More business-like habits in Washington might rescue the country

Commentary by James H. Shott 

Some Americans fully understand the potentially cataclysmic economic situation facing the country. They are not the ones we have to worry about.

Who we have to worry about are the ones – the millions – that either do not fully comprehend the problem, or have some level of understanding and either are unconcerned about the problem, are using it to their advantage, or have no idea what to do about it. Many of the people in this group hold positions in the federal government, and are responsible for creating the crisis and/or perpetuating it and making it worse.

While government and business are distinctly different creatures, there are aspects of sound business operation that belong in the Federal Government Operators Manual, and Chapter I is “Fiscal Responsibility.”

The Prime Directive, derived from the U.S. Constitution, is a simple one: Government must remain small with limited scope and interfere minimally in the lives of the citizens it exists to serve. It must be a good steward of the people’s finances, taxing minimally and spending frugally.

If such a manual existed and if it had the force of law, many politicians and bureaucrats would have been jailed or fired for their part in creating a crisis that more and more resembles to a frightening degree what now threatens socialist Europe.

The situation is this: The U.S. has borrowed debt amounting to $50,000 for every citizen in the country totaling nearly $16 trillion. Despite this enormous and growing debt, in most years the federal government willfully spends more than it takes in, averaging deficits of $1.3 trillion annually since 2009, which is approximately 40 percent more than revenue, and has increased the national debt by about a third.

To say it is foolish and risky to have done this for years on end produces one of those “well, duh!” moments.
Yet, that is what we have done, and continue to do.

Those Americans more concerned with the fate of the nation than with their own political well-being know that we cannot continue on this course.

There are three options to correct this crisis: Reduce spending; increase revenue; or a combination of both. The latter is the best option.

Some people advocate deeply cutting the out-of-control and frequently wasteful and fraudulent spending. These people are responsible citizens and conscientious public servants. They are accused of wanting to throw people out on the street, take food from babies, and other equally cartoonish slurs by those who want to maintain the status quo, people who a) benefit from wasting your tax dollars or b) benefit from government misspending.

Government taxation and spending is where common business practice should be applied: what would a business with costs 40 percent higher than its income do? Unlike government, which can – but shouldn’t – print money at will, if it wants to survive, a business must have more income than spending. Government should have a balance of the two.

One of the first things a business would do is cut non-essential expense. Here, the federal government has a vast array of opportunities: combine the dozens of wasteful duplicated services, reduce employee expense through attrition; fire unproductive and self-serving federal workers, and take the virtually unprecedented step of shutting down programs that do not work. Like Head Start, a true tribute to government inefficiency that a Department of Health and Human Services study found has wasted $150 billion since 1965, but produces no lasting benefits for participants.

 It could scale back the frenzied regulatory efforts of the EPA and other agencies that spend our money killing jobs, raising costs for businesses and consumers, but produce negligible improvements, or do more harm than good. It could stop agencies like the GSA from robbing taxpayers to fund lavish get-togethers posing as training activities, and stop giving away the public’s money on dumb ideas like the half-billion President Barack Obama “loaned” to the failed solar company Solyndra, and other self-defeating assaults on the private sector. It could sell the 14,000 federally owned real estate properties that now sit empty and unproductive.

The government could give up its predatory attitude toward businesses and the wealthy in its futile effort to increase government revenue, and the politicians could replace their efforts to gin up class envy with practical steps that would foster job creation, thereby broadening the tax base and actually increasing tax revenue.

The idea of raising taxes on rich folks might cause some people to get all tingly, but it won’t make a significant difference in balancing out the treacherous over-spending in which the federal government continues to indulge.

Federal government fiscal negligence predates Mr. Obama’s presidency by many years, but the sign that proclaims “The Buck Stops Here” is on the desk he campaigned so aggressively to earn in 2008, and before he asks a single American to pay a penny more in taxes to support a bloated bureaucracy or higher costs resulting from excessive regulation, he needs to get his administration under control. Some or perhaps most of the ideologues now running the administration are not up to the task, but the country has lots of capable people outside government that can do the job.

