Tag: spending (page 2)

"Balancing the budget" by killing the dollar bill and forcing Americans to carry little burlap bags full of dollar coins like it is the 12th century, not the 21st?  I know this is RightMichigan.com, not 30 Rockefeller Center, but... Seriously?

According to Roll Call, that's the proposal being floated by a "Republican" Congressman from Arizona by the name of Dave Schweikart.  (Because the last time Republicans followed the lead of an Arizonan it worked out so well.  (ZING!))

Schweikart (pictured at right swimming in cold, hard home-state-mined cash) claims that burning all the paper money and forcing Americans to use those gold colored copper one-dollar coins (you know, the ones you immediately hand back to the cashier or the bank teller asking for "real money" every time she tries to hand it to you?) will help balance the budget by saving less than $200 million a year.  Coins are more durable, the argument goes, so they'd last longer and cost less to reproduce.

Yeah they last longer.  Because they sit in the bottom of our sock drawers since you'd have to lug around eight pounds of metal to buy a freaking Big Mac!  The American people have had the option -paper or coin--for years.   We've chosen lighter pockets and fewer trips to the chiropractor.

Camp and Upton sit on the powerful Super Committee and have not yet provided any clear inclination that they back this expensive, onerous, poorly thought out  bit of cow-towing to Arizonan special interests (I'll get there, bear with me), but its just a sneakily stupid enough of an idea I figured it'd be worth raising the red flag.

Please read more below the fold.

From the AP

  The House on Thursday voted to allow the government to go $1.9 trillion deeper in debt -- or about $6,000 more for every U.S. resident. The measure, approved 217-212, would raise the cap on federal borrowing to $14.3 trillion. That's enough to keep Congress from having to vote again before the November elections on an issue that is feeding a sense among voters that the government is spending too much and putting future generations under a mountain of debt to do it.

    Already, the accumulated debt amounts to roughly $40,000 per person. And the debt is increasingly held by foreign nations such as China.

    Passage of the bill would send it to President Barack Obama, who will sign it to avoid a first-ever, market-rattling default on U.S. obligations.

    "I can't think of a more reckless or irresponsible act. Defaulting is not an option," said Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass. "If the United States defaults, investors will lose confidence that the U.S. will honor its debts in the future.

    Democrats barely passed it through the Senate last week over a unanimous "no" vote from GOP members present.

I've said for almost four years that the Republican Party is at a crossroads, mainly due to fiscal issues. It can follow the lead of the Republican Study Committee, Mike Pence, Jim DeMint, and Jeb Hensarling in its opposition to deficit spending, or it can follow the lead of Ted Stevens, George W Bush, and Charlie Crist in their support for big spending policies. The choice made here, will determine whether the GOP can take the house back in 2010, and the senate back in 2012 or 2014. It will also determine if Obama will be a one-termer. The bailout in 2008 turned the election from a close race to an ass kicking. The fiscal policies in 2006 caused an ass kicking. Democrat-lite policies from the GOP do not work. Why vote for democrat-lite when the real thing is always available.

While I understand that what works in one community does not always work in another, basic principles should always apply, and that they should be less government and more freedom.

Many in the GOP are starting to get that message again with Obama's radical leftism, Mike Pence having a more visible role, Ted Stevens being defeated, and George W Bush being gone. Starting being the operative word. There's still a lot of trust that needs to be earned, and nobody trusts the government right now. That's why we have the tea parties. That's why the calls are flooding the offices. That's why people are involved in politics who have not been involved.

Detroit is in the eye of the storm...

Few government reformers have taken on a more impossible task than Detroit Public Schools Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb, who is trying to restore fiscal and functional sanity to the national disgrace that is the Detroit Public Schools. Now, Bobb is being sued by a defiant Detroit School Board determined to protect the status quo that they created and have benefited from.

Kudos to Attorney General Mike Cox, who will defend Bobb against the School Board's retaliatory suit.

Detroit Mayor Bing, meanwhile, is facing a fierce, daily battle with Detroit's unionized city employees, who believe they should be immune from the City's 22% unemployment rate, plummeting population, and evaporating tax base. These unions are more highly compensated than employees in similar cities (according to a Detroit Free Press study), but they won't concede a penny in adjusted benefits or pay.

Meanwhile, in the suburbs...

As you know, the Michigan Legislature this week approved the governor's Executive Order to resolve a deficit of more than $1 billion for the current fiscal year. This is only the first step in addressing our state's overarching budget crisis.

Be ready.

To the thousands of people across Michigan who attended the Tea Parties on April 15 - be ready.  Despite the fact that the mainstream media under-reported your passion for smaller, more reasonable government, you know who you are.  Standing on the steps of Michigan's Capitol, I felt the passion of your convictions. You came to the Capitol not to rally against anyone, but to stand up for an idea - that government must live within its means.  Now I encourage you to be ready to put your convictions to work and encourage a new direction for our state government.

For example, you say the roads are in rough shape? Cushingberry has a solution: Hike the gas tax by 50 cents per gallon. The state has a spending problem? George cosponsored a Constitutional amendment to repeal the ban on a graduated income tax.

But Cush may want to think twice about his latest idea, imposing a tax on doctors who refuse to take Medicaid patients, as reported in the May 5 MIRS newsletter (subscription required). They refuse because the state pays only 60-cents on the dollar compared to the price-controlled Medicare rates, which supposedly reflect market rates. Also, getting paid for Medicaid patients is a huge administrative hassle.

But taxing those M.D. "slackers" would likely drive more docs out of business or out of the state, adding to a growing state physician shortage that's already a huge problem according to a report from the Michigan Department of Community Health, coincidentally released the day before Cush spoke the T-word to doctors.

The title of the report says it all: "Michigan Faces Serious Shortage of Physicians." Among other things the press release accompanying the report notes, "The number of new primary care physicians has just barely kept pace with the number of primary care physicians leaving the workforce in the past few years," and "just 47 percent of active physicians plan to practice medicine for one to 10 more years, compared to 41 percent of physicians surveyed in 2007."