Making America Great and Donald Trump

America is great when the American People are free to exercise their broad and sovereign rights to life, liberty, property, self-ownership, and the pursuit of their own happiness.  There is no greater value than that of enjoying these liberties.  Donald Trump is a materialist who does not seem to have any concept of this.

I do not like Donald Trump.  I do not like how he has practiced business.  He has been a crowing crony capitalist who has used subsidies and eminent domain extensively in his business dealings.  Several of his businesses went bankrupt, though this happened just after he sold them to suckers.  His business ethics has been immoral.  His success has substantially come at the expense of others, not often enough in the form of mutually beneficial trades and too often at the expense of unwilling taxpayers.  The state of New Jersey, both under Corzine and Christie, has poured subsidy monies into the gambling industry in Atlantic City, to Trump's great benefit.  That industry is failing badly and at the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars of New Jersey taxpayers.  I do not like the meanness in Donald Trump.  Decent people do not make fun of other people's afflictions.  Now, I am not politically correct, but if you do not like how someone else looks, keep it to yourself.  A man who would be President ought to be a gentleman and one can easily be a gentleman while telling the truth about the many issues that government must deal with and about the tasks it should leave to the private sector.

Trump has been in favor of a universal, government-provided health care system.  That idea is a huge assertion of collective ownership of every individual by the state.  He says he will repeal ObamaCare, but there is no mention of this on his website.

His website says he is interested in the following reforms and provides some information on what he plans to do:

• U.S. - China Trade Reform
• Veterans Administration Reforms
• Tax Reform
• Second Amendment Rights
• Immigration Reform

On U.S. - China trade reforms, what is written is not as bad as the overt trade protectionism Trump advocates on the campaign trail, but it also fails to note that the primary reason the opening of new trade markets around the world has not led to the growth of the American economy is because the American government does not allow American businesses to be competitive.  He notes the importance of corporate tax reductions, but only after implying that bad trade negotiations caused job loses in America.  The job losses in America are due to excessive taxes, paperwork, and regulations that American businesses are hobbled with, thanks to Washington.  Business expenses are very high in America compared to many other countries in the world.  To compete, we need to be free to take full advantage of our design and innovation capabilities, while shedding governmental burdens that provide no or insufficient benefits.  We should be taking advantage of our abundance of inexpensive and reliable energy, not trying to make it more expensive as Obama has done.  We should be taking advantage of our great banking and financial companies, not smothering most of them in disabling requirements under Dodd-Frank so-called reform.  We should not be raising the cost of business with governmental dictates of minimum wages, paid leave benefits, the highest corporate and personal taxes in most of the developed nations, ObamaCare, NLRB rulings favoring forced unionization, and EPA regulations based on exaggerated claims of mercury or catastrophic man-made global warming. 

The Veterans Administration certainly needs reform.  Trump would make a key correction by allowing veterans more treatment in non-Veterans Administration hospitals and doctor offices.  He does not actually note that the many ills of the VA are endemic in government operations and would be propagated to other government attempts to control medical care.

Tax Reform is horribly overdue and the Trump plan is a pretty good one, with the exception that he would exempt single people from paying any income tax if they make less than $25,000 a year and married couples if they make $50,000 or less.  This gives them no skin in the cost of government and I do not think this is a good idea.  They should pay something.  It seemed he was going to outlaw corporation inversions overseas, but upon further reading he is really saying he will make them unnecessary.  He will continue to tax corporation earnings abroad, which I think is bad, but he will give them the credit to paying taxes abroad, so the U.S. tax of 15% will actually only be paid as the difference of the foreign tax and the US 15% should the foreign tax be less than 15%.  That is not bad at all.  His tax reform would allow a great leap of growth in the American economy.

On the Second Amendment:

The Second Amendment guarantees a fundamental right that belongs to all law-abiding Americans. The Constitution doesn’t create that right – it ensures that the government can’t take it away. Our Founding Fathers knew, and our Supreme Court has upheld, that the Second Amendment’s purpose is to guarantee our right to defend ourselves and our families. This is about self-defense, plain and simple.

It’s been said that the Second Amendment is America’s first freedom. That’s because the Right to Keep and Bear Arms protects all our other rights. We are the only country in the world that has a Second Amendment. Protecting that freedom is imperative.

