As I wrote last week, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has gotten herself into some hot water concerning her solicitation for donations for non-profit groups that will help with the implementation of Obamacare.  She asked for donations from corporations, some of which are regulated by HHS, and foundations.

Reuters reports the non-profit “Enroll America” seems to be the prime beneficiary of these funds, at least so far.  The group was founded by principals from the group “Families USA,” a big supporter of Obamacare.  It is led by Anne Filipic, who…drum roll please…worked in the Obama White House on public engagement projects and Chris Wyant who ran the president’s eastern Ohio field office.  (Hmmm, I wonder how quickly they got their 501(c)3 non-profit status?)

Reuter’s reports that only the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation has given a grant.  Also solicited was H. & R. Block, the tax preparation company, but they have said they have made no commitment to provide financial assistance to “Enroll America.”

However, prior news reports indicate that insurance companies, and perhaps other health industries, were also approached by Secretary Sebelius.  Since these entities are regulated by HHS, such solicitations would be improper, if not outright illegal.

Congress has gotten into the act and is now investigating the episode.  The Energy and Commerce Committee has sent a letter to HHS and several companies expressing concern that Secretary Sebelius has asked for donations from a regulated industry and has demanded a list of individuals, companies, and organizations that received the fundraising pitch.  The committee also wants to know, “a list of HHS employees that participated [in the effort], a summary of the communications and information relayed, and detailed information on the funding sources and amount spent/allocated to implement the law.”  You can click here and here to review the letters sent by the committee.

The peeling back of the onion begins yet again on another administration scandal.

Filed under: Big Government, Corruption, Healthcare, Obamacare, Scandal | No Comments »

With the triad of scandals rocking Washington this week, you would be forgiven if you were unaware of the fact that we are heading into consideration of a five-year $940 billion Farm Bill, starting Monday.

CCAGW, along with ten other taxpayer watchdog and consumer groups, distributed a nice primer on the “Terrible Twelve” items currently contained in the behemoth that should be of serious concern:

“Washington’s Farm Policy is a nearly trillion dollar tangle of agriculture subsidies, welfare payments and environmental patronage.  There is tremendous need for reform.  Current subsidy programs are rooted in the 1930s, when prices for crops and livestock bottomed out and farm families were desperate for income.  Agriculture today could not be more different.  Farmers are pulling in record-high levels of income and carrying record-low levels of debt.  Technology has eliminated many of the risks that once plagued farming, and the profitability of crops that go without subsidies demonstrates independent agriculture is viable in the 21st Century.  There is no way to justify continuing to give tens of billions of dollars to the farm industry.”

1. Direct Payments.  Taxpayers are lavishing billions of dollars on successful farm enterprises whether or not the farm is actually growing the crops for which they are receiving the subsidies or growing any crop at all.

2. Federal Crop Insurance.  In 2012 taxpayers spent more than $14 billion subsidizing agriculture businesses buying crop insurance (and thus subsidizing insurance companies) for everything from almonds to oysters.

3. Shallow Loss Programs.  A new open-ended income program will put taxpayers on the hook for guaranteeing record prices.  This shallow loss coverage would cost taxpayers billions of dollars and potentially violate World Trade Organization rules.

4. USDA Trade Promotion Programs. Taxpayers spend some $200 million annually to support advertising campaigns that benefit large corporate enterprises and agricultural special interests.

5. Sugar Program. A small number of sugar producers receive enormous benefits, while the costs are spread across the U.S. economy, harming consumers, taxpayers, and the sweetener-using industries.

6. Dairy Market Stabilization Plan (DMSP).  The DMSP would impose government controls and regulations on the nation’s milk supply, penalize farmers for exceeding government milk production “quotas,” artificially inflate the price of dairy products for families and drive the cost of federal food programs higher.

7. Target Prices. Government-set price targets—about 40% higher than the previous farm bill and in many cases higher than record levels seen between 2005 and 2010—would expose taxpayers to billions in payments if crop prices dip slightly.

