12 Days of Solutions, Day 6: Cut, Cap, & Balance
December 15, 2012 at 2:19 pm in News by Tea Party Patriots 28 Comments
Last year’s debt ceiling debate highlighted many things broken in the Washington budget process, including Harry Reid’s infamous quote, “It can’t all be spending cuts.”
Of the multiple solutions offered, “Cut, Cap & Balance” offered the most hope for fiscal restraint, which is why we are highlighting it in our 12 days of solutions.
Unfortunately, the Senate and President ignored the plan offered by the Republican Study Committee (RSC) and passed by the House that aimed to address the real problem in Washington, the overspending. From the RSC’s website:
H.R. 2560, The Cut, Cap, and Balance Act, is based on the framework first proposed by the Republican Study Committee in June 2011. The bill makes cuts $111 billion in FY 2012, places firm caps on future spending, and – contingent upon House and Senate passage of a Balanced Budget Amendment – grants President Obama’s request for a debt limit increase.
The Cut, Cap, and Balance (CCB) Act aimed for three important things:
- It cut spending.
- It enacted a strict cap on spending, to be phased in over time.
- It allowed a debt ceiling increase only if a Balanced Budget Amendment passed Congress.
However, the Cut, Cap, and Balance Act was not the only CCB proposal brought to Congress last year. In a letter to House leadership, which was written before the CCB Act was introduced, RSC Members pushed for an even stronger version of the CCB Act that would have cut spending by nearly $400 billion in one year. It would have permitted reforms to defense and certain entitlement programs to be part of the cuts, which the CCB Act did not allow.
In the end, the Cut, Cap, and Balance Act would not have been enough to prevent a fiscal calamity from taking place in America on its own. However, it would have been far, far better than the sequestration and “fiscal cliff” mess Washington has placed on the American people.
The idea of cutting spending is great but the problem becomes what to cut.
Do old perple want Medicare cut … no
Do students want Pell grants cut … no
Do defense contractors want military spending cut … no
Do consumers want less money spent on food safety inspections … no
Each of these is happy to cut the others program but not their own.
The only way this will get done is if everything gets cut the same. People will see that as fair. This will limit cuts the the amount the most important programs can be cut.
Jerry, (most) everybody loves to have the government take money from other people and give it to them. That’s why our Constitution doesn’t give the government the power to do any such thing.
“Fair” would be to let people keep what they earn, make any Direct tax apportioned, and all Indirect taxes uniform. And not the “geographic” uniformity created by our Supreme Court- actually uniform.
How does that decide what spending to cut?
Just for instance Jerry, there is no Constitutional authority for the national government to do anything related to education, so, the Dept. of Education and all the money spent by the national government related to education, get cut.
That’s a decent idea (getting rid of the DOE). As near as my feeble 70 year old brain can remember, education has taken a nose dive since the government got involved. I can remember clearly when they first got involved and my dad raising cain about it. I didn’t understand why he was so upset then, but brother do I now.
War story follows. Not too many years ago (well 30 isn’t so long ago at my age) my daughter enrolled in algebra with my prompting. I promised her I would help her if she needed it. I was lucky that I had really fine math teachers all through junior and senior high school as well as college and I enjoy math. I was able to make sure she understood the principles of whatever they were working on, but showed her several short cuts to ease the pain. She came back from a midterm test crying because she got a big, fat, red “F” and telling me that I didn’t know so much in language that she must have gotten from her mother. Her answers were all correct, but she didn’t “show her work”. I went in to conference with the teacher along with my daughter to show the teacher that she knew the “long form” but the short cuts just saved time. The dumb cluck couldn’t follow what I had done.
I think a good portion of today’s teachers have their degree due only to a dumb downed curriculum and social promotions. That’s another big problem we have to face and it’s not restricted to only math. My brother and sister-in-law both taught in high school and neither one of them can spell or put together a decent sentence much less a paragraph.
The teacher’s union is another complete rant that seems to be suffering some lately due to changing laws in places such as Wisconsin. For years the U S led the world in educating the largest percentile of the population. No longer. The more the government gets involved the harder and longer the road back is going to be.
Craig, Constitutionally how are these taxes fraudulent? I would think if it was unconstitutional, the good people of America would send it to the Supreme Court for a ruling.
Well, Mr. Fire,
I never said they were fraudulent, I just quoted the Constitution in saying that all Direct taxes must be apportioned and all Indirect taxes must be uniform.
There is fraud involved when the IRS defines wages and salaries as “income” and by that means allows a tax that is substantially Direct to be levied without apportionment.
I’m not sure what you mean by “the American People should take it to the Supreme Court…
Here’s what has to happen for a citizen to challenge a tax in Federal Court-
First, you have to pay the tax.
Then you have to exhaust all the administrative appeals available through the IRS.
Next, you have to file a complaint in Federal District Court.
When you lose there (and you will, they’ll simply tell you that the issue you raised was settled a long time ago, but they won’t tell you when or where or how), you have to file an appeal with the Federal Appeals Court, where they will agree with the District Court.
If you still have any money or time or patience left, you can appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court- but they are pretty busy hearing Obamacare cases, and they probably won’t have the time to hear your case.
And if you try to handle it yourself, the lawyers will fight you tooth and nail every step of the way. I speak from experience due to trying to file for a divorce without a $200/hour attorney’s signature on the standard forms. And he had his assistant do the work of filling in the blanks on the forms. Someone told me that Bill Shakespeare said somewhere to “shoot all the lawyers”. There may be some merit to that. At least partially.