That is excellent and is the only place I know of in which Trump has spoken of individual rights and the need to maintain constitutional law.

On Immigration Reform, he is apparently not going to send the Army into Mexico to make them pay for the wall at the southern border.

Mexico must pay for the wall and, until they do, the United States will, among other things: impound all remittance payments derived from illegal wages; increase fees on all temporary visas issued to Mexican CEOs and diplomats (and if necessary cancel them); increase fees on all border crossing cards – of which we issue about 1 million to Mexican nationals each year (a major source of visa overstays); increase fees on all NAFTA worker visas from Mexico (another major source of overstays); and increase fees at ports of entry to the United States from Mexico [Tariffs and foreign aid cuts are also options].  We will not be taken advantage of anymore.  

But he is going to try to control immigrants seeking jobs that he claims Americans need.  Companies will have less say in who they hire under his plan. Fewer highly skilled foreign workers will be allowed to immigrate.  This is a short-sighted example of populism.

There are too many other issues he has not given a plan to treat.  I do not have great certitude in his keeping his word either, especially given his history of many changes of mind.  He comes out of a primarily Democrat Socialist New York/New Jersey background and he played those Democrat politicians to the hilt.  Perhaps he was just using them.  He does pride himself as a manipulator.  Is he also manipulating those who vote for him?  Will he turn on those who vote for him now as he has turned on the Democrat Socialists he supported a short while ago, perhaps because they were then useful to his businesses?  Perhaps his voters now are only a useful means for him acquiring great power?  Donald Trump is a vapor.  He has no consistency.  He has no substance that one can perceive in his speeches.  Will his website policy statements also become vapor when he has the power he wants?

But these few plans that are given some substance are better than I had expected.  This is good, because it is looking more and more as though this man may be the next President of the United States of America.  I still have concerns that his temperament is much more suited to that of a dictator than to the presidency of a constitutionally limited government in the U.S.A.  I also suspect that these policy positions are written by advisers who understand much more than Trump does and they may be shoved aside once he is in power. After all, he thinks he is better than anyone else, just as Obama does.  We can expect much more arrogance in the extensive use of power should Trump become President.  And how many months will it take for him as President to subject each and every one of us to is childish name-calling?

Is New York State Really a Great Job Creator?

New York state government is spending its taxpayer's money advertising 10 areas near state universities into which a new company or an out-of-state company can move and pay no taxes for 10 years, provided the government likes your business and is given significant controls over your business.  Mostly New York's Democrat Socialist Party controlled government likes certain high technology companies, such as biotechnology companies.

They do not like the vast majority of businesses, at least not enough to give them any tax breaks.  Indeed, most businesses have to be taxed heavily so that the few anointed companies can be lured into the high tax trap of New York and so such advertising can be carried out in Maryland and Oklahoma and many another state.  Even more expensive is the huge welfare state apparatus of New York state.  The only way to fund that redistribution of income is to tax both businesses and better paid persons heavily.

Among the claims in the ad, New York state government claims it has created 400,000 jobs.  They neglect to say over what time period and whether these are net jobs or these are all new jobs with any lost jobs ignored.  The high tax and heavily regulated state of New York is undoubtedly very good at killing jobs, so it is perilous to ignore the jobs destroyed.  According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the non-farm seasonally adjusted establishment job tally of private sector jobs increased in New York state from March 2013 to March 2014 by 103,500.  So maybe the 400,000 jobs were net jobs since the depth of the never-ending Great Socialist Recession.  They were not recently created net jobs.  I have ignored any added government jobs since such jobs would only create greater burdens for any private sector company moving to New York.

New York claimed that the 400,000 jobs were the second largest number of jobs created in any state in the US.  In 2010, New York state was the third most populous state, so just to stay even on jobs, it would likely have to produce at least the third most jobs.  Actually, New York state has a population growth estimated from 1 April 2010 to 1 July 2013 of 1.4%, which lags the population growth of 2.4% of the nation as a whole.  What is more, a larger fraction of its population is over 65 years old and a smaller fraction is under 18 years old.  There seems to be no rush of people into New York state owing to good jobs, despite the huge sums of bailout money that the federal government has dumped into New York City and its financial institutions.  That bailout in the form of quantitative easing continues to this day.