8. Rural Broadband. The Rural Utilities Service Broadband Loan Program is a classic example of waste and market distortion. In addition to the cost, in many areas, the practice of guaranteeing loans serves to undercut existing private-sector investment.

9. Mandatory Assessments. Mandatory assessments on farmers to promote commodities cost consumers and skirt constitutional provisions that only Congress has the power to tax. The program also violates basic principles of free speech, forcing some producers to pay to communicate messages against their will.

10. Cotton Program. Federal subsidies for domestic cotton are so high, they violate international trade rules. To keep Brazil from enacting retaliatory tariffs which would hurt American consumers, taxpayers send a $147.3 million check to the Brazilian Cotton Institute every year. Contact: James Valvo jvalvo at afphq.org

11. Ethanol. The Feedstock Flexibility Program is the definition of cronyism. With taxpayer dollars, the federal government buys up subsidized surplus sugar and sells it at a loss to ethanol makers.

12. Biomass. Since 2008, the Biomass Crop Assistance Program (BCAP) has proven to be a failure. Even though this wasteful, market-distorting program is replete with loopholes and is not currently funded, it would be revived by the draft farm bill.”

On Direct Payments, the GAO has issued several scathing reports on the program, but here is the gist of their findings from a July 3, 2012 report :

“From 2003 through 2011, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) made more than $46 billion in direct payments to farmers and other producers. These producers planted varying percentages of acres that qualified for payments based on their historical planting yields and designated payment rates (qualifying acres).

“Cumulatively, USDA paid $10.6 billion—almost one-fourth of total direct payments made from 2003 through 2011—to producers who did not, in a given year, grow the crop associated with their qualifying acres, which they are allowed to do. About 2,300 farms (0.15 percent of farms receiving direct payments) reported all their land as “fallow,” and producers did not plant any crops on this land for each year for the last 5 years, from 2007 through 2011; in 2011, these producers received almost $3 million in direct payments.”

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The Washington Post had an interesting column a few days ago.  It seems Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is asking for more money from health industry officials to help implement Obamacare since Congress is refusing to provide more funds.  While the effort is caged as asking for “donations” it does not take someone from Mensa International to know this is very questionable behavior.  When a government official from an agency that regulates a business asks for donations from that business to support a government initiative, is it not really a shakedown?  What’s more, why is this even occurring?  Were not the American people promised that Obamacare would make for “more affordable coverage?”

The Congressional Budget Office is now scoring Obamacare at a cost of $1.8 trillion over ten years.  But let’s go back to yesteryear when Americans were promised by the president and Congress that Obamacare would cost less than $1 trillion over ten years.  President Obama said in a joint session before Congress in 2009 that his health plan “will cost around $900 billion over 10 years.”

Furthermore, to bend down the healthcare cost curve, officials in the White House and members of Congress met and negotiated with the healthcare industry several times and extracted billions of dollars to pay for Obamacare.  And how much is the industry already paying?

At minimum, the pharmaceutical industry will pay $26 billion and hospitals will pay $58.8 billion in just new fees over ten years.  The medical device industry will pay a 2.3% excise tax on total sales each year, which is estimated to cost the industry $30 billion over ten years.  Of course, the industry will pay much more due to a variety of other provisions in the healthcare law, in lost R&D opportunities, and jobs.

In February, the Obama Administration announced it was closing down to new applicants the high-risk pool that was created under the healthcare law because there was not enough funding.  Started in 2010, the high-risk pool was suppose to last until 2014 when Obamacare was up and running.  Many policy experts thought there was never enough money in the high-risk pool to start with but the salient point here is Congress is never good about predicting what a government-run program will cost and usually always underestimates its price tag.  For example, Congress predicted in 1967 that Medicare would cost $12 billion in 1990.  Its actual cost was $110 billion in that year.

Is this demand by a government official – oh sorry – this “request” by a government official for donations from industry even illegal?  According to the Washington Post Federal regulations do not allow Department officials to fundraise in their professional capacity.  They do allow Cabinet members to solicit donations as private citizens as long as they do not solicit funds from a subordinate or from someone who does business or seeks to do business with the Department they represent.  HHS spokesman, Jason Young noted that there is a special provision in the Public Health Service Act that allows the secretary to encourage donations to nonprofit groups working to provide healthcare information.  However, a health industry official said there was a “clear insinuation by the administration that the insurers should give financially to the nonprofits.”