A case could be made for making only half the population pay all the income tax for the other half of the population is a bill of attainder.
Then, that would be unconstitutional, to exempt half the population from paying income taxes.
DB – That’s true. Why should we only pay all the taxes! The moochers and deadbeats should be forced to leave the country.
You mean everybody who works for the government?
We have over a trillion dollar deficit, and they propose to cut a hundred billion dollars, which probably won’t ever happen.
They are not serious yet.
Shut the government down.
No more debt. Not for any reason.
DB,
Then make sure your guns are locked and loaded. Once they stop paying the police it’s going to get nasty
It’s nasty even when they pay them. I see drugs everywhere, and it’s not even my job to find them. Burglaries are rampant, and we know where the burglars are coming from.
To tell the truth, we would solve this problem if the police weren’t around. We seem to be the problem, and not the crime.
Something has happened to the population. When I was young, we didn’t even lock the house, and left the keys in the ignition in the car. There wasn’t a reason to worry then. Then, the dominant majority of the population weren’t thieves.
That’s not true today.
And, I’m not under the impression that the police are paid by the federal government. If the federal government shuts down, that will have no impact on state and local governments. They can continue to function.
Why do you think shutting the federal government down will impact local police departments?
DB – Actually, a good portion of the Obama stimulus package was used to pay police, teachers and fire fighters all over the country. Some of the Liberal/ Commie economist thought losing these jobs would make the recession worse.
But I say, how do they really know? Do they have a crystal ball? Only God knows what would really happen in the future.
Hellfire,
Actually economics makes predictions about what will happen if you raise or lower spending all the time. That is how they know lower taxes are good for business.
Hellfire,
Keynesian economics (the favorite of “progressives”) predicts that government stimulus will increase employment and cause the economy to grow.
It didn’t work in the Great Depression, and it’s never worked since then either. It’s not because they don’t have a crystal ball, it’s just because the theory is wrong.
Austrian economics predicts that stable money and free markets where property rights are enforced will create prosperity.
That always happens, and again , it’s not because they have a crystal ball, it’s because the theory is correct.
DB,
There federal government is pervasive. They have all kinds of grants and cost sharing with the state and cities. My city got an $18 million grant from the Federal Tranportaion Dept for rapid transit repairs. The DHS has all kinds of grants for local police. The Education Dept for teaching. Cities and states woudl have to cut police and everything else to make up for the shortfall. It would be brutal.
Jerry,
Why cycle it all through Washington? Make the local and State governments collect their own taxes to fund their own services. It all comes from us taxpayers anyway, and we might have a better chance of controlling it if it’s kept at a local level.
Jerry, I suspect that it’s going to be brutal one way or the other. It’s going to be tough for my grandkids to pay their taxes on the income they will make flipping burgers. Fifty years of guilt ridden freebies will be hard to reverse. The people can live with most anything except the greed and power struggles of the governments, especially federal.
Jerry,
The Police powers are not given to the national government, they are left with the States and local governments.
Of course if the national government is transferring wealth around to pay Sate and local police, that should stop. I don’t mind paying taxes to fund my local police, but I don’t want to pay taxes to fund the Chicago police- I don’t live there.
Craig,
If you don’t want the Federal Government giving the states money demand that your state refuse it. See how your state likes the idea of raising taxes to make up the difference.
Also the Austrian School is bunk as I pointed out to you in a post yesterday.
I don’t want the federal government influencing the actions of local police. I like being the only influence on them. And, I don’t like someone in Washington telling me I need to pay more for police in Chicago when I live in Joplin, Missouri, for instance. If Chicago thinks they need more police, then let Chicago pay for it.
There are many Supreme Court rulings against money relationships because the effect is a violation of the Constitution. It is unconstitutional for the federal government to dictate law enforcement at the state or local level. If federal money is used, then the federal government is in a position to hold them hostage and dictate to them.
That’s one place we can cut the federal budget. Make states subsidize the municipalities law enforcement costs as they see necessary. That’s how the country is supposed to work.
Current history being the instructor, I’d trust this administration to make any cuts after the honorable opponents allow the increases about as much as I would trust someone that told be that Obamacare would be cheaper.
I think the only way to ger this country on the right track is to have term limits on our crooks is the capital They do not deserve a pension after one term a life time medical for them and there family Anybody in any other business would be long gone if they stalled and lyed like they do . It’s a crime to not tell them the truth but no crime to lie to us or blame the other party they think we don’t know that there are lying to us makes me sick As for the dead beats they deserve what’s coming they voted for him
Or, institute a flat tax that EVERYONE pays. Let’s see how everyone votes when they have to pay for what they vote for out of their own pocket. I assure you we won’t have a bunch of Democrats spending us into oblivion if everyone who voted for them had to actually pay for the government they voted to install.
We have what could be called effective term limits already in place. They’re called elections, but the American people keep sending the same ineffective and corrupt representatives back year after year. If you expect these same elected representatives to pass legislation that would restrict them to only one or two terms in office, then that’s just wishful thinking. Why would they consider having to go back home and live like everyone else, when they have such a sweet deal? Public outrage you say? Would this be the same public that keeps sending back the same folks for decades, no matter what?
The problem is the public who keep electing these people. How do you propose to remedy an apathetic and increasingly ignorant public? That is what is needed to get this situation truly fixed.