Let us examine the growth in the number of non-farm private sector jobs relative to the other states:

There were 26 states in which a higher percentage private sector job increase occurred compared to the 1.45% increase in New York.  This is not such a remarkable achievement by New York as it is represented to be in its ubiquitous ad.  The New New York is not so very different.  It is North Dakota that is the jobs creation giant, albeit in percentage terms only.  Six states have had private sector job growth rates more than twice that of New York state.  In fact, we can see that in this recent period, the claim that New York created the second most jobs in number is clearly wrong.  The population of the state of Texas is greater than that of New York and its job increase of 2.99% clearly means it added many more jobs than did New York.  The population of Florida is about the same as that of New York, so its job increase of 3.49% also means more jobs were created in Florida than in New York.  So, in this time period, at least two states added more jobs than New York did.

The New York state government is running an ad which is very misleading.  There may be some convoluted manner in which it is not a literal lie, but it is surely a serious attempt to mislead the People.

The employment increases in the table above allow us to make a few interesting comments about some other states and the possible presidential prospects for their governors.  Note that Gov. Rick Perry's state of Texas is still tearing up the racetrack in creating jobs with a 2.99% increase between March 2013 and March 2014.  On the other hand, Gov. Chris Christy of New Jersey heads a state government where the private sector job increase is essentially zero at 0.07%, the next to the worst record of any state.  Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin has a state with a 1.24% increase, a 32nd ranking counting DC, but at least greater than the population growth in that time.  Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana has a state that is not doing great in the business of job creation either at 1.08% increase and a rank of 35.  On the Democrat Socialist Party side, Gov. Martin O'Malley of Maryland earns his moniker of O'Folley with 40 straight tax increases, a job increase of only 0.52%, and a ranking of 45.  Maryland's population since April 2010 is estimated to have grown by 0.90% a year, so Maryland is not keeping up with the population growth with its meager 0.52% increase in jobs.  I marvel at the ability of some governors to seek higher office when they have not demonstrated that their states can create private sector jobs.

The People should be paying attention to this.  I will acknowledge that some of these states were basket cases and it will take several good governors to allow private industry to turn the states around.  Their state governments have bollixed up the state economies for a very long time in many cases.  The damage done can take a long time to correct and the healing process can take time.  Yet, when good government policies are established, some great results often occur quickly.  The engine of growth is in the private sector, but governments have to stop stuffing the gas tank with sand and sugar.

Obama Did Not Know NSA Spied on Leaders of Other Nations

The pattern continues: Obama was ignorant of the NSA surveillance of telecommunications of the leaders of many nations, including our allies, until recently.  See the 28 October 2013 issue of the Wall Street Journal.  According to Kathleen Sebelius, he also did not know about the massive problems in the roll-out of ObamaCare until those problems were public knowledge.

So, he was ignorant of the management of his signature achievement.  He was ignorant of a keystone of his actual constitutional job to act as Commander-in-Chief to secure our national defense and security.  He is completely detached from any effort to control federal spending and the national debt.  He has no knowledge of what happened in Benghazi and no knowledge of his Justice Department sending thousands of weapons into Mexico.  He believes a trimmed budget means he should increase government spending in such a manner as to cause as many people pain as possible by erecting barriers around open-air public facilities.

Meanwhile, the NSA reports it has so many surveillance programs that it could not brief Obama on them all.  That may be so.  It should not be so.  What is more, that does not mean that the NSA should be hiding a program to spy on Angela Merkel and other leaders from Obama.  But then again, it is likely that Obama told them to keep him ignorant so he would have plausible deniability!

What we have is a con man pretending to be President who does not meet the constitutional requirement to be President, does not like the Constitution he is sworn to protect, chooses to be ignorant about key national defense and security issues, and nationalizes huge segments of the private sector and is disconnected from the management thereafter of all the resulting impacts upon our lives, including factors essential to our literal life and death.

To realize that some people actually believe Obama cares about people is to wonder about their sanity.  There never was a President who took on so many responsibilities and then so greatly and consistently neglected them.  It takes too much effort to really care.  It is more fun to be a con man.

If Obama Gets All of the Funding He Wants, He Will Listen

I heard the tail end of Obama's speech today.  As usual, I was nauseated by the constant stream of lies, misrepresentations, and the utter disdain for the intelligence of the American citizen.

