Obama: I will go through the budget line by line

Do you recall when Obama said he would go through the budget line by line and cut wasteful programs?  Do we call this a failed promise?

On the one hand, perhaps he could not keep this promise because his Democrat Senate has never produced the budget they are required by law to produce.  Not one single budget in the entire Obama presidency has ever emerged from the Democrat Senate.

On the other hand, what kind of President cannot show even enough leadership to get the Senate well-controlled by his own party to produce a budget as required by law.  Recall that the President is supposed to execute the laws, which among other things means he should surely be putting unrelenting pressure on the Senate to produce a budget.  Besides, he should be eager to keep his promise to go through that budget line by line to eliminate wasteful spending.  But not this man.  He is more a celebrity than a leader.

You Can Vote Directly to Cut Wasteful and Inappropriate Federal Programs

Eric Cantor, Republican of Virginia and House Minority Whip, has come up with a great idea to allow Americans to directly vote for one of five government funded programs each week to cut and eliminate it.  It is a good way to read a brief synopsis on five programs that should be cut each week.  The program receiving the most votes to be cut will be brought up by Republicans for a vote to defund and cut it in the House of Representatives.  The web page for the votes on the weekly program to cut is called YouCut.  So far, these federal programs have won the popular vote to be cut in previous weeks:

• New Non-Reformed Welfare Program, costs $2.5 billion a year.
  
  The program was recently created to incentivize states to increase their welfare caseloads without requiring able-bodied adults to work, get job training, or otherwise prepare to move off of taxpayer assistance. Reforming the welfare program was one of the great achievements of the mid 1990s, saving taxpayers billions of dollars and ending the cycle of dependency on welfare. This new program, created in 2009 is a backdoor way to undo those reforms.
• Eliminate Federal Employee Pay Raise, saving $2 billion next year and $30 billion over 10 years.  Cut was voted down by Congress by 183 - 227.  As part of his FY 2011 Budget submission President proposed raising federal civilian pay by 1.4% beginning in January of next year. This will be on top of the 2.0% raise federal civilian employees received this past January, the 3.9% raise they received the previous January, and the 3.5% raise they received the January before that. Freezing federal civilian pay at the current level for one year would save approximately $2 billion next year and $30 billion over ten years.  Eric Cantor says non-uniformed federal employees are paid 20% more than private sector workers.  Actually, they are paid a bigger differential than that according to recent studies and receive a benefits package worth about 4 times that of private sector employees.
• Reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
  Savings estimated at $30 billion.  Cut was voted down by Congress 180 -230.
  Since taking over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two government sponsored mortgage-backing companies, taxpayers have injected over $145 billion into the two companies. Yet Congress still has not considered proposals to reform these companies and recoup taxpayer funds. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that absent reform, costs to taxpayer will continue to grow. Taking action to reform these companies now (as opposed to delaying action as some have proposed) by ending their government conservatorship, shrinking their portfolios, establishing minimum capital standards, and bringing transparency to taxpayer exposure could generate savings of up to an estimated $30 billion.

Votes were required on each of these ill-conceived spending programs and despite the desperate deficits of the federal government, none of the spending programs was cut.  The votes were very nearly on party lines with the Republicans voting to cut these shameful and useless costs and the Democrats voting to maintain them.  Each vote is recorded, so you can look up how your Congressman voted.  Be aware that those Democrat Congressmen who pretend to be fiscal conservatives in their home districts have in almost every case voted to maintain the wasteful spending programs.  They occasionally vote in a fiscally conservative way on high profile programs that their constituents may be watching, but whenever they are not watching, which is most of the time, they vote the socialist party spendthrift way.  My mother was just recently telling me that Dan Boren, the only Oklahoma Democrat in Congress, is a good fiscal conservative, yet he voted to maintain the foolish spending on two of the above programs and did not vote on the other at all.

