How Much Washington Really Owes: $100 Trillion – WSJ

Unfunded entitlements are more than twice as large as the official national debt. The problem is growing.

By Vince Kolber – The Wall Street Journal, Dec. 20, 2022 – Excerpts:

It will be weeks before the U.S. Treasury releases its financial report on the federal government for the 2022 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30. But Washington’s spending has already reached a historic and troubling milestone. This news was hidden in the Treasury’s report for fiscal 2021, released last February.

The issue arises from the way Treasury accounts for future spending that is required by law. It reports two separate figures, “net position” and “social insurance net expenditures,” but it doesn’t add them up into “total obligations,” and thereby deprives lawmakers and taxpayers of a full picture.

Net position is the difference between U.S. government “assets” and “total liabilities.” Importantly, total liabilities include only bonded debt—that is, U.S. Treasury bills, notes and bonds. Total liabilities were $34.8 trillion at the end of fiscal 2021. The Treasury reported assets at $4.9 trillion. Simple arithmetic brings us to the net position, negative $29.9 trillion.

But this accounting leaves a lot out. Social insurance net expenditures calculates the difference between the expected future liabilities of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and similar programs over the next 75 years and the income these programs are expected to generate during the same period under current law. The Treasury reported these unfunded liabilities at $71 trillion at the end of fiscal 2021.

That brings us to the alarming milestone. Add the net position of $29.9 trillion to the social insurance net expenditures of $71 trillion, and you find that they topped $100 trillion—the first time they have ever done so.

Government accounting specialists argue that the Treasury is right to keep these categories separate. They contend that social-insurance obligations aren’t truly debt because Congress has the power to curtail them by changing the law. But lawmakers have failed to do so for nearly 40 years and, until they do, the unfunded liability exists and is a present economic danger. By Treasury’s accounting, the amount these programs’ costs are expected to exceed their revenue is more than twice the net position—and the latter figure alone is what is commonly known as the national debt.

The burden is quickly growing. Between 2011 and 2021, total obligations more than doubled, increasing at an annual pace exceeding 8% at a time when economic growth was less than 3% a year. The explosion of total obligations is the most underappreciated reason that inflation may become an indefinite reality.

Members of Congress are told of these unfunded liabilities, but they fail to talk about the problem or take action. Their periodic debt-ceiling dance ignores the problem by considering only bonded debt.

The debt ceiling should be modified to include total obligations, and the Treasury should begin explicitly keeping track of how much Washington really owes. Perhaps transparency will open congressional eyes. At the very least, it should alert voters to the frightening scope of federal largess so that we can hold Congress’s big spenders and benefit granters accountable.

Mr. Kolber is chairman of RESIDCO, a transportation equipment leasing company.

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Clearly, Congress has nothing resembling even an ‘inkling’ of a viable plan to get this debt monster back under control.

Shamefully, Washington Republicans who should some type of a vision for America, have no inclination to do anything, but ‘lightly tap the brakes’ on Democrat spending bonanzas.

And America remains headed for major U.S. Dollar instability and complete disorder in the credit markets.

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Economic Scoring links:

·  The Leviticus 25 Plan – 2022 Generates $383 billion Federal Budget Surpluses (2022-2026) Part 1: Overview, Deficit Projection

·  The Leviticus 25 Plan Generates $383 Billion Federal Budget Surpluses Annually (2022-2026). Part 2: Federal Income Tax Recapture, Means-Tested Welfare Recapture.

·  The Leviticus 25 Plan Generates $383 Billion Federal Budget Surpluses Annually (2022-2026). Part 3: Medicare, VA, TRICARE, FEHB, SSDI Recapture.

·  The Leviticus 25 Plan Generates $383 Billion Federal Budget Surpluses Annually (2022-2026). Part 4: Interest Expense Recapture, Totals Summary                         

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The Coming Tax Revenue Reckoning – WSJ

Politicians aren’t ready as signs point to budget trouble ahead.

By The Editorial Board / Dec. 18, 2022

The federal and state governments have had a good pandemic, enjoying the gusher of tax revenue and federal largesse. But those fat years are about to end, and the political class in most places isn’t ready for it.

The latest evidence came this month in the federal revenue news for October and November, the first two months of the 2023 fiscal year. Revenue rose only 1%, in contrast to a 21% increase in all of fiscal 2022. Individual taxes rose 4% but corporate tax revenue fell 6% and other revenue fell 21%.