He posed as a reasonable man by saying that he was open to negotiations with the Republican House as long as he got everything he wanted up front.  Yes, then he would sit down with them and listen to their complaints.  Well, if the Republicans prove stupid enough to give him all the funding he wants, they will find that he will spend a token few minutes listening to their complaints about ObamaCare and some of his other wild and unfunded spending and he will do nothing to fix the huge problems the Republicans have concerns about.  The Republicans will have lost all leverage and will become powerless.

A legitimate government is one of very limited power, as is ours when it abides by the enumerated powers of the Constitution.  Government has not done so in 100 years under the authoritarian influence of the self-proclaimed Progressives.  Our government was designed to distribute power between the two houses of the Congress, the President, and the Federal Courts.  It was purposely designed so that it would be difficult to spend money and enact laws unless there was overwhelming support for those laws and expenditures.  The Progressives have worked hard and consistently to decrease the distribution of power and centralize it in the hands of the President as much as possible.  This is because when they hold the presidency, they can shove through large chunks of their socialist agenda and anchor them in place.

These anchored programs are very hard to repeal as we are finding with the very unpopular and floundering ObamaCare.  The funding for almost all socialist transfer programs is even termed mandatory.  Congress no longer even has effective control over the 80% of government expenditures termed mandatory.  We have a government which finds it much too easy to spend money and to pass mandates.  Obama objects mightily to the Republican House attempt to thwart his will, though the House was explicitly given the lead in funding and taxing legislation by the Constitution.  Good government is only possible if the agenda to grow government and to displace the private sector is thwarted frequently and with principled determination.

Seth Mandel at Commentary made some very good observations on Obama's speech and answers in the Q & A today.

Obama - "A is not A."

The President is the executive in our Federal Government whose job is to Constitutionally execute the laws Constitutionally passed by Congress. Great care was taken in formulating the powers of the office, because the Framers of the Constitution were acutely aware that tyrants had arisen throughout history to take over governments. They feared tyrants about as much as they did anarchy. They were also very perceptive in understanding that the passions of men caused democracies to frequently become tyrannical or turn to or fall to tyrants. They therefore feared democracy and took great pains to set up a Constitutionally-limited Republic which would resist both tyrants and fickle, fragile democratic fads and fancies.

Previously, the greatest threats to the rights of the individual which the Constitution was constructed to preserve and defend, were the presidencies of Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Each of these men was at once a self-proclaimed pragmatist and an admirer of socialism. On the one hand, their viewpoint was commonly guided by a socialist's outlook and view of history, while on the other hand, they frequently eschewed ideas and ideology in favor of the idea that they could make things work, without having to clearly state the criteria for when things worked and without principles to guide them to the actions that were likely to work.

Roosevelt, with his combination of uncritically analyzed socialist preferences and lack of principles, madly experimented with massive transfers of manpower and wealth from the private sector to government and from the able and responsible in the private sector to the unable and the irresponsible wherever they were to be found. In the process, he created huge uncertainty. He also raised tax rates to very high levels for those able enough to maintain good incomes, thereby causing many of them to work less hard to create jobs. He raised wages for some (usually union workers) so high with mandates, that many others could not be employed at all. His socialist viewpoint and mad pursuit of unprincipled experimentation, deepened and greatly lengthened the Great Depression.

Yesterday, Barack Hussein Obama took the oath of office for the presidency, by swearing to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." This was a blatant lie. He is on record with his belief that the Constitution is highly defective because it does not require or even allow the redistribution of wealth and income which he believes is essential to "social justice." The only justice that actually exists is individual justice, just as the only human rights that exist are individual rights. Obama's so-called "positive rights", which require some men to serve others. Positive rights and his idea of social justice, are the means to allow and enable the tyranny of a socialist leader at the expense of the individual citizen. To gain support for a tyrannical socialist rule through his creation of positive rights and social justice, he calls upon us to be selfless. He calls upon us to forget the individual nature of our minds, bodies, and souls. He calls upon us to forget our individual values and life goals. When we have given up our selfish claim to our minds, bodies, souls, values, and goals, we become putty in the hands of the tyrant. This is especially the case if he has a mesmerizing voice, which appeals to the mindless passions of many.