Hmmmm….talk about threading the needle!

As predicted by many of us in the “smaller government is better crowd,” Obamacare is going to cost taxpayers much more than it was predicted to cost.  It is also clear the roll-out of Obamacare is going to be a “train wreck” and there is panic in Washington as 2014 gets closer and closer.

Filed under: Big Government, Corruption, Healthcare, Obamacare | No Comments »

Every once in a while a politician or political operative says something with which everyone can agree.  So today, for the first time, all of us at CAGW agree with David Axelrod to the extent that he acknowledged that the government is too big.  Obviously we don’t agree that the size of the government excuses President Obama from knowing about the IRS scandal and other examples of waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement.

\ http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2013/05/15/axelrod_government_so_vast_obama_cant_know_about_wrongdoing.html

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By now I am sure you have heard that the IRS targeted and harassed Tea Party and conservative groups that were trying to obtain non-profit status.  If a group used words like “tea party” or “patriot” in their organization’s name or the phrase “making America a better place to live” it was enough to raise the ire of some IRS bureaucrats who would then slow-walk their application for non-profit standing with the agency.  The IRS would also ask of the groups for information that were an unnecessary or illegal intrusion into their affairs such as a list of their donors, whether one of the organization’s executives was planning to run for office, or what political affiliation they had.

About a year ago, members of Congress were beginning to hear about how various conservative groups were being hassled by the IRS.  Their staff met with the Treasury Department inspector general’s office about the matter.  As a result, the inspector general began investigating the complaints about the IRS overreach.  The inspector general released his report on Tuesday.

I do not need to bother you with much further detail about the matter because it is all over the news, it is clear the issue is not going away, and new information will likely be discovered.  The House Ways and Means Committee is having a hearing this Friday and the House Committee on Oversight and Investigations is planning a hearing next Wednesday.  Senators Max Baucus (D-MT), Carl Levin (D-Mich), and John McCain (R-Ariz.) have called for hearings as well.  But what you may have missed in all the kerfuffle is an editorial in the Wall Street Journal by James Bovard, a Libertarian author that focuses on waste, abuse, and corruption in government.  He details how these recent actions by the IRS are not the first time the agency has conducted highly questionable and political witch-hunts on behalf of a president and his administration.  It is worth the read.

Bovard discusses how President Franklin Roosevelt used the agency to go after newspaper publishers, such as William Randolph Hearst, who opposed the New Deal or to intimidate his political rivals.

It is shocking to read Bovard’s tale of how President John Kennedy at a press conference let it be known that he expected the IRS to “be vigilant in policing the tax-exempt status of questionable (read: conservative) organizations.”  Days later the “Ideological Organizations Audit Project” was created that hounded several conservative groups.  His administration also used the agency to go after steel companies so that they would support “voluntary” price controls.  If they did not, their reward was an audit.

And who can forget President Nixon’s enemy list and how his administration went after organizations and individuals that spoke out against his policies?

Bovard points out that for several years following Nixon, public outage at the IRS was limited to their usual abuse of individual innocent taxpayers, until President Clinton came along.  First reported in a Wall Street Journal column, the Clinton administration and the Democratic National Committee produced a report “Communication Stream of Conspiracy Commerce” that went after magazines, think-tanks, and other groups and individuals that were critical of President Clinton.  In the years that followed, many groups mentioned in the report were audited by the IRS, as well as several high-profile individuals.

All of this injustice should remind American citizens why our founding fathers wanted a small, federal government and for most of the power to be relegated to the states and to the individual.  It is precisely this type of abuse of power they wanted to avoid.

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On Tuesday, May 14, 2013, the House Oversight and Government Affairs Subcommittee on Government Operations held a hearing on “Data Centers and Cloud Computing:  Is the Government Optimizing New Information Technologies to Save Taxpayer Dollars?”