The latter includes Federal Reserve remittances from interest on its bond holdings, which fell to $1 billion from $15 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Those remittances will turn into deficits as the central bank pares its bond portfolio.

State revenues are also headed for an adjustment, especially in capitals that built in new structural spending obligations during the pandemic. California, that means you, and Sacramento now faces a $25 billion deficit. The New York state comptroller is also warning about potential deficits, as federal pandemic aid winds down and tax revenue falls.

One irony is that high-tax progressive states have benefitted in particular from the capital-gains income of the high earners they claim to despise. But capital-gains revenue is sure to plunge given the enormous decline in stock prices this year. Corporate tax revenue is also likely to slow as earnings are under pressure.

All of this was predictable since the good times were kept afloat by easy money and a highly progressive tax code. Federal tax receipts as a share of GDP hit a near record 19.6% in fiscal 2022, and Congress spent like it would never end. Well, it always does, and that is before the widely predicted recession in 2023.

______________________________________

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The U.S. government, backed by the electronic money-printing power of the Federal Reserve, routed a stunning amount of pandemic aid recipients outside the U.S. – through some 2,000 foreign contractors and nonprofits in 177 countries.

Highlight: “The pandemic relief funds that went to non-domestic recipients are in addition, or supplementary, to existing U.S. foreign aid programs, which totaled $51 billion in aid obligations to 11,000 recipients across the globe in 2020.”

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More Than $6.4 Billion In US Pandemic Aid Sent Abroad, Including China

ZeroHedge, Jan 27, 2022 / Authored by John Haughey via The Epoch Times

Some 2,000 foreign contractors and nonprofits in 177 countries received more than $6.4 billion in United States’ federal pandemic response assistance between the spring of 2020 and the fall of 2021, according to a report by the U.S. Office of Inspector General’s (OIG) Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC).

A view of the U.S. Capitol on the west front January 06, 2022 in Washington, DC. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Most of the “prime recipients” are based in the United States and distributed the funds overseas. The $6.4 billion in foreign payments came from two pandemic relief packages passed by Congress in March 2020 and March 2021 totaling $4.1 trillion.

Those prime recipients include federal agencies, including the departments of Defense, Homeland Security and Health & Human Services, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and nonprofits, such as North Carolina-based Family Health International and Boston-based JSI Research & Training Institute.

Collectively between spring 2020 and Sept. 30, 2021, these federal agencies and nonprofits have approved more than 4,000 contracts and issued 1,000 grants from pandemic relief funds to “sub-recipients” across the globe, including foreign contractors that provide services for the U.S. government and international development and health care organizations.

The largest single international prime recipient is the United Nations, which received $831.4 million in direct pandemic funding, according to the report.

The United Nations, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and the U.N.’s High Commissioner for Refugees received 43 percent of U.S. pandemic relief funding spent overseas, according to the report.

The other top nine prime recipients which spend the relief funds overseas included were: UNICEF ($224 million); FHI ($99.945 million); General Dynamics Global Force LLC ($96.5 million); United Kingdom-based Acrow Global Ltd. ($83.5 million); International Red Cross/Red Crescent ($73.667 million); International Organization for Migration ($68.242 million); JSI ($64.32 million); the African Field Epidemiology Network ($62.5 million) and “miscellaneous foreign contractors” ($366.5 million).

About $2.132 billion of the $6.4 billion in internationally distributed U.S. pandemic relief funds was deposited and distributed through banks in Switzerland because many international nonprofits and organizations are headquartered in Geneva.

According to PRAC, those Geneva-based recipients include $1.5 billion for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria; $401 million for the U.N. High Commission; $87.856 million for the International Organization for Migration; $78.688 million for the World Health Organization; and $61.4 million for Le Comite International de La Croix-Rouge (Red Cross).

The recipient mix varies from nation to nation. For instance, sub-recipients in Kuwait received the second-highest allocation by nation after Switzerland, $411 million, with most providing services for U.S. information technology and defense contractors, such as Colorado-based Vectrus Systems Corp., which distributed $339 million in pandemic relief funds on contractors and organizations in Kuwait.

The pandemic relief funds that went to non-domestic recipients are in addition, or supplementary, to existing U.S. foreign aid programs, which totaled $51 billion in aid obligations to 11,000 recipients across the globe in 2020.