We are asked to give the new President, if a man bent upon the destruction of the Constitution can be called the President, a chance to succeed. This sounds like a call to fairness. It is not really. It is a call to allow him to get fully up to speed in his efforts to trample the rights of the individual.

We are generally told that we should respect others and often even to respect their values, no matter what their character may be. Frankly, this makes the concept of respect meaningless. Respect only exists as a recognition of good character. What we should do is to give every individual in civilized society the benefit of some provisional respect while we are in the process of evaluating their character. When their character is sufficiently assessed, then the respect may become more solid or it may have to be replaced by disgust and disdain. We are obliged to weigh a person's character, not to approve of it no matter what.

I have had months to weigh the character of B.O. and it is fundamentally lacking in gravitas. The gravitas suggested by his voice is a fraud. This man consistently leads the attack on the rights of the individual. The battle for the preservation and defense of the rights of the individual is now and has always been the overriding moral issue of anyone's time. Because it is specifically the duty of the President of the United States to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, which is the primary instrument for preserving, protecting, and defending the rights of the individual, it is crucial to evaluate the character of each President before he might become President. Obama is clearly committed to socialism and to tyranny. Their pursuit nullifies his claim to be President or the man who sees that government operates Constitutionally. He claims to be A, but he does not have the nature of A. His character is such that he belongs in the lowest levels of hell. That is my studied evaluation of this man.

It is most unfortunate that the first African-American elected President is a man of such abominable character. The man who one wishes might symbolize the rise of African-Americans from slavery to acknowledged respectability, is the would-be tyrant our Constitution was supposed to protect us from. This is a man who would enslave every American, not a man who will celebrate the freedom of each and every individual. This is a man who celebrates the incompetent, the irresponsible, and the corner-cutter at the expense of men of good character who are competent, responsible, and hardworking. This man weighs everyone's character and then most enslaves those he finds to have the better character. Good character becomes a fault in the eyes of Obama's government.

Those of us who love the rights of the individual have no obligation to give this would-be tyrant a chance to succeed as President. When he pursues a socialist goal, he is wrong and he should be immediately stopped. He should be given no grace period. This is the fight of our lives. If and when he should do something right, we will recognize that. Given his grotesque character, we cannot expect that he will do much right. It is a tragedy whenever an American President does not understand his job and is not committed to the values recognized by our Constitution. They are all failures as President. It is unfortunate that we can already tell that our first African-American President will be a failure, barring a miracle of self-resurrection on Obama's part. Such a self-resurrection would ironically partially justify his Messiah image, though it is clear that those who think of him now as the Messiah would be disillusioned if he did come to understand the critical nature of the rights of the individual and the virtue of selfishness.

Detecting an Elitist

I have often commented on how elitists often presume to know how to manage your life better than you can. Without your upbringing and childhood experiences, without your body and mind, without knowledge of your dreams and goals, without knowledge of how you specifically make a living or invest for your future, and without your loves and friendships, they are sure they can provide you a better plan for life than you can provide yourself. And best of all, you do not get an option to review their plan for your life and choose to either sign on or walk away from it in disgust. No, their plan is mandated by government and you are forced to submit to it in the name of the Law of the Land!

Some time ago in a comment I made on the Bidinotto Blog, I noted that I would rather spend an evening in discussion with Sarah Palin than with Barack Obama. Well, perhaps that comment planted a seed of thought in Robert Bidinotto, who has made some interesting and useful observations on how elitists gravitate to Obama, while those who respect the fact that others want to and should be allowed to manage their own lives are drawn to Palin. He notes that the very irritating (for me) tendency of elitists to elevate style above substance and principle plays a strong role in their disdain for Sarah. Indeed, in part because of Palin, many so-called libertarians and some conservatives are actually going to vote for Obama! Elitists are not always found amid the socialist spectrum.

This quote is very long, but it is nonetheless less than half of Robert's post of 30 October and I do want people to focus on this astute observation.

Sarah Palin (and Joe the Plumber) have indeed become Rorschach symbols for conservatives and libertarians, but also for the wider culture. Whether one views them favorably and sympathetically -- or whether one despises and repudiates them -- speaks volumes about one's personal self-image and one's sense of place within American society and culture.

