this is what happens when government funds something

interesting thoughts

The dude still abidesWednesday, Mar 20, 2013

* If you want to see what a successful Illinois Republican is - not some ideologically embittered hyperpartisan - then you have to go no further than Big Jim Thompson.
Elected four times as governor, Thompson embodied Illinois Republicanism. Tough, accomplished, governing-focused and pro-business but with a decidedly humane and moderate face.
Thompson spoke this month to the World Presidents’ Organization/Young Presidents’ Organization Chicago Chapter forum and part of his speech has been transcribed. We ran some excerpts the other day, but I strongly urge you to read the whole thing now. This guy still has it…

We need to improve the business climate in the state of Illinois because we need to increase employment in the state of Illinois. There is no sounder reason to increase employment and to drive down the cost to the state of Illinois of pensions and pension reform than more jobs in this state. Two million people in a population of 12.8 million, 2 million people in the state of Illinois are on food stamps. Two million, Why? Because they don’t have jobs that can support themselves and their family. They don’t have enough money to buy food, so they’re on food stamps.

Now we’ve got a choice. We can continue all those people on food stamps and just push (them) away, put them behind the curtain, don’t think about them. Or we can work to increase the business climate in this state to provide the jobs that will start taking people off food stamps and off welfare and off government assistance.

Thompson, unlike so many modern “conservatives,” did not demonize the poor and heap condemnations upon them He fervently wants to help them with the only hand up that really matters: A decent job.
* But he’s no automatic mouthpiece for big business, either…

We’ve got to scour the tax code of this state, get rid of wasteful tax expenditures, or have a rational tax policy that encourages business and its growth in this state. And you can tell the difference. And yes, various businesses will come and say, “But keep mine.” OK. That happens all the time. But the governor and the legislature can decide who’s right in that one. Academics can help them decide who’s right in that one., Economists can help them decide who’s right in that one. You don’t have to listen to every special plea no matter where it’s from. But if we’re not constantly looking at our tax policy, looking at our unemployment compensation policy, looking at our workers’ compensation policy to make this state a haven for business and send those carpetbaggers from Wisconsin and Indiana and Iowa and Mississippi and Alabama and Texas back to their own states. Thank you very much, we’ve got just as good a business climate in Illinois as any that you can conjure up to make our people move. If we don’t put our efforts behind that, if we don’t link it to government expenditures beginning with pension reform, we are going to be in even bigger trouble.

* And he wants us to think big, like he did back in the day…

We need to substantially repair Illinois’ infrastructure. The governor is going to hope to sell $800 million in bonds shortly that would go for capital projects, infrastructure. It’s not enough. It’s not enough. […]

Look, I used to be proud to say that Illinois was the transportation center of the world. And it was literally true. What’s the largest economy in the world? The United States. What state has more components of a transportation system than any other? Illinois. Sitting in the heart of the nation. Criss-crossed by Interstate highways north, south, east, west. The Mississippi River flowing down, the Illinois River. Railroads running into the state and out of the state. Illinois in Lincoln’s time was the jumping-off place for the railroads to go west, To bring the finished goods from eastern and Midwestern factories out to the West and to bring the grain and the beef back. We still occupy that position even though the cargo that we carry may be different now.

O’Hare until just recently was the busiest airport in the world. Now, if the United States is the largest economy in the world and if Illinois has more transportation components than any other state, then Illinois is literally the transportation capital of the world and we ought to act like it and keep that system in repair. Because when you talk about the economy of this state you have to pay very close attention to what I call the economic backbone. Of the state. What do I mean by that?

The transportation system, obviously. The ability to get the employees to and from work. The ability to get goods out of your factory to where you’re sending them across the world. The ability to get raw materials in to aid in your process of manufacturing. If we don’t have a good, decent transportation system, we will never have a strong economy and won’t have the jobs we want.

* Thomspon also took a swipe at Attorney General Lisa Madigan and Gov. Pat Quinn when he made this point about utility infrastructure…

A lot of politicians like to pick on the utilities. Our electric utilities. Our telephone systems. Well that’s all well and good. An attorney general can be the people’s lawyer and bash the utilities and oppose rate hikes and try to hold down profit. I mean, the list is endless.

But governors, governors responsible for the economic climate of the state have to ensure that our utilities as well as our transportation system are doing their job. That our utilities are strong, technologically advanced and dependable. And you can’t have a utilitly system, whether it’s phones or electricity or gas, that’s strong, technologically advanced and dependable if you are consistently trying to starve it in the name of consumers or customers. That’s why the job of attorney general and governor are different. Very different.

* And he made an excellent point about cleaning up government…

And we have to scour the state budget to end the boondoggles. I know everybody decries the boondoggles. The press likes to expose them. Grants going to community organizations that turn out to be just for the private profit of those who are running them. Look, it’s not a lot of money. The state budget is $35 billion. Stuff like that is in the millions. Small potatoes. But what it is, it says something about the credibility of the state. It says something about the credibility of state government if you’re wasting money.

I know that candidates’ favorite refrain is “fraud, waste and abuse.” They’re going to end fraud, waste and abuse and then when they get elected it’s the last you ever hear about it, and they start participating in fraud, waste and abuse. And I’m not here to tell you, as some politicians have before me, that if we cut fraud, waste and abuse we can cut taxes and don’t have to spend as much. That’s all wrong. It’s wrong. That’s such a miniscule part of the state government that makes no difference except that it debases state government. And people feel less about their state government when they read something like that in a newspaper and there’s no reason why we shouldn’t get rid of it.

