There was a lot in President Obama's speech last night. I liked his call for accountability and a balanced budge, and I hope to be able to track the expenditures of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act Along with all of you at www.recovery.gov.
Why can't this accountability and common sense be applied across the board though? Following Governor Jindal's response I heard a critic say that by refusing some of the support that he did for Louisiana, 25,000 people were not going to receive certain unemployment benefits. There are 4.4 million people in Louisiana! If working through the budgetary issues and making the state self-sustaining means making 0.57% of the population uncomfortable, so be it!
It is the same kind of logic that Howard Dean used defending the Housing bill - foreclosures have really gone up in south Florida and Vegas. No kidding! Those were the speculative hotbeds of the whole country. As the president said, we can work through this, but fiscal common sense and budgetary prudence are musts. It makes no sense to open the checkbook without trying to cut costs and look forward at the same time. You would not buy a new more expensive car without first knowing that you were going to cut back somewhere else, or were receiving a raise in the near future.
Decision making on poor information or to the benefit of a few at the cost of many, will not make the future brighter for our children. Common sense transparent financial planning might!
-2outof4
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I think Jindal should refuse Federal funding for all of the state's Corps of Engineers work. That place is more dependent on Federal funding than almost any other in the Country, so Jindal is full of sh*t. They can never work through their budgetary issues and will never be self-sustaining without continued Federal assistance.
ReplyDeleteGreg, are you saying that if a state currently takes federal funding that they should be forced to take any and all future federal funding? Seems weak. Jindal has also only been Governor for 2 years, and if he was elected to clean up their budgetary mess then refusing part of the stimulus is a good move. Like a crack dealer, the stimulus provides funds for expanded programs for 2 years only then cuts off the states. Then the state is left with picking up the tab by making the politically difficult decision of raising taxes or cutting those programs. Somehow, Washington gets away with counting this spending increase as a two year deal even though we all know that nobody's going to cut the expanded entitlement spending. I've read that the true 10 year cost of the stimulus is closer to $2trln.
ReplyDeleteNice back and forth.
ReplyDeleteGDB is correct. LA is the most depenedent on Corp of Engineering work. However, once again, I think we are not putting the numbers in context.
In this 2005 article the Washington Post said that during the whole Bush Adminsitration, to date, $1.9 billion had been spent on Corps of Engineering projects (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/07/AR2005090702462.html). That is 6.3% of today's total budget.
Given the spuriousness of some of these projects, I do not see why it would be unreasonalbe for LA to reject federal funding of the Corp of Engineering on an annual basis.
Second paragraph above refers to the state of Louisiana.
ReplyDeleteMJ,
ReplyDeleteThe idea is that after two years, the economy may have rebounded and the states and everyone else will be able to pick up their parts of the tab again, absent the Federal government.
My point about Jindal is that he's a dumb Republican who is trying to make a point at the expense of his most vulnerable constituents. But, why would he care? He knows they'll never vote for him anyway and they certainly don't contribute to his campaign.
John-O, the amount that the Corps has now spent in LA post Katrina is huge. At least double what was spent from 2000-2005.
It actually appears that post Katrina Corp of Engineering spending was greater than 4x what was spent from 2000-2005: http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/85xx/doc8514/08-07-Hurricanes_Letter.pdf, or 14% of the current budget on an annualized basis.
ReplyDeleteI think that what you miss with the above argument is the context of numbers. Even if the critic, who I referenced in the original post, was complaining that 25,000 of the richest people in LA were getting hurt because in order to balance the budget their marginal income tax rate was being raised 1%, my point is still the same. That is a tiny fraction of the overall population, and if a few people suffer in order to benefit the greater population over the long-term, then so be it.
Pandering to every interest group’s needs and not making difficult decisions is at least in part to blame for the states' and national budget deficits and debt burden. Such politically tinged viewpoints get in the way of smart and efficient management, which I know is asking a lot from government, but is possible.
-2outof4