Citizens Against Government Waste’s (CAGW) most recent cloud computing report, the 2012 Federal Cloud Review discussed the potential for savings in federal information technology (IT) through greater adoption of cloud computing.  As the federal government shifts its operations towards increased use of cloud computing tools, there will be less need for it to operate the large number of federal data centers it currently owns as part of its IT portfolio.

In the past 15 years, the federal government’s growing need for IT led to a large increase in the number of federal agency data centers.  According to testimony provided by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), there were 432 federal data centers in 1998.  By 2009, that number had risen to more than 1,100 operating at a significant cost to the federal government in hardware, software, maintenance, real estate and energy use.

In 2010, as part of the administration’s 25 Point Implementation Plan to Reform Federal Information Technology Management, the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative (FDCCI) was instituted to reduce the number of data centers across the country.  At the May 13 hearing, GAO testified that under FDCCI, the federal government has made some progress towards closing 40 percent, or 1,253 of its 3,133 total federal data centers operating across 24 participating agencies.  This statement was reiterated by the U.S. Department of Interior’s Chief Information Officer Bernard Mazer, who indicated that as of May 10, 2013, agencies have closed 484 data centers with plans to close 855 by the end of fiscal year 2013.  Mr. Mazer highlighted the use of cloud-based technologies by agencies to accelerate data center consolidation efforts.

However, GAO cited issues with the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) lack of adequate tracking and reporting on performance measurements, including cost savings, which limit the government’s ability to oversee agency progress toward key goals and objectives.  In March 2013, OMB issued a memorandum shifting integration of the FDCCI to the PortfolioStat initiative which conducts an annual review of federal IT investments.  According to Mr. Mazer, this movement is expected to strengthen the focus on tracking cost savings from the data center consolidation.

According to testimony provided by Steve O’Keeffe of MeriTalk, more than 56 percent of federal IT professionals surveyed graded their agency’s consolidation efforts at “C” or below, and only half believe their agency is on target to close 1,200 data centers by 2015.  Among the challenges cited by the May 13, 2013 MeriTalk report were overcoming mission owner objections (45 percent), finding the budget to consolidate (48 percent), shutting down or consolidating applications (33 percent), security issues (18 percent), and completing data center inventories (15 percent).

CAGW President Tom Schatz provided the committee with a statement for the hearing record, in which he pointed out that, “…a tight rein must be kept on the data reporting of the status of federal IT projects, including the data center consolidation effort through both the IT Dashboard and the PortfolioStat.  Taxpayers should continue to keep a watchful eye on federal IT investments, particularly cloud computing and data center consolidation efforts.”

The use of new technology tools to improve IT management provide opportunities for the federal government to save taxpayer dollars while increasing efficiency.  However, without proper metrics to evaluate agency progress and cost benefits as the federal government moves forward with cloud computing adoption and data center consolidation, it is difficult to discern the actual savings accrued.

Filed under: Big Government, Cloud Computing, Technology, Transparency | No Comments »

“The farmers love this bill,

The farmers love this bill,

High, HIGH, the dairies go,

The farmers love this bill!”

While it’s a tortured version of the original, the verse scribbled above represents a more fitting rendition of the classic nursery rhyme these days, given ongoing congressional action.  Today, the Senate will markup its version (S. 10) of this year’s farm bill, the Agriculture Reform, Food and Jobs Act of 2013.  The House of Representatives is expected to follow suit tomorrow.

Based on last year’s failed farm bill, the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste (CCAGW), along with ten other watch-dog groups, published the “Terrible Twelve,” an indictment of the usual suspects likely to be found corrupting any attempt to develop a more rational, market-oriented agricultural policy.  Following the preamble, which is re-printed here, we have listed twelve bad seeds that deserve to be rooted out of this year’s farm bills.