In 2021, while pandemic relief funds were distributed through USAID, its direct allocation actually declined to $36 billion, which was committed to 8,000 “activities” in 181 countries.

Since spring 2020, USAID maintains it has supported “more than 120 countries in their fight to contain and combat the virus” by providing $5.7 billion for vaccinations, including $700 million to strengthen vaccination programs and to purchase 1 billion Pfizer vaccines for distributions around the world.

During fiscal year 2022, USAID reports it had $4.7 billion “obligated”—$502 million in contracts, $4.2 million in grants—and dispersed $3.1 billion in 781 pandemic relief awards to 287 recipients, including many in Africa.

Phone calls and emails left with officials listed as USAID media contacts did not to elicit a response over a two-week period.

PRAC was created within the OIG’s independent Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity & Efficiency (CIGIE) in spring 2020 to track the $2.2 trillion in CARES Act allocations to state and local governments, nonprofits, contractors, and individuals.

With the subsequent adoption of additional federal COVID-19 relief and stimulus packages, including the March 2021 American Rescue Plan Act, PRAC’s 22 inspector generals are now tracking more than $5 trillion in federal pandemic allocations and documenting what is reported by “prime recipients” on its webpage that is accessible to the public on the committee’s website.

But accessibility and transparency doesn’t always translate into comprehensive accounting; there are 21 million “rows” of data on one of PRAC’s dashboards.

OpenTheBooks.com founder Adam Andrzejewski told Epoch Times that while doing a “deep dive” August analysis of the $282.6 billion the U.S. distributed in foreign aid between 2013-18, researchers found discrepancies between the numbers posted by PRAC, USAID, the Department of Treasury, the Congressional Budget Office, the Office of Management and Budget, and the Congressional Research Service.

Many of the discrepancies across the varied tracking and oversight programs are related to specific agency reporting requirements, the type of recipients they deal with, and can mix in assorted federal allocations from different times and programs that are not related to the COVID-19 response.

The bottom line, Andrzejewski said, is it can be daunting to find the bottom line when there are nearly as many haystacks as needles.

“It takes hard work” to ferret through and comprehend the data, he said. “They don’t make it easy.”

According to the Treasury, in 2020 Congress appropriated $3.8 billion for international COVID-19 relief efforts and by April 2021, had added another $10.8 billion in COVID-19 foreign-aid funding, totaling $14.6 billion.

OpenTheBooks maintains the $6.4 billion figure cited by PRAC, and even the $14,6 billion cited by Treasury, does not include all foreign-related COVID-19 spending, such as allocations for the U.S. Health & Human Services global vaccine program, the $9.6 billion in “total COVID-19 budgetary resources” earmarked for USAID, or the American subsidiaries of foreign companies,

According to OpenTheBooks.com, that includes 125 Chinese firms—with “strong ties to the Communist Chinese Party (CCP)”—that received forgivable loans from the $660 billion Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) in 2020, which is also not included in the foreign aid outlays.

PRAC’s Award Details Report lists 27 allocations totaling $14.539 million in pandemic assistance on its webpage to contractors in China through U.S.-based organizations and businesses with the largest —$5.18 million—allocated by DHS to U.S. Tactical Supply, Inc., based in Post Falls, Idaho.

According to USASpending, the May 18, 2020 allocation was for U.S. Tactical Supply’s procurement of 5.396 million face masks made in China.

FHI of Durham, N.C., distributed $99.945 million and the JSI Research & Training Institute, based in Boston, dispersed $64.32 million to contractors and organizations overseas.

Both are public health management consulting and research organizations that provide technical and managerial assistance to public health programs worldwide in tandem with contributions from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the European Union, European Investment Bank, and corporate donors.

FHI fields a staff of 4,000 across the U.S. and in more than 60 countries. JSI Research & Training Institute, a nonprofit subsidiary of John Snow International, has 135 staff members engaged in 75 projects in 40 countries, seven technical core competency centers and corporate services teams.

Officials at JSI did not respond to repeated emails and phone calls. An FHI representative who requested not to be cited for attribution explained COVID-19 assistance was “channeled” by U.S.-based nonprofits to international groups and contractors using existing “contracting vehicles” and “funding mechanisms” established through the Epidemic Control (EpiC) project funded by the Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).

