Michael Sargent writing in The Daily Signal
* * *
On Thursday the Senate...
* THE... REPUBLICAN... CONTROLLED... SENATE...
...sent yet another short term extension of the Highway
Trust Fund to the president’s desk (the fourth this year).
* WHY CAN'T ISIS SIMPLY KILL OUR POLITICIANS...?!?! TALK
ABOUT WINNING HEARTS AND MINDS...
(*PURSED LIPS*)
This latest short term extension means that members of the
highway bill conference have until Dec. 4th to pass a bailout through hammering
out the small differences between what has passed in the House and Senate. Unfortunately,
neither the House, nor the Senate plan offer any meaningful reforms that would
address the trust fund’s chronic overspending that has already required $73
billion in bailouts since 2008.
* SERIOUSLY... IF ONLY AL QAIDA WOULD FUND-RAISE UNDER THE
BANNER OF "GIVE US MONEY AND WE'LL KILL THE SCUM RUNNING YOUR ONCE GREAT
COUNTRY INTO THE GROUND!"
So while the final product will inevitably be another
status-quo bailout, there is one area in which members have embraced innovative
thinking: finding gimmicks and other fake savings in unrelated areas of the
budget to fund this new spending.
* DIE, RYAN, DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE, MCCONNELL, DIE!
DIE! DIE! DIE!
Because the trust fund is projected to run over $80
billion in deficits over the next 6 years, the final bill will require at least
that much in offsets.
And that’s where the gimmicks come in.
For members of congress, it’s easier to pull together a
menu of small, palatable offsets from across the government instead of having
to make tough decisions or enact fundamental reform.
Here are the worst offenders in consideration for the
highway bill:
1) Raid the Federal Reserve’s surplus fund: $59.5 billion
In a gimmick that Former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has
denounced as a “budgetary sleight-of-hand,” Congress would eliminate the
Federal Reserve’s $29 billion surplus fund. This measure would simply drain the
Fed’s surplus fund (a rainy day fund of sorts) and send future sums that would
have been set aside to the Treasury.
But since any interest these balances generate would
eventually be remitted to the Treasury (and since the Treasury would ultimately
have to cover any Federal Reserve losses anyway), this gimmick simply shifts
the timing of future cash flows.
Worse, tinkering with the Fed’s balance sheet to fuel a
spending measure eviscerates the notion that the Fed is separated from
Congressional politics.
(*PURSED LIPS*)
In addition, the initial bills relied on a different
offset that would change in the Fed’s dividend payment rate to member banks,
generating $17 billion. Although this similar gimmick was shelved last minute
in favor of eliminating the surplus fund, members should resist any renewed
temptation to double up on the Fed in order to fuel even more spending.
2) Sell off a portion of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve:
$9.1 billion
This measure would instruct the Department of Energy to
sell off 101 million barrels of oil from the unrelated Strategic Petroleum
Reserve to generate over $9 billion. But in a classic case of government
accounting, the bill assumes that the Department of Energy could somehow
command $90 per barrel, even though the market price is currently $40 per
barrel. Good luck.
3) Increase Customs User Fees: $5.7 billion.
This offset would shamelessly increase fees on travelers
who are required to go through the U.S. Customs service and spend the new money
on transportation. Repurposing the Customs service’s true user fee for highway
spending (which already relies on its own user fee in the form of the gas tax)
is inexcusable.
* I... WANT... THESE... BA$TARDS... DEAD...!!!
4) Contract Tax Collection to Private Entities: $2.4
billion
By contracting out the responsibility of collecting
outstanding tax payments to private debt collection agencies, this offset would
generate over $2 billion in new revenues. In exchange for their services, the
Feds would have to fork over a portion of the collections to the private
contractors. The big problem with this? This practice has been tried twice
before and ended up losing money both times.
5) Various other budget gimmicks: $7 billion
Sundry other gimmicks would simply shift money around on
paper or generate dubious new revenues. These include efforts to increase the
penalties for vehicle safety violations, recycling unspent contract authority,
correcting interest payments on government overpayments, and other revenue changes
worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
Altogether, this unlikely menagerie of gimmicks will
enable congress to bail out the Highway Trust Fund with billions of dollars
without having to make real spending cuts or true reforms. At the very least,
lawmakers should make the least irresponsible decision regarding spending
levels as possible.
The conferees still must determine whether to adopt
six-years of funding at baseline spending levels (generating annual deficits of
about $15 billion) or the Senate’s preference of a shorter bill with higher
spending levels, meaning even larger deficits.
* THE... REPUBLICAN... SENATE'S...!!!
The responsible move would be to reject this false
proposition of spending more in exchange for a shorter bill.
* FOLKS... HERE'S WHY YOU NEED TO SIGN ON TO THE BILL
BARKER "DIE! DIE! DIE! YOU FILTHY TRAITOROUS SCUM!" PLATFORM:
Once higher spending levels are enacted, they become the
new “baseline,” begetting even more spending and commensurate bailouts in the
future.
This is not a prudent course for a trust fund with a
cumulative deficit already projected at $159 billion over the next decade.
Perhaps one bright spot is that once these one-time
gimmicks are used up, they won’t be around anymore for Congress to lean on.
Just maybe this will prompt lawmakers to do the right thing when they’re back
in the same spot after the trust fund burns through this latest bailout in just
a few years.
* SERIOUSLY... TELL ME VIOLENCE ISN'T THE ANSWER. I
REALLY WANNA BE CONVINCED. TELL ME THIS NATION WOULDN'T BE FAR BETTER OFF IF
MOST OF THESE PEOPLE WERE DEAD. CONVINCE ME!
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