"Demagoguery Is The Last Refuge Of The Spineless Politician Willing To Do Anything To Win The Next Election"

The title words today comes from an op-ed piece that U.S. Senator Marco Rubio wrote for the April 4, 2011 St. Petersburg Times. He was writing about the impending financial collapse of the United States that is sure to happen, taking our freedom and liberty with it, if the Federal government does not gets its runaway spending under control. He began the piece with a review of some of the dire statistics:

• The Federal government is currently $14 TRILLION in debt.
• On average, the Federal government spends $4 billion a day that it does not have revenue to cover, requiring it to continually sell Treasury bonds on the open market.
• President Obama's latest budget plan would spend more than $46 TRILLION over the next decade, more than three times the current size of one year's worth of GDP. Although not mentioned in the op-ed piece, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that Obama's proposed budget would add over $9 TRILLION to the Federal debt.Depressing numbers.

And while the government spends $4 billion a day that it does not have, most of the political class in Washington is arguing over nits when it comes to budget cuts. The current plan being circulated for fiscal year 2011's budget, which is already over six months late, is to reduce the Federal budget this year by a mere $33 billion. And the Democrats think this is too much even though it is equal to only about a week of deficit spend by the Federal government. Certainly no way to solve this problem.


Many, many groups and organizations have done fantastic work to address and solve this crisis. The CATO Institute went through the current Federal budget line-by-line and identified hundreds of billions of dollars in savings from government expense cuts, the vast majority of which would have minimal impact on most Americans. The Concord Coalition, co-chaired by a former Democratic Senator and a former Republican Senator, have also actively addressed the issue. Last year, a detailed, joint analysis by the National Taxpayer Union, a right leaning organization and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, a left leaning organization, published their results which showed they could take hundreds of billions of dollars out of the government expense stream, again with minimal impact to most Americans. The President's Deficit Reduction Commission, did a fine job also but was completely kicked aside by Obama, Reid, and Pelosi.


Most Americans also understand the need to get unnecessary spending under control. If you go to our sister site, www.loathemygovernment.com, you can vote on whether or not you think 43 Federal spending programs from the past few years, which cost the American taxpayer almost $600 million, were worthwhile uses of taxpayer money. Some of these actual expenditures including a $1 million study in Utah on how to cross the street, Federal funds for the construction of the Paper Industry Hall of Fame, and the construction of a bike path in Michigan. The overwhelming majority of site visitors who have voted have given each of the 43 Federal spending projects and programs a thumbs down with some of the expenditures never receiving a positive single vote indicating they were a good use of taxpayer money. Thus, most ordinary Americans recognize that the political class is wasting their taxpayer dollars on frivolous initiatives, all of which increase the deficit.

But is it not just these 43 programs that are unnecessary. Consider some recent news items that show how much money we waste as a country:

• The April 1, 2011 issue of The Week magazine reported that government expenditures in Afghanistan are so out of control that an Afghan vice President was discovered transporting $53 million in cash to Dubai. I am assuming this was not the only corrupt Afghan official, how many others have made off with million and millions of taxpayer dollars through such incompetence of our government and political class?
• The same article reported that the United States has given the country of Senegal $543 million in foreign aid, whose government recently spent $28 million to build a "bombastic 'African Renaissance' monument which is larger than the Statue of Liberty." Not a good use of U.S. foreign aid to a poor country.
• An Associated Press article from February 5, 2011 reported that the Federal government loses about $60 billion a year through Medicare and Medicaid fraud.
• One example in the article reported that one criminal bilked the government out of $1 million for motorized wheelchairs no one needed. Two sisters got $9 million from Medicare for pricey drugs that were never administered. Two brothers out of Miami scammed $119 million by billing for HIV drugs that patients never received or did not need. The list is endless as the deficit piles up and the waste and fraud keeps pace.
• According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, government auditors have found that the Federal government has 15 agencies in charge of food safety, 20 agencies in charge of homeless affairs, 80 agencies in charge of economic development, 46 agencies in charge of job training (at a cost of $18 billion a year), and 82 agencies  in charge of improving teacher quality (none of which seem to be dong a good job if you look at how poorly American kids fare vs. the education quality in the rest of the world.)

This is the kind of insanity that a few politicians like Rubio want to get under control. One way the Senator intends to accomplish this task is a forthright and committed stand to not raise the nation's debt limit when it comes up for a vote shortly unless there is a hard commitment across the political spectrum to rein in spending. He is taking this courageous stand, a least for a politician, to not delay this urgent matter until after the next election like many spineless politicians want to do. That type of behavior does not solve the problem it makes it worse, and the solution more painful.

To support this position, Senator Rubio cites the words of another young U.S. Senator who stated in 2006 that "Raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure." Who was this other Senator? It was Barack Obama, the same person who now wants to add an astronomical amount of debt and doubt to the country's future. If anyone has failed  leadership in this area, it is the President. The country is willing, experts have already done the difficult and hard analyses, all that is missing is some leadership.

How could the politicians of the country get cracking on this issue? The Senator cites some examples that are good starts (but only starts):

• Congressman Dave Camp has introduced a plan to simplify tax rates and close tax loopholes while reducing tax rates, an idea that Rubio says Obama has spoken of doing.
• Senator Rand Paul wants to go through all Federal regulations that each cost the American eocnomy over $100 million a year and have a thumbs up or down vote in Congress to determine if they are each still worthwhile.
• Rubio recognizes that long term, fundamental changes are needed to Social Secuirty and Medicare, changes that would not effect people currently in the systems or close to being in the systems but changes which provide time for younger Americans to adjust to less robust spending in each area.
• Rubio would also introduce a concept that would tie public debt to a permanent, reasonable, and sustainable Debt to GDP ratio. Failure to meet this ratio would trigger across the board cuts in all Federal departments. This approach would place a "governor" switch on political class spending.

And what have the Demcorats come back with? We know Obama has come back with the same old tired and wasteful spending plans. (So much for his "Change" moniker). The Democrats in both the House and the Senate have come up with nothing except crticizing anyone who dares to cut expenses. They attack worthwhile ideas despite the massive amount of waste and fraud inherent in our government today. In other words, they have no plan whatsoever, at least they have no plan until after the 2012 election lest any plans upset a voter or two. Hardly what one would call leadership.

Rubio recognizes that these ideas are subject to severe political atttack and criticism. When he proposed some of these bold moves in his campaign for the Senate, he claims his opponent spent millions of dollars on ads to scare seniors. However, he was elected anyway, which would reinforce the notion stated above that Americans are ready for budget constraints.

He is willing to stand up and come forward, willing to make the difficult budget decisions for what is right for the country and not what is right for his political career. It's called leadership, when you know you will be attacked but make the right and courageous choice anyway. He seems ready to have the important and probably  painful discussions and actions on how to fix the country, all he needs is someone with a spine to sit across the table from him, face-to-face, to confront and solve the problems like adults and like Americans.



Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at http://www.loathemygovernment.com/. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.


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http://www.cato.org/
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http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendmen.com/