“When COVID hit, (the federal government) used a lot of nonprofits” like FHI and JSI because “they were experienced and they had the pipelines in place” to support COVID-19 response in countries “where we’re already working,” she said, providing a fact sheet outlining how FHI allocated pandemic relief money by modifying EpiC in early 2020 to respond to COVID-19 and to bolster health systems to address the pandemic.

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Post Pandemic: It is high time now for U.S. citizens to receive their own ‘just rewards.’

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The Hard Reality of a Debt-Ceiling Showdown – WSJ

Do House Republicans have a strategy that will keep them unified when the political clamor about default looms?

By The Editorial Board

The Wall Street Journal, Jan. 16, 2023 – Excerpts:

The U.S. will reach its $31.4 trillion limit on gross federal debt on Thursday, and Treasury is resorting to special measures that on present revenue trend can delay default into the spring. Speaker Kevin McCarthy has promised his Members he won’t move to raise the limit without spending concessions from President Biden. But Mr. Biden says he won’t negotiate at all over the debt limit.

Something or someone has to give because the debt limit has to be raised. The U.S. has already borrowed and spent the money, and debt held by the public is a contract. Nobody sane in Washington wants to be blamed for triggering a default, and the bond market ructions it would cause, which means it almost certainly won’t happen.

Republicans are right to want to stop the reckless spending trends of the last four years. U.S. debt held by the public is now about 100% of GDP, up from 39.2% as recently as 2008 and 77.6% in 2018. The cost of financing that debt is rising fast along with interest rates, and interest on the debt will take up an increasingly large share of federal revenue. Priorities like national defense will be squeezed.

…….All of Wall Street, bond investors, the credit-rating agencies and the financial world will be warning of debt-limit doom. The press will side as usual with the Democrats. Maintaining GOP unity as the political pressure builds will make the vote for Speaker look easy.

Republicans used the debt limit as leverage to negotiate a spending limit on non-entitlement spending in 2011 with Barack Obama. Annual caps and the threat of automatic cuts caused outlays to fall as a share of GDP for several years. But the cost was high because defense and domestic social-welfare spending were both capped. Entitlements were exempt as the two sides agreed to negotiate reforms. But Mr. Obama had no real intention of doing so, and neither does Mr. Biden, whose transparent strategy is to portray the House GOP as MAGA radicals.

One emerging GOP strategy would be to pass a bill that guarantees against default by prioritizing tax revenue for debt repayment. It would also protect Medicare and Social Security payments and some vital federal services. That would leave other domestic accounts and perhaps non-essential defense spending to be unfunded until a debt deal is reached. This beats taking debt default as a hostage, but it still carries political risks as Democrats highlight what isn’t funded.

All of which means Republicans will have to pick their spending targets carefully, explain their goals in reasonable terms so they don’t look like they want a default, and then sell this to the public as a united team. The worst result would be for Republicans to talk tough for months, only to splinter in a rout at the end, and be forced to turn the House floor over to Democrats to raise the debt limit with nothing to show for it. Opportunists on the right would then cry “sellout,” even if they had insisted on demands that were unachievable.

This is what Democrats expect to happen, which is why they don’t think they need to negotiate. If Republicans want to use the debt limit as leverage, they need a strategy for how this showdown ends, not merely how it begins.

____________________________________

Washington Republicans are going to end up with another ‘politics as usual’ budget agreement that will do nothing to solve America’s growing debt crisis and restore long-term financial security for the families of hard-working, tax-paying U.S. citizens – the backbone of America.

What America needs is a literal ‘blockbuster’ economic strategy, one that will generate major federal, state, and local government budget surpluses; revive free market dynamics and economic liberty; reduce dependence on government hand-outs; eliminate massive amounts of household debt nation-wide.

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WSJ: Biden’s Food Stamp Trickery

The USDA pushed an increase of $200 billion over 10 years without Congressional review.

By The Editorial Board

The Wall Street Journal, Jan. 3, 2023 – Excerpts:

One peril of a large administrative state is the mischief agencies can get up to when no one is watching. Witness the overreach of the Agriculture Department, which expanded food-stamp benefits by evading the process for determining benefits and end-running Congressional review.

The behavior has earned USDA two scoldings this year from the Government Accountability Office. The latest report in December thwacked the department for “key decisions [that] did not fully meet standards for economic analysis” as well as “insufficient analysis of the effects of decisions” and “lack of documentation.”