This week, my favorite choice is this:

Sell Excess Federal Property
The Office of Management and Budget estimated in 2007 that the federal government is holding $18 billion in real property that it does not need. Rather than selling this property, however, Federal law usually requires that it first be offered, often at no cost, to other government agencies, to state and local governments, to non-profits, and others. The federal government has conveyed at no cost: a building in Las Vegas that is intended to house the “mob museum,” land in Massachusetts for a private high school where tuition is over $29,000 a year, and a building in Florida that the federal government now leases back at a cost of over $100,000 a year. In addition, because of the red tape associated with selling property, federal agencies often hold onto the property (incurring more maintenance costs) because that is easier than selling it. This proposal would amend federal law to require an expedited process for selling unneeded federal property with 80% of the proceeds used to reduce the deficit. It would set an initial goal of disposing of $18 billion worth of property.  [There is actually much, much more federal property which should be sold than estimated here.  Many a western state is largely owned by the federal government, which greatly reduces the productive use of land.]

Please go to YouCut and vote yourself. The Democrats may prevent the cutting of any of the programs, but they have to go on record as voting to maintain a wasteful program each time. That wasteful program has been designated as particularly deserving of being eliminated by large numbers of Americans in a way that we have never before had an opportunity to do. We are establishing on vote after vote that our Congressmen are not listening to us and we are exposing those who are not and who are fiscally irresponsible week after week.  I hope more and more Americans will participate in this exercise so that the will of the American People is well-established with respect to the dire need to cut government spending.  In the process, we will be able to retain more of our hard-earned income and prevent some government meddling with our lives.

Excessive Recycling

A great deal of taxpayer money is being wasted by many local governments on excessive levels of waste material recycling according to J. Winston Porter, President of the Waste Policy Center.  It turns out that excessive recycling may not only be an unwise use of your personal time, but it can be more environmentally damaging and costly than dumping waste into landfills.

From 1985 to 1989, Dr. Porter was the Assistant Administrator for Solid Waste and Emergency Response at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In this capacity, he served as the national program manager for the Superfund and RCRA (Resource Conservation and Recovery Act) programs.  He set an EPA goal at that time for 25% recycling of all municipal solid waste (MSW).

Porter supports the recycling of about one-third of MSW.  This is about the national rate of recycling now.  The EPA has set a target of 35%.  In the Washington Metro area, several counties are recycling at higher rates.  Montgomery County recycles 44.2% of its MSW, Arlington County recycles 42.8%, and Fairfax County recycles 40% of its trash.

Montgomery County has a formal goal to recycle 50% of MSW and forces every county business to file a recycling report every year with the county.  It spends $18.8 million a year on residential recycling pick-ups alone.  It also runs ads in Spanish on Fox News telling Spanish speakers listening to Fox News in English that it is the law that they must recycle in Montgomery County!  Much more is spent on commercial education and enforcement, recycling center operations, and other programs.  The Montgomery County Recycling Chief, Eileen Kao, does not know what the total cost is.  This is rather reminiscent of the school board not knowing what the public school cost per student is in the county!  Taxpayer money is just too easy to come by for anyone to worry very much about how it is spent.  Recycling in the Democrat suburbs of the area is popular, even if it is carried out beyond rational levels.

Porter notes that landfills are readily available in most of the country and they are now much safer and cleaner.  They are better located, much hazardous waste is now excluded, there are methane gas and surface water controls, and nearby ground water is better monitored.  Liners and leachate collection systems are used in most new landfills.  Much of our trash can now rest peacefully in landfills with no real environmental consequences.

Kenneth Green, an environmental scientist at the American Enterprise Institute, says that recycling aluminum cans and white office paper usually makes sense.  However, recycling much of the remaining trash is neither environmentally nor economically sensible.  For instance, recycling glass, as we must do in Montgomery County, makes no sense.  Ground glass is essentially sand, so it can sit peaceably in landfills.  Recycling this heavy material with movement in trucks and processing for reuse, costs more energy than the use of sand to simply make new glass.  But, local governments that want bragging rights for their high recycling percentages, love recycling glass because it is relatively heavy and the goals are measured by weight!