What Sarah and Joe symbolically represent and personify are the millions of inhabitants of what intellectual and cultural elites arrogantly dismiss as "Flyover America": the "non-intellectual," pop-cultural American heartland that lies between its two culturally "sophisticated" coasts. They represent plain, simple, unpretentious, hard-working, self-supporting individuals whose concerns focus mostly on the concrete matters of daily living.

By contrast, the elites base their personal self-images on how smart, well-educated, well-connected, and culturally sophisticated they are. Their social "comfort zones" center around associations with others who occupy the same educational levels, cultural classes, and social strata.

This division is not primarily economic: There are plenty of wealthy people in Middle America. But most of those are self-made successes -- people who built small businesses or struggled to support themselves through school. But they still retain an emotional connection to their social and cultural roots: to their old neighborhoods and families, and especially to the values that shaped them as they grew up. By contrast, many of the financially successful among the elites had the privilege of attending the finest schools, and/or came from upper-middle-class families, and/or found some other portal of access to "sophisticated" circles.

Now, observe the pedigrees, educational backgrounds, social circles, cultural preferences, and zip codes of those conservatives and libertarians who are expressing their loathing of Sarah Palin and/or their admiration for Barack Obama. Using the same criteria, contrast them with those who like Sarah and despise Obama.

It is certainly true that "progressive" John McCain has sunk too often to a populist assault against the financially successful. But populism shouldn't be confused with a legitimate sympathy for, or identification with, the millions of working Americans who are being targeted for regulations and financial exploitation by politically connected elites. Just consider, for example, who are the beneficiaries of the massive governmental financial bailouts, and who are being forced to pick up the tab. What right-wing elitists are repudiating as "populism" becomes much more transparent when they attack not McCain, but Sarah Palin or Joe the Plumber -- and especially in the kind of insults they use to demean the latters' intelligence and mock their cultural values and preferences.

I'm generalizing, of course; there are notable exceptions among all these groups; but I think the exceptions prove the rule. And the rule can be summarized by means of a simple question:

Would you rather spend an evening with Sarah Palin or Barack Obama?

That question appears to be a huge, if tacit, factor in the polarization taking place in this election -- a factor competing with any philosophical principle or other calculation among the electorate in deciding whom to support. I certainly believe it explains the dispute on the right between supporting McCain or Obama.

Thank you Robert!

Fred Thompson on the Election

I have just seen this excellent video by Fred Thompson on the Presidential election at the excellent Bidinotto Blog. I am going to post it here also.



I hope you enjoyed this and will send it to your friends also.

Congressional Spending Chaos

Over the last 25 years, it has been hard to reign in the spending of Congress no matter which party controls it. As John McCain pointed out in his speech accepting the nomination of the Republican Party to run for the Presidency, when the Republicans had control of Congress and the Presidency, they lost the trust of the American people by going on a spending binge. From time to time, it is pointed out that if Congress is controlled by one party, then it is better for the purpose of controlling the size of government that the President be of the other party. But, even better, Richard Rahn points out is a divided Congress, since it is Congress that makes the laws and creates new taxes and new agencies. He has written an article called "The Economy and the Congress," which was published in the Washington Times on 4 September and provides interesting data on this issue.

His principal points are:

• The economy grew best when the Democrats controlled the House and the Republicans the Senate in the middle Reagan years and when the Republicans controlled both the House and the Senate in the last six Clinton years.
• The deficit was lowest and a surplus even occurred when the Republicans controlled the Congress under Clinton.
• In the 5 years between 1983 and 2007 when Congress was divided, the economy grew at a 4.1% annual rate, when the Republicans controlled Congress for 11 of those years the growth rate was lower at 3.3%, and when the Democrats controlled Congress for 9 of those years the economy grew still more slowly at a rate of 2.8%.
• When Congress was divided, the deficit decreased as a % of GDP by 4.2%, while it decreased under Democrat control by 3.4%, and only by 1.0% when Congress was controlled by the Republicans.

One of the things McCain promised tonight was that he would veto pork-barrel bills passed by Congress. On the other hand, Obama has promised to hugely expand the service agencies of government and to create many, many new spending programs. Despite the fact that Congress is held in lower esteem than is President Bush, it is likely to remain in the control of the Democrats. So, it will clearly be much better for the country if McCain wins the presidential election and reigns in what would otherwise be an out-of-control Congress.