The sneak started in 2021 when USDA rejiggered the Thrifty Food Plan, a metric the government uses to determine foods that make up a healthy nutritional basket. Agriculture uses that information, as well as food prices and inflation, to set benefits for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (known as SNAP, or food stamps).

Congress controls the purse and reviews benefits for social safety-net programs including food stamps. Since the 1970s, SNAP benefits and the Thrifty Food Plan have been adjusted annually for inflation. But in 2020 USDA extended a special 15% emergency increase in response to the pandemic and shortages and price hikes for certain foods owing to shortages.

The pandemic increase was set to expire in September 2021, so the USDA hurried to push through its 2021 increase on an abbreviated time frame, increasing SNAP benefits by an average of 21%. The result skipped over procedural safeguards, evaded Congressional review and produced its increases without a project plan or program manager. According to a review by Angela Rachidi at the American Enterprise Institute, the Congressional Budget Office estimates the 2021 increase in the Thrifty Food Plan added $200 billion to the budget baseline over 10 years.

In its first review of USDA, the GAO skewered Agriculture’s process for having violated the Congressional Review Act, noting that the “2021 [Thrifty Food Plan] meets the definition of a rule under the [Congressional Review Act] and no CRA exception applies. Therefore, the 2021 TFP is subject to the requirement that it be submitted to Congress.” GAO’s second report says “officials made this update without key project management and quality assurance practices in place.”

Abuse of process doesn’t get much clearer than that. The GAO review won’t unwind the increase, which requires action by the USDA. But the GAO report should resonate with taxpayers who don’t like to see the politicization of a process meant to provide nutrition to those in need, not act as a vehicle for partisan agency staffers to impose their agenda without Congressional approval.

All of this undermines transparency and accountability for a program that provided food stamps to some 41 million people in 2021. The Biden Administration is using the cover of the pandemic to expand the entitlement state beyond what Congress authorized. House Republicans can draw attention to this lawlessness and use their power of the purse to stop it to the extent possible with a Democratic Senate.

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The Leviticus 25 Plan will dramatically shrink the SNAP rolls, reduce fraud, help clean up political abuse of the program, and reward the hard-working citizens whose tax dollars have been supporting this entitlement bonanza, nonstop, for decades on end.

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WSJ Review: ‘The Myth of American Inequality’ – Believe Your Eyes, Not the Statistics  Dec 27, 2022

Government statistical reports exclude “noncash” sources of income, which excludes most transfers from social programs. Taxes (paid disproportionately by high earners) are also ignored in official calculations. Furthermore, even the government’s “cash” income numbers are reported in a way that understates improvements in real (inflation-adjusted) income over time because government inflation measures fail to use the appropriate chained price indexes or take account of new products and services.

Increased earned-income inequality is the natural consequence of redistributive policies: if one can enjoy median household consumption without earning any income, the incentive to work is substantially diminished. This largely explains the growing distance between earned and total income for poor households (transfers to those households have gone up dramatically). Ironically, it is the very success of redistribution in reducing poverty and inequality that has led mismeasurement to create the false perception of increasing inequality.

The equality of consumption between the bottom quintile (in which only 36% of prime-age persons work) and the middle quintile (in which 92% of prime-age persons work) is a striking finding. As the authors note: “It is hard to see how a middle-income family with two adults both working would not resent the fact that other prime work-age people who are not working at all are just about as well off as they are.”

Most of the facts documented in this book will not shock economists who specialize in studying poverty and inequality. The formal studies of these topics published in professional journals, however, tend to focus on short periods of time and narrowly defined questions, not broad issues of measurement. What makes this book an invaluable new resource for public policy and economic education is its focus on how the experiences of Americans of different living standards evolved over time and how earned income and consumption diverged for the poorest households. It traces improvements in the living standards of the poor to transfer programs, shows how taxation of the rich has flattened the distribution of consumption across households, and documents how measurement errors have distorted general beliefs about economic inequality….

The analysis probes deeply to demonstrate the robustness of its conclusions. For example, it measures not only differences in consumption by households across quintiles, but also the more meaningful per capita consumption across quintiles, and adjusts those per capita calculations to capture consumption synergies within households using standard methods….

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America’s Washington establishment politicians have created this mess – and none of them have a politically viable way to reverse it.

America’s Main Street Republicans have a solution – one that will boost the prospects of working-class, tax-paying U.S. citizens; flatten the curve on growing entitlements; increase labor force participation and worker productivity; largely eliminate federal and state budget deficits; strengthen the U.S. Dollar; reawaken America’s free-market economy.

