August, 2019, Part 1, Political Class Insanity: Underpaid Congress Members, More Wasteful Food Stamp Spending, and Where Did The MOney Go in Baltimore

It is another month which means it is again time to review the latest political class insanity from Washington and around the world. Political class insanity takes many forms including the wasting of taxpayer wealth, criminal fraud within government programs, inane and stupid political quotes and actions, the inability to create and implement effective and efficient government programs, stupid and ill performing economic policies and strategies, and other forms of insanity that continue to evolve and surprise and shock us.

Let’s get started:

1) Before we get into the first piece of insanity today, let’s check some numbers and reality:

• Most credible sources put the total number of homeless Americans in this country at just over half a million citizens.
• The average household income in this country is generally estimated to be about $54,000.
• Members of Congress earn about $174,000 a year, more than three times what the average American household earns.

Given these realities consider a recent piece of legislation that has been proposed in Congress:

• Congressman Bennie Thompson has proposed a law that would ban members of Congress from sleeping in their offices and change the IRS rules so that members of the House of Representatives would be able to deduct up $3,000 in housing expense off of their annual tax returns.
• In addition, he wants to spend taxpayer money to turn a vacant building near the Capitol building into apartments that House members could rent.
• Apparently some members of the House actually live in their offices to save on housing costs.
• The organization, Citizens Against Government Waste, had some very appropriate views on this nonsense: "On May 16, 2018, Rep. Thompson introduced H.R. 5845, the ‘No Couches for Congress Act,' which would ban members of Congress from sleeping in their offices. He also proposed converting vacant residence halls near the Capitol into ‘affordable‘ housing for members of Congress, who make $174,000 per year. He claimed that it would be available for members who found housing costs to be ‘prohibitive. However, the claim that housing is unaffordable is belied by the average monthly cost of a studio apartment in Washington, D.C., which is $1,602, or less than 10 percent of members' annual salary. The average American spends 33 percent of his or her annual income on housing."
• The proposed legislation currently has 23 co-sponsors.

Of all the problems facing the country, the cost of housing for Congressional people in D.C. should be nowhere on anyone’s priority list. Congressman, you make three times the average income of the average American family, deal with it. Congressman, if you want to help out the housing needs of this country, forget about your selfish desires and put that money towards getting a roof over the half a million homeless Americans. Congressman, if you need housing help, what about members of your staff who earn far less than $174,000 a year, what about their suffering? And finally Congressman, the country owes $22 TRILLION in national debt, would it not kill members of Congress to show a little class and gumption and not add to that national debt with this selfish action?

Just another example that shows how out of touch these people are with the realities in this country.

2) Trump has been in a spitting contest with Congressman Elijah Cummings of Baltimore over the past few weeks. After Cummings unleashed a blistering, cruel, and false attack on those guarding our southern border, Trump properly came to their defense and suggested that Cummings should spend some time helping out his own home Congressional district and not worry about how our border security people are doing their job. As with most statements Trump makes, Democrats immediately called him a racist since Cummings is African-American despite Trump’s comments having nothing to do with race.

In addition, Trump is not wrong in calling Baltimore a bad, bad place to live, a topic that we will explore in a future post. In the meantime, consider the following reality as it relates to Cummings district:

• According to a recent Freedom Outpost article, Lynne Patton, regional administrator for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, $16 billion of Federal taxpayer money was spent in Cummings district just in 2018.
• This was more money than the Obama administration ever gave Cummings’ district.
• She also posed the simple and realistic question: what happened to all of that taxpayer money once we, the American taxpayer, gave it to you?
• The local paper, the Baltimore Sun, confirms that $15.7 billion went to the district in 2018.
• Since there are about 240,000 households in Cummings district, if we could bypass all bureaucracy relative to the $15.7 billion than each household in his district would have received $65,000 in Federal taxpayer benefits.
• Thus, each household would have been receiving 20% more than the average income of a typical American household.

Obviously there has to be some bureaucracy and overhead cost in managing $15.7 billion. But really, how does $15.7 billion NOT result in a vastly improved life style for Baltimore residents? 

3) Speaking of wasting taxpayer money, consider the latest results from the Federal government’s food stamp program:

• According to the latest analysis from Judicial Watch, the food stamp program continues to be waste infested.
• The Federal government spends over $900 million a year on “nutrition education” classes whose effectiveness cannot and has never been measured.
• A Federal audit found that these so-called SNAPEd programs cannot “be aggregated or reviewed.”
• In other words, we have no idea if we are getting our money’s worth for $900 million a year.
• The audit was done by the Government Accountability Office which also stated that a similar study was done 15 years ago which also found that the program’s benefits were not trackable or quantifiable 15 years ago.
• In other words, the government has spent billions of dollars on a program that we have no idea whether or not it works.
• While over 40 million Americans receive food stamp benefits but only about 4 million people participate in these programs.
• Thus, the program is spending $900 million to maybe education 4 million recipients every year or $225 per recipient EVERY year and it is unclear if the education makes any difference for only 10% of recipients.
• Oh, by the way, law enforcement officials in north Florida arrested 200 people last year for operating an extensive food stamp fraud ring which resulted in $3.7 million in food stamp funds being illegally diverted to cash and drugs.

What a disgrace. Expensive programs that cannot be measured or tracked and fraud that permeates a very expensive and wasteful government program. No wonder we have a $22 TRILLION in national debt.

This month’s insanity is just getting started.

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:

https://www.amazon.com/Walter-Bruno-Korschek/e/B002KYU08Q/ref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

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Please visit the following sites for freedom:


http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w