Military vs. domestic spending
Fox News reports that the day after Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel proposed massive cuts to defense spending, President Obama proposed massive spending for roads and bridges, highlighting the administration’s divisive nature. When they wanted to increase costs to retirees (after they raided our $770 million healthcare surplus), they said if they didn’t, training and the active force would suffer. That didn’t work so well, so now they’re pitting national defense against domestic spending;
The president talked about the stimulus-style plan during a stop Wednesday afternoon in St. Paul, Minn. Officials say the money, as proposed, largely would come from “pro-growth business tax reform.” But aside from the challenges in pushing tax reform, Obama could have a hard time making the sell when his military leaders, just days ago, were complaining about the budget crunch.
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“President Obama claimed that the $830 billion stimulus would spend money on shovel-ready projects that would repair our country’s infrastructure,” RNC spokesman Jahan Wilcox said in a statement. “If the president couldn’t fix our economic problems the first time, then why would we trust him with another blank check?”
The Preamble to the Constitution reads;
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Now, what part of that covers roads and bridges? I see “provide for the common defense” right there spelled out simply. I don’t see “provide for roads, bridges and mass transit”, though. Of course, the founders didn’t anticipate that there would be roads and bridges in the future, huh? So we’ll just pencil that in.
Oh, by the way, they plan on paying for it with the same method they used for their plan for full employment – hoping something happens. The same method they use for their energy programs – hoping unicorn farts are a good renewable source;
The administration is calling for $150 billion from tax reform changes, combined with existing funding for road projects, to fund the plan. A White House “fact sheet” said the nation’s transportation system is facing a “funding crisis” — and needs the money for everything from highway improvements to new light rail and bus projects to mass transit ventures.
The Highway Trust Fund finances federal highway and transit programs but is forecast to go broke as early as August.
Funny how when discussing “tax reform” makes me think that it won’t be good for us taxpayers-the opposite of when we talk about tax reform when it’s Republicans using those same words.
Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Military issues
Roads and bridges are to be paid for out of that little tax they put on fuel. Yeah, that’s what they claimed that $.24 per gallon of gasoline is supposed to be for; to pay for roads and bridges. Each state has their own cut by adding another few cents per gallon onto the federal gas tax. Here in Minnesota, I believe it’s 29 cents total per gallon of gas. I could be wrong, it may have gone up by now.
I read an article, back after the 35W bridge collapse, that broke down the “infrastructure” budget for a year and it started out at $40 billion (approx.) and by the time it got to how much money was actually spent on the bridges it was down to $12 billion. The question was; what happened to the $28 billion? Some gummint administrator claimed that it was for administrative costs, etc. So, less than half the money budgeted actually went to the bridges and the government system ate the rest.
Another question; where is all the gas tax money going? That’s right; to the same place all the other money is going, to the general fund.
The defense budget is ~17% of the overall budget; where is the other 83% going? I’m sure that’s down, percentage wise, already, so by the time this all shakes out, we’re talking not about reducing spending, just shifting spending from defense to welfare. And then, they will increase how much money they want in the budget, also. The defense budget, which is a responsibility of the federal government as laid out in the Constitution, is probably going to end up being about 10% of the budget by the time we can get rid of these idiots.
Two questions: must a thing be done? Can that thing be done privately? If a thing must be done, but it can be done privately then it is almost always better to do it privately because it will almost certainly be done more efficiently and with less corruption. Those things that must be done, but cannot be done privately are rightly within the scope of government, and the founders gave us a pretty nice list of what these things are in Article I, Section 8 (even then there are things like the Post Office which could probably be privatized).
Defense is one thing that must be done, but cannot be done privately. For a long time this was widely recognized and members of the military were made to live and work under a strict code of discipline because they were the primary benefactors of government spending. Then the idiot socialists started nationalizing all sorts of things (and, not coincidentally consolidating power) without enforcing any similar standard of discipline and now our government is rife with corruption and the population is justifiably cynical about the operation of our government (though less so about the military than any other part-funny that).
The sad part is that so many perceive that they have a stake in government spending that no serious effort to cut it (except for the one really necessary part) can be undertaken-see for an illustration of this concept the summary chapter of P.J. O’Rourke’s classic “Parliament of Whores”.
As for the preamble to the Constitution, “progressives” seem to think it says promote the common defense and provide the general welfare.
@3: That’s because most of them never made it past 8th grade. They read rights in the Constitution that aren’t there and want to dismiss rights that are clearly written in the Constituition. It’s all about how they “feel”.
Weren’t all those “shovel-ready” jobs paid for by the last stimulus supposed to fix the infrastructure?
Buses and light rail? The government is going to run bus lines? Light rail lines? Like they’ve run Amtrak? Like they run the HHS and Obamacare?
I guess I will be the dick… “PROMOTE THE GENERAL WELFARE” Roads and bridges add to the general welfare of the nation, that is where I would find the justification for these programs were I attempting to defend my decisions. I would also use Domestic Tranquility and General Welfare as reason enough to make sure I was feeding and housing the less fortunate. What that preamble doesn’t say is anything about offering billions of dollars of corporate welfare each year to companies that don’t need it. It doesn’t actually say anything about the necessity of offering price support to farmers, it also doesn’t say anything about making sure our foreign allies are using lots of our tax dollars to keep their governments running as corruptly as they ever did… I will give both sides a nice round of applause for figuring out where to put the spotlight to make sure it shines on pitting veterans and welfare recipients against each other instead of shining that light on corporate bailouts, corporate welfare, and tax incentives to people who don’t need tax incentives. The idea that a corporation should be treated as an individual with the attendant rights and privileges was always a ludicrous legal construct designed to create an advantage to those organizations over the rest of the tax paying slobs… Allowing NAFTA style de-regulation has done more damage to this nation than any welfare program or veteran benefit plan. We are losing the ability to manufacture our own defense products and our own domestic use products. A nation that continues down the path of allowing destabilizing legislation that creates less manufacturing and more importation of manufactured goods creates this wealth gap between the rich and the middle class…we are well on our way to that situation under the last 3 presidents. The benefit as you can all see is the loss of income to most of the middle class and a hugely unsuccessful attempt to repair that through abominable legislation like bailouts and this ACA….now we are coming to the point where we can’t afford the ACA, the welfare funds… Read more »
Budget for ‘Bama phones.
No budget for legit workers.
Sounds legit.