The Leviticus 25 Plan is a dynamic economic initiative providing direct liquidity benefits for American families, while at the same time scaling back the role of government in managing and controlling the affairs of citizens.  It is a comprehensive plan with long-term economic and social benefits for citizens and government.

The inspiration for this plan is based upon Biblical principles set forth in the Book of Leviticus, principles tendering direct economic liberties to the people.

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John Maynard Keynes:

“Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security but [also] at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth.

Those to whom the system brings windfalls, beyond their deserts and even beyond their expectations or desires, become “profiteers,” who are the object of the hatred of the bourgeoisie, whom the inflationism has impoverished, not less than of the proletariat. As the inflation proceeds and the real value of the currency fluctuates wildly from month to month, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery.

Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”

For starters, Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC) reports: “My team and I are reading through the omnibus bill today – all $1.7 trillion and 4,155 pages of it (@RepDanBishop) December 20, 2022. The omnibus bill includes:

Expressly prohibits Border Patrol funding from being used to improve border security…

While allocating $410 million towards border security for Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia and Oman

A “Ukrainian Independence Park” in Washington DC

$335 million to prepare for an influenza pandemic, including the use of surveillance tools.

$65 million to help ‘Pacific salmon’ populations (and those in charge of handling the money, we assume)

$3 million for ‘bee-friendly highways’ and another $5 million for the salmon

$575 million for “family planning” in areas where population growth “threatens biodiversity.”

$65 million in two programs for Senator Leahy and a federal building named for Nancy Pelosi

$3.6 million for the “Michelle Obama Trail”

$477k for “antiracist” training, $3 million for a LGBTQ+ museum in NYC, $1.2 million in “services for DACA recipients”

$524.4 million for the NIH to fight “structural racism”

$7.5 million to better understand “domestic radicalization” and $1 million for gun violence research

Gender programs in Pakistan and $200 million for Gender Equity

A 15% increase in the vaccine injury fund

$11.33 billion for the FBI, $1.75 billion for the ATF and $2.63 billion for US attorneys (all significant increases over the previous year)

$70 million for minority business development, an increase of $15 million from Fy22

Summary: America’s widening budget deficits — no end in sight…

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New Earmarks in Spending Bill Cost $16B

By Adam Andrzejewski – December 28, 2022

Congress’ $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill to fund the government through the end of the fiscal year, Sept. 30, contains no less than $16 billion in earmarks — funding for 7,510 pet projects in lawmakers’ districts.

These new earmarks pay for projects that will make lawmakers’ constituents in their home states and districts happy, rather than going to the core functions of the federal government.

“In effect, earmarks are legal bribes doled out to members of Congress in exchange for their support of these large, irresponsible spending bills that are rushed through without much scrutiny,” Adam Andrzejewski, CEO and Founder of OpenTheBooks.com, wrote in an opinion piece in The Daily Caller.

For example, $20,000 will go to upgrade a National Park Service bathroom in Murphysboro, Illinois. A $1 million stairway to the beach in Mondo Cove Beach, California will allow surfers easier access to the waves; the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland will receive $1 million; the Universal Hip Hop Museum in New York will receive $2 million; $3 million will go to restore the Irish Heritage Center in Maine; and $3.75 million will go renovate a Chicago YMCA.

Republicans in red-Texas out-earmarked Democrats $500 million to $300 million, just as in Florida, where the state’s Republican caucus out-earmarked the Democrats $445 million to $251 million.

“It’s time to tell Congress: get back to normal budgeting, not temporary bills stuffed with special favors,” Andrzejewski wrote. The $1.7 trillion budget is up from about $1.5 trillion in the last fiscal year.

OpenTheBooks has logged every earmark in a searchable database, showing which congressmember requested how much money and for what project.

Former Honorary Chairman of OpenTheBooks, U.S. Senator Dr. Tom Coburn, said it best: “Earmarks are the gateway drug to runaway spending bills.”

The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com

This article was originally published by RealClearPolicy and made available via RealClearWire.

_________________________________

Washington Democrats are pushing ‘full throttle’ to destroy the U.S. Dollar.

Washington Republicans, in general, are tepidly supporting their Democrat counterparts, and have no politically feasible plan, no cohesive strategy, to oppose this spending madness and get America back on track.

