interest rate the country must pay on new debt. Once the debt reaches around 90% of GDP, it can quickly become unsustainable. Fiscal consolidation (less government spending, higher taxes) slows economic growth, so debt rises. Investors get nervous, so interest rates go up, leading to more fiscal consolidation and still slower growth. In the worst case, you get a spiral leading to economic collapse.
This is where we are heading if we don't cut spending and adopt polcies that increase economic growth.
We are literally spending 30-40% more money than we take in (this was before stimulus or the Obamacare). We don't need symbolism, we need Republicans to "focus like a laser" on cutting spending by 1 to 1.3 trillion PER year from the Big 5:
1) Social Security.
2) Medicare
3) Defense
4) Medicaid
5) Salaries of Federal Workforce