According to the EPA, in 2008, about 56% of paper was recycled, 7.1% of plastic, 23.1% of glass, and 21.1% of aluminum.  About 33.2% of all waste was recycled.  The bulk of the paper is either corrugated boxes, of which 70% was recycled in 2002, or newspapers, of which 62% was recycled in 2002.  In 2002, only 54% of office paper was recycled and 47% of aluminum.  Interestingly, the white office paper that makes the most sense to recycle was less recycled than corrugated boxes and newsprint.  Another interesting observation is that aluminum does make sense to recycle, but the recycling of aluminum in 2008 was at a 21.1% level, which was less than half what was recycled in 2002 when 47% was recycled!  There is a curious inversion of logic here.  The more sense it makes to recycle a material, the less likely it is to be recycled!  Glass, newsprint, and corrugated boxes are more likely to be recycled than aluminum!  This is likely to be due to a simple fascination with bulk and weight, as opposed to economics.

Many states have set recycling goals at percentages well above rational levels.  Among these are:

At 70%:  Massachusetts, Rhode Island

At 65%:  New Jersey

At 55%:  Maine

At 50%:  California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia

At 45%:  District of Columbia

At 40%:  Arkansas, Maryland, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Texas

One area of good news is that since 1990, the generation of MSW has increased at about the same rate as the population has.  From 1980 to 1990, there was an increase of MSW by 34.9%, while the population grew by only 10.1%!  Thanks in good part to significant weight reductions in the packaging of products, the amount of waste per person has not increased since 1990.  In 1980, a 2-liter PET bottle weighed about 65 grams, but in 2002, it was only 47 grams.  An aluminum can in 1980 weighed 19 grams, but in 2002 it was down to 13 grams.  A glass soda bottle went from 255 grams to 165 grams.  A steel, tin-coated soup can went from 48 to 35 grams.  A half-pint milk carton dropped from 14 to 9 grams from 1980 to 2002.  In most cases these reductions in materials use required improved materials and improved processing of materials.  This is work my laboratory plays a role in with its materials characterization, failure analysis, and quality control services.

Gallup: Half of each dollar spent by government is wasted

The Gallup poll of 15 September asked, "Of every tax dollar that goes to Washington, D.C., how many cents of each dollar would you say is wasted?"  The mean response was $0.50.  Amazingly, these same Americans recently voted for Obama!  Yet, when Americans voted for Ronald Reagan in 1980, Americans believed that only $0.40 of every tax dollar was wasted.

The poll also found that 45% of Americans believe there is too much government regulation of business and industry, while only a wild-eyed 24% believe there is too little.

Stephen Moore, in an article in The Wall Street Journal on 23 September, noted that Obama was the first president since Lyndon B. Johnson who did not even pretend to want to cut taxes.  Moore says that there has been a strong voter backlash against Obama and Bush due to the bailouts, stimulus plans, and multi-trillion dollar deficits.  Saving United Auto Worker Union jobs at a cost of $300,000 each and the funding of many old left-wing programs in the Stimulus Bill was too much.  Moore believes the American People are now "in the mood for a radical shrinking of government in order to reduce debt and waste."  Moore suggests:

• A 15% cut in every federal agency, whose budgets have generally increased by more than 50% this last year
• A freeze on federal pay and benefits increases, since federal compensation is nearly twice as high as comparable private sector jobs
• Furloughs for federal workers
  
• Eliminate hundreds of useless federal agencies, such as the Legal Services Corporation
• Use every penny returned by the bailed-out banks to reduce the debt, rather than as a slush fund for new socialist programs

He concludes:

Mr. Obama keeps calling federal spending an "investment," but Americans apparently feel this is the worst investment they've ever made.  They've come to regard Washington as a $2 trillion Bridge to Nowhere.  They are right.

Stephen Moore is apparently trying to be respectful by using the "Mr." before Obama.  I do not feel that respect.  Besides, Obama wants to be a one-word kind of guy, like celebrities such as Sting, Madonna, Prince and the Messiah.

Obama Wants 600,000 More Bureaucrats

Daniel J. Mitchell of the Cato Institute listened to President-Elect Obama give his weekly radio address and discovered that Obama wants 600,000 more government bureaucrats to harass the American people. Obama claims these people will help the economy get moving.

Only a fool believes that government workers create anything positive on a scale comparable to what private sector workers produce. Government, when strictly limited to its proper scope, creates an environment as free of the use of force as possible, provides rational and knowable laws, and protects property and enforces contracts. Beyond that, and we are way, way beyond that, it only creates mischief, injustice, time-sinks, high taxes and waste, and barriers to trade and production.