Cross-posted from Observations

Rescuing America Requires A Political Purge Of Our Government(s)

Rescuing America Requires A Political Purge Of Our Government(s)
Clean them out from City Hall to Congress!
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
****************
Recently, I warned my fellow Americans to prepare for an avalanche of taxes. These taxe will be descending upon us from the federal government, the state governments, our county governments, and our city governments.

WHY? The answer is simply because the various governments ruling us have no understanding of capitalist economics. Well, that is not exactly true. Some of the folks in government understand capitalist and socialist economics as well as any accountant, but quite often they, too, are intoxicated with the power-trip levying taxes provides for lawmakers -- not to mention they have opted for the socialist brand of economics.

Why all the increases in taxes and the implementation of new taxes? The root cause is SPENDING – out of control, useless, careless, spending.

Look, I am married to a woman who spent nearly 35 years in the banking industry. I would bet my paycheck, if I had one, that you could put that woman in a room –alone -- with a red pencil, and present her with the books of the US government, and instruct her to find cuts in the budget – and -- when she finished the United States of America would be in damn good financial condition!

Having said that, I expect that most any average American given the same task could find billions of dollars in useless, careless, even nonsensical spending that could be cut, completely, bringing this country back on an even keel financial.

We all know that when the public demands their public officials cut spending, the public “servants” always, ALWAYS, come back with their tried and true scare tactics of being forced to cut, public safety, as in policemen, firemen, rescue personnel, and such. They ALWAYS do that. But, it is complete Bovine Scatology (BS!).

Yes, they may have to cut a few jobs in those departments, but not so many that anarchy reigns. Besides, if the average citizen was given access to the books and allowed to make cuts, I expect there would be very few folks who would argue with the cuts they would find. Certainly some of those directly affected by the cuts would raise hell, but hey, at some point reality must be allowed to come to the fore and tough decisions made -- and the economy righted. It can be done, but we have to WANT to do it.

In the meantime, our government has spent billions and billions of dollars we don’t have. The country is broke. So the government borrowed the money -- and then blew it.

Somebody has to pay those lenders back. You and I will pay a portion of it. Our children and grandchildren and even our great grandchildren will be paying off those loans far, far, into the future.

How will we pay it? Taxes -- and MORE taxes. Suggestions from some senators include a 15-cents per gallon tax on gasoline. A Value Added Tax has already been suggested. Then they are really going to get creative.

America will be smothered by taxes. Watch for another bout of “malaise” to set in when Americans come to understand there is no point in working so hard when most of what you earn is going to the government, anyway.

In the next few weeks we will be hit with propaganda telling us the recession is over or almost over. They will try to convince Americans that good times are here again.

Don’t believe it. There may be a period of moderation in the recession, but many believe it will be temporary and in a few months we’ll be in as bad a shape economically as we are today, if not worse.

I tend to believe there will be a deliberate move to “cook the books” in the months and weeks, leading to the election in November, to make democrats look much better than they look today and stave off the bloodletting of democrats in the Mid-Term Election. In 2011, if we are correct, the bottom will fall out of the American economy again. Ask yourself this: when you consider those running the US government these days, is this scenario too far fetched? See what I mean?

Americans fought a war over taxation without representation. I must tell you, it is worse WITH representation! Especially when those we sent to Washington to represent us DON’T!

The only chance we have to rescue our country is to throw the bums out! We’ll have a chance at a good start at doing just that this coming November. I intend to vote against every incumbent, beginning with the NC primary election in May. Let’s just say I intend to enforce some term limits of my own on those purportedly representing me all the way from City Hall to Congress.

Rescuing America cannot wait. If we are to be successful, we must begin the purge in the primaries and follow through all the way to the General Election in November of 2012. It is the only way to save the republic.

J. D. Longstreet