From “Farm Policy: the ‘Terrible Twelve’ (That actually relate to farming):”

“Washington’s Farm Policy is a nearly trillion dollar tangle of agriculture subsidies, welfare payments and environmental patronage.  There is tremendous need for reform. Current subsidy programs are rooted in the 1930s, when prices for crops and livestock bottomed out and farm families were desperate
for income.  Agriculture today could not be more different.  Farmers are pulling in record-high levels of income and carrying record-low levels of debt.  Technology has eliminated many of the risks that once plagued farming, and the profitability of crops that go without subsidies demonstrates independent agriculture is viable in the 21st Century.  There is no way to justify continuing to give tens of billions of dollars to the farm industry.”

The dozen agricultural “bad actors,” along with the organizations that can provide additional information for each, are listed here.

1. Direct Payments. Taxpayers are lavishing billions of dollars on successful farm enterprises whether or not the farm is actually growing the crops for which they are receiving the subsidies or growing any crop at all. Contact: Diane Katz diane.katz@heritage.org and Fran Smith fbsmith@cei.org.

2. Federal Crop Insurance. In 2012 taxpayers spent more than $14 billion subsidizing agriculture businesses buying crop insurance (and thus subsidizing insurance companies) for everything from almonds to oysters. Contact: Andrew Moylan amoylan@rstreet.org and Josh Sewell josh@taxpayer.net.

3. Shallow Loss Programs. A new open-ended income program will put taxpayers on the hook for guaranteeing record prices. This shallow loss coverage would cost taxpayers billions of dollars and potentially violate World Trade Organization rules. Contact: Josh Sewell Josh@taxpayer.net and Andrew Moylan amoylan@rstreet.org.

4. USDA Trade Promotion Programs. Taxpayers spend some $200 million annually to support advertising campaigns that benefit large corporate enterprises and agricultural special interests. Contact: Leslie Paige lpaige@cagw.org.

5. Sugar Program. A small number of sugar producers receive enormous benefits, while the costs are spread across the U.S. economy, harming consumers, taxpayers, and the sweetener-using industries. Contact: Fran Smith fbsmith@cei.org.

6. Dairy Market Stabilization Plan (DMSP). The DMSP would impose government controls and regulations on the nation’s milk supply, penalize farmers for exceeding government milk production “quotas,” artificially inflate the price of dairy products for families and drive the cost of federal food programs higher. Contact: Leslie Paige lpaige@cagw.org.

7. Target Prices. Government-set price targets—about 40% higher than the previous farm bill and in many cases higher than record levels seen between 2005 and 2010—would expose taxpayers to billions in payments if crop prices dip slightly. Contact: Josh Sewell josh@taxpayer.net.

8. Rural Broadband. The Rural Utilities Service Broadband Loan Program is a classic example of waste and market distortion. In addition to the cost, in many areas, the practice of guaranteeing loans serves to undercut existing private-sector investment. Contact: David Williams davidwilliams@protectingtaxpayers.org and James Valvo jvalvo@afphq.org.

9. Mandatory Assessments. Mandatory assessments on farmers to promote commodities cost consumers and skirt constitutional provisions that only Congress has the power to tax. The program also violates basic principles of free speech, forcing some producers to pay to communicate messages against their will. Contact: Diane Katz Diane.Katz@heritage.org.

10. Cotton Program. Federal subsidies for domestic cotton are so high, they violate international trade rules. To keep Brazil from enacting retaliatory tariffs which would hurt American consumers, taxpayers send a $147.3 million check to the Brazilian Cotton Institute every year. Contact: James Valvo jvalvo@afphq.org.

11. Ethanol. The Feedstock Flexibility Program is the definition of cronyism. With taxpayer dollars, the federal government buys up subsidized surplus sugar and sells it at a loss to ethanol makers. Contact: Fran Smith fbsmith@cei.org.

12. Biomass. Since 2008, the Biomass Crop Assistance Program (BCAP) has proven to be a failure. Even though this wasteful, market-distorting program is replete with loopholes and is not currently funded, it would be revived by the draft farm bill.  Contact:  Josh Sewell josh@taxpayer.net.

The bottom line is a fairly straightforward one.  At a time when all Americans, not just farmers, are experiencing financial hardships in a sluggish economy, taxpayers and consumers simply cannot afford to prop up a single industry – not even farmers, who (on average) are actually faring better than non-farm families.