America’s Main Street Republicans do have a plan: The Leviticus 25 Plan

The Leviticus 25 Plan is a dynamic economic initiative providing direct liquidity benefits for American families, while at the same time scaling back the role of government in managing and controlling the affairs of citizens.  It is a comprehensive plan with long-term economic and social benefits for citizens and government.

The inspiration for this plan is based upon Biblical principles set forth in the Book of Leviticus, principles tendering direct economic liberties to the people.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America

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“He who will not apply new remedies must expect new evils.” – Sir Francis Bacon

Monsignor Fulton J. Sheen – 1931 essay:

“America, it is said, is suffering from intolerance – it is not.  It is suffering from tolerance. Tolerance of right and wrong, truth and error, virtue and evil, Christ and chaos. Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded.”

“Tolerance is an attitude of reasoned patience toward evil … a forbearance that restrains us from showing anger or inflicting punishment. Tolerance applies only to persons … never to truth. Tolerance applies to the erring, intolerance to the error … Architects are as intolerant about sand as foundations for skyscrapers as doctors are intolerant about germs in the laboratory.

Tolerance does not apply to truth or principles. About these things we must be intolerant, and for this kind of intolerance, so much needed to rouse us from sentimental gush, I make a plea. Intolerance of this kind is the foundation of all stability.”

“The refusal to take sides on great moral issues is itself a decision. It is a silent acquiescence to evil. The Tragedy of our time is that those who still believe in honesty lack fire and conviction, while those who believe in dishonesty are full of passionate conviction.”

Paying Americans Not to Work – Committee To Unleash Prosperity

A Family of Four Can Receive over $100,000 Annualized Equivalent in Cash and
Benefits in Three States, and over $80,000 in 14 States, with No One Working

Casey Mulligan is a Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, who served as Chief Economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisors. EJ Antoni is a Research Fellow for Regional Economics in The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis. Both are Senior Fellows at the Committee to Unleash Prosperity.

Executive Summary
In a previous study in 2021 we estimated that with supplemental unemployment benefits of up to $600 a month, food stamp expansions, child tax credit payments, and other special Covid-related benefits to families without anyone working could exceed $120,000 in many states. Those extra benefits had a highly negative effect on employment, particularly in the states with the highest benefits.

Those temporary benefits have expired but this study finds that even with existing unemployment benefits and the dramatic recent expansion of ObamaCare subsidies, a spouse would have to earn more than $80,000 a year from a 40 hour a week job to have the same after-tax income as certain families with two unemployed spouses receiving government benefits. In these states, working 40 hours a week and earning $20 an hour would mean a slight REDUCTION in income compared to two parents receiving unemployment benefits and health care subsidies.

This study also finds:
• In 24 states, unemployment benefits and ACA subsidies for a family of four with both parents not working are the annualized equivalent of at least the national median household income.
• In 5 states, those two programs provide the same family with both parents not working the annualized equivalent of at least the national median household income and benefits.
• In 14 states, unemployment benefits and ACA subsidies are the equivalent to a head of household earning $80,000 in salary, plus health insurance benefits.
• This is a higher wage than is earned by the national median secondary school teacher, electrician, trucker, machinist, and many other jobs.
• In more than half the states, unemployment benefits and ACA subsidies exceed the value of the salary and benefits of the average firefighter, truck driver, machinist, or retail associate in those states.
• In a dozen states, unemployment benefits and ACA subsidies exceed the value of the salary and benefits of the average teacher, construction worker, or electrician in those states.
• A family of four with income over $227,000 qualifies for ACA subsidies in all states and families earning over $300,000 a year still qualify for ACA subsidies in 40 states and DC.

Fig. 1: Highest Benefit States for Not Working and National Median Income Plus Benefits for Selected Occupations

Disincentive crisis: Many states pay families unemployment benefits larger than job salaries https://committeetounleashprosperity.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Paying-Americans-Not-to-Work.pdf

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America’s Main Street Republicans have a solution to these types of big-government perverse outcomes – one that will deliver a ‘helping hand’ up to a new live of debt elimination and financial security for hard-working, tax-paying U.S. citizens – rather than ongoing government handouts and debt serfdom.

This dynamic plan will generate federal budget surpluses, state budget surpluses, citizen-centered healthcare, and economic liberty for all Americans.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America

$90,000 per U.S. citizen – Leviticus 25 Plan 2023 (5516 downloads)