* Another invaluable insight…

The point is, people in Illinois — and in other states; we’re not the only ones – the point is that people in this state have allowed things to go so far that they think they can get away with anything. And they have. They have. And let’s stop pointing fingers about who’s responsible for this, the legislature, the governor, the public employees – it’s irrelevant. They’re all responsible. And we’re all responsible.

Right freaking on.
Yeah, he made his share of mistakes, kicked his share of cans down the road. I could give you a very long list of all of that. But, man, the dude was a giant, and he loved every square inch of this state and had the skills to make his visions a reality.
This used to be a great state. We still are in many respects, but we’ve slipped partly because we’ve completely lost our confidence - and for good reason. Too many clueless governors and voters. Too much inertia, partisan and otherwise. Not enough vision.
I don’t know about you, but, personally, I’d vote for Big Jim if he ran again. This is exactly the sort of leader we so desperately need in Illinois right now.

- Posted by Rich Miller

Paul Ryan’s Ax Isn’t Sharp Enough

By PAUL C. BROUN Jr.

Published: March 18, 2013

Washington

THE latest budget proposal by Representative Paul D. Ryan, called “The Path to Prosperity,” is anything but. It fails to seriously address runaway government spending, the most pressing problem facing our nation. I cannot vote for something that would trick the American people into thinking that Congress is fixing Washington’s spending problem, when in actuality we’d just be allowing it to continue without end.

Supporters of the “Path to Prosperity,” including many of my fellow Republicans, say that we have to stop spending money we don’t have, an idea I promote every chance I get. But under the proposal by Mr. Ryan of Wisconsin, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, the federal government would continue to spend more than it will this year.

Spending would grow by an average of 3.4 percent annually, only slightly less than the rate under President Obama’s plan, which is 5 percent a year. After 10 years — Mr. Ryan’s target for eliminating the deficit — the “Path to Prosperity” will have spent $41 trillion, when the president’s plan would allow spending of $46 trillion. My party’s de facto position has become “we’re increasing spending, but not as much as the other guy.” That’s not good enough.

Just reducing growth in spending does almost nothing. We have to dig deeper and make profound cuts now. We cannot continue to assume that future Congresses will do our dirty work for us.

We ought to get rid of certain federal departments and agencies, stopping only to shift the role of governing back to the states, where it belongs. The Departments of Education and Energy, for example, are two bloated bureaucracies that we don’t need; their core functions would be absorbed by the states through block grants, saving taxpayers at least $500 billion over the next decade.

Constitutionally speaking, the federal government should not have a role in K-12 public education anyway. Overpaid Washington bureaucrats shouldn’t be deciding how to provide for teachers and students, whose own state and local governments are better equipped to understand their needs. A Heritage Foundation study showed that in 2010, the average salary of an Education Department employee reached $103,000 — nearly double the average public-school teacher’s salary. Let’s phase out a large portion of the department’s roughly $70 billion budget. We can transfer the remaining dollars directly to the states, where they will be used more wisely.

Let’s also abolish the Energy Department, which is one of the biggest federal culprits responsible for the mismanagement of taxpayer dollars. Without unending government backing, the Energy Department would have ceased to exist long ago because of its ineffectiveness, corruption and poor investment strategy. Taxpayers are now on the hook for hundreds of millions of squandered dollars because of failed federal loans given to green companies like Solyndra and Fisker Automotive.

The only constitutionally necessary service provided by the Energy Department is regulation of the nation’s stockpile of atomic weapons, a function that can return to the Department of Defense. Eliminating this bureaucracy would be a large, permanent spending cut, and restore energy-related venture capitalism to its natural home, the private sector.

Our spending crisis is so severe that we can’t stop at these two departments — there are more areas to cut. For example, we should also phase out the federal highway financing system and allow states to keep their own gas tax receipts. States would then be free to determine their own transportation needs and explore creative funding for roads like public-private partnerships.

As a family doctor for more than 30 years, I understand that we must look for savings in our health care system too. I recently co-sponsored legislation that would convert Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program into state-managed programs through a single federal block grant. This would save approximately $2 trillion over 10 years by capping federal funding at 2012 levels for the next 10 years and giving states an incentive to seek out and eliminate waste, fraud and abuse. The government agency closest to the consumer can most efficiently manage taxpayer dollars.

We’re not done. We must repeal Obamacare — including the associated taxes, which the Ryan budget leaves intact by assuming the enactment of tax reform later on. We’ll replace it with a market-based health care system devoid of government involvement and managed by patients and their doctors, a plan I have described in my Patient Option Act.

If we get government out of the way and put Medicare in patients’ hands by increasing contribution limits to health savings accounts, it will transform Medicare into a more flexible premium assistance program.

To cap all this off — literally — I have proposed a balanced-budget amendment that would force Congress to stick to the principle of not spending more than we take in. Passing a constitutional amendment is no easy task. While it’s a large undertaking, I’ll continue to fight for its passage. Just a few weeks ago, the House put enough pressure on the Senate to force it to produce a budget — something Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic majority leader, hadn’t attempted in over four years. If we keep up the pressure, we’ll continue to see results.

Rather than nibbling around the edges as the Ryan proposal does, we must do all of this and much more now. There is a “Path to Prosperity,” but Mr. Ryan’s budget isn’t it. The only way to protect our nation’s financial future as well as our citizens’ liberty is to stop the outrageous spending in Washington and permanently reduce the size of our overreaching federal government.

Paul C. Broun Jr., a Georgia Republican, has been a United States representative since 2007 and is a member of the Tea Party caucus in Congress
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A version of this op-ed appeared in print on March 19, 2013, on page A27 of the New York edition with the headline: Paul Ryan’s Ax Isn’t Sharp Enough.