Filed under: Agriculture, Big Government, Broadband, Budget, Congress, Entitlements, Farm Bill, Pork, Reform, Waste | No Comments »

Although some progress was made last year toward passing a new, five-year Farm Bill, taxpayers should for once be thankful that lawmakers were unable to do their jobs, as the legislation left many programs largely unreformed and opened the door for additional wasteful spending.  This week, both the House and Senate Agriculture Committees are scheduled to mark up draft versions of the Farm Bill.  Instead of simply tinkering around the edges of the bills that were introduced during the last Congress, lawmakers should seize the opportunity to “go big” in finding savings for the Farm Bill.

On June 21, 2012, the Senate voted 64-35 in favor of S. 3240, the Agriculture Reform, Food, and Jobs Act of 2012.  S. 3240 would have some eliminated profligate programs, such as the Average Crop Revenue Election program, direct payments, and counter-cyclical payments.  However, the bill did not do nearly enough. Although the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) originally projected that S. 3240 would cut the deficit by $23.1 billion over a 10-year period, CBO re-estimated the savings on March 1, 2013 and reduced the amount by 43 percent to $13.1 billion.

The House version of the Farm Bill in the 112^th Congress, H.R. 6083, would have reduced spending by $35.1 billion over 10 years.  The bill included many of the same changes in farm programs proposed in the Senate bill.  The additional savings in the House bill were largely achieved through revisions in the nutrition title, affecting program eligibility for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps, which accounts for more than 70 percent of the overall Farm Bill.

The House and Senate recently released drafts of their proposed Farm Bills, and the initial picture for taxpayers is not pretty.  Using the dairy portion of the bill as an example, both bills include proposals to replace the current dairy program (already a wasteful arranged of subsidies that artificially inflate prices for consumers) with the onerous Dairy Market Stabilization Program (DMSP).   CCAGW, along with many other free-market organizations, recently released a letter opposing the DMSP, which read in part:

The Farm Bill proposes to replace milk price supports with the DMSP, a program that will result in more frequent and more intrusive government manipulation of milk prices and markets.  Instead of being triggered only occasionally, the DMSP will be in effect whenever dairy farmer profit margins decline, up to 40 percent of the time according to one study.    Like price supports, the DMSP would manage both supply and demand for milk in order to keep prices artificially high.  Consumers will pay even more for dairy products, government funds will be wasted on dairy purchases, and dairy industry and job growth will be stunted.  Taxpayers and consumers can visit YourMilkMoney.org for more information on the issue.

After last year’s failed effort to reform America’s outdated agriculture policies, the 2013 Farm Bill must not include the same mistaken provisions.  At a time when all Americans, not just farmers, are experiencing financial hardships in a sluggish economy, taxpayers simply cannot afford to prop up a single industry.

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All of the mid-Atlantic area is awaiting the arrival of the cicadas.  “What are they?” you may be asking.  If you are “lucky” enough to live along the Route 95 corridor from North Carolina to New Jersey, you may already know what they are but for the rest of our dear readers they are simply really annoying insects.

Every 17 years, millions of cicadas crawl out of the earth and take over neighborhoods.  There are different broods of cicadas that go through a 17-year life cycle.  The brood that is popping out this year is Brood II.  Back in 2004, there was an even bigger one, called Brood X.

They are really big bugs, over an inch long.  They have wide bodies, big red eyes, and are extremely noisy for hours on end as they search for what they want and that is to find another cicada so they can make more cicadas.  They can be scary as thousands of them swarm all over the place, often landing on humans or on the ground where they get squished by cars or perhaps your foot.  And talk about the waste they make, they also leave behind their exoskeleton, sort of a calling card to as if to simply let you know they were there.  For food, they suck on the life-giving sap that flows through trees and other deciduous plants.

Hmmmm, does this sound like anything else you know?

How about Washington, D.C. and the thousands of politicians, special interests, and bureaucrats that swarm around and want part of your life-giving sap – your money so they can grow more government programs?  But unlike the 17-year cicadas, Washington never disappears.  The DC Brood just keeps getting bigger and bigger, demanding more money from the taxpayers.

