BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from mullings.com
We need a new way of keeping score when it comes to government spending. The only test is: How much did we spend on a program last year and how much more (or, rarely, less) are we spending this year.
There is no mention of whether the program in question is working well, badly, or not at all. There is no consideration of whether there is a more efficient way to deliver whatever services or goods are involved in the program.
BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON
In the spring of 1981 Office of Management and Budget Director David Stockman sat for weeks at a long table in room H-228 of the Capitol, his beady eyes peering over stacks of thick, black 3-ring binders containing the detail on most every federal program.
Stockman was holding over budget negotiations with his former colleagues in the House of Representatives. His mission was to cut spending, cut taxes, increase defense, and help his President, Ronald Reagan, usher in a new era of smaller, limited government, entrepreneurial innovation, individual freedom, and global prestige.
Piece of cake.
Few if any at the table, maybe with the exception of Jack Kemp, knew they were making history at the time. But they were, in the same way congressional leaders did for Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and Roosevelt’s New Deal and McKinley’s and Teddy Roosevelt’s regimes of political and regulatory reforms.
BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from the feeherytheory.com
Mitch McConnell bowed to reality with his statement on earmarks yesterday. It couldn’t have been easy and it shouldn’t have been.
Earmarks are essential part of our Constitutional process. For any member of Congress (House or Senate) to willingly give power away to the executive branch in such a haphazard way is troubling.