The good thing about cicadas is they disappear and do not reappear for several years.  The cicadas lay their eggs on tree stems; the eggs hatch and the young nymphs fall to the ground.  From there, the nymphs using their strong front legs, bury themselves deep into the earth.  For the next 17 years they will feed on the life-giving juice found in the roots of plants to…

Oh wait, maybe they are more like Washington after all.

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Americans need to take heed to the shenanigans that the Obama Administration has undertaken in response to the sequester, which began March 1.  Its action in the recent air traffic control episode to slow down air travel demonstrates arrogance and indifference toward the American people.  In response, Congress had to pass legislation to halt the Department of Transportation (DOT) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) from furloughing air traffic controllers.  The law gives the authority to the DOT secretary to move as much as $253 million funds within the agency to stop air traffic control furloughs.  The money will come from airport improvement funds.

However, several lawmakers and policy wonks said the law was only necessary to stop an impetuous administration from punishing travelers because it wanted to continue its narrative that any cut to the federal government could only be made with severe pain.  The Wall Street Journal pointed out that the “FAA’s all-hands furloughs managed to convert a less than 4% FAA budget cut into a 10% air traffic control cut that would delay 40% of flights.  The 6,700 flights that the FAA threatened to force off schedule every day is twice as many delays as the single worst travel day of 2012.”

Representative Bill Shuster (R-PA), chairman of the House of Representatives Transportation Committee said, “there are some in the Obama administration who thought inflicting pain on the public would give the president more leverage to avoid making necessary spending cuts and to impose more tax hikes on the American people.”

The government must and can cut back on its spending.  It should be noted that spending on the FAA for 2013 was budgeted at $16 billion.  Yet somehow, in 2008, when the FAA had a budget of $14.8 billion, almost $1.2 billion less, air traffic controllers managed to stay on the job every day.

Of course, there have been plenty of instances when the government was facing a complete shutdown, not just a reduction in funding, and air traffic controllers stayed on the job.  This usually can happen when Congress has not reached an agreement on the appropriations (spending) bills in time for the new fiscal year, which begins October 1.  But in those instances, “essential personal,” which are determined by agency heads, would be allowed to work.  In April 2011, when a temporary spending bill was due to expire, there were discussions about who would be allowed to stay on the job and who would be temporarily furloughed.  At that time, the Obama Administration said that those employees necessary to protect life and property would continue working.  It included the military, law enforcement such as the FBI or the Border Patrol, and the air traffic controllers.

Perhaps Congress should consider going even further to avoid a future situation like this.  Many countries have privatized their air traffic controllers without any problems and Citizens Against Government Waste has long supported such a move here in the U.S.  Much of what the traveling public unnecessarily experienced two weeks ago could have been avoided with a private air traffic control force in place.

Why did the Obama Administration yank the public’s chain on air travel?  Because it could.  It wanted to show its displeasure with sequestration budget cuts, it wanted to make a political point, and it wanted it to hurt. 

Unfortunately, acts like this may not end here.  Instead of government control being reduced, it is expanding.  The administration, with allies in Congress, is doing what it can to have the government run even more aspects of our lives.  Examples:

• We have seen a huge increase in people collecting disability checks, some 5.4 million since President Obama was sworn in. 
• Food stamps are now being utilized by 15% of American families.
• The entire guaranteed student loan program for college is being run by the Department of Education.
• Picking winners and losers in the energy sector, the government provided billions of taxpayer-funded federal grants to “green energy” companies.  Unfortunately, this lead to billions being lost to bad management and bankruptcy.
• And of course there is Obamacare, the crème de la crème where the federal government will now control the healthcare of every American citizen.

The federal government is immersing itself more and more into our daily lives and more people and businesses are relying on Washington for their every need.

There will be another budget crunch that will come along and require a necessary reduction in spending because our leviathan government is deeply in debt. When that happens, what strings will be pulled to inflict pain on American citizens to protest those cuts?  The only way to reverse such control is to reduce the size of government.

Filed under: Big Government, Budget, Debt, Sequestration | No Comments »