Congress deals a blow to 'honest budgeting'

Chicago IL Saturday AM, March 28, 2009

Editors, Washington Post

Gentlepeople:

The Washington Post Thursday, March 26 Article "Congress deals a blow to 'honest budgeting'" notes Congressional leaders "were spooked by a Congressional Budget Office analysis of President Obama's $3.6 trillion proposal that found the government would run a deficit of $9.3 trillion... over the next decade," adding that Obama's budget "was a 10-year financial plan" that "endeavored to be more honest."

Some might doubt the honesty of a 10-year plan offered by someone constitutionally limited to eight years of office, but this man wrote two autobiographies before he was 50 years old, so I guess it's all right.

Even a single autobiography at this age would be audacious considering the thin experience pool it had to work with: four crucial pre-teen years slogging thru the mud of Indonesia, eight years as an Illinois state senator (a job requiring no more skill than a third string Washington Redskins jock strap attendant, without the responsibility.) Beyond that, it was 'Community Activist', a Chicago euphemism for Democrat vote hustler.

The article continues approvingly describing Obama's budget contributions such as putting aside "$250 billion for more funding for fiscal stabilization" and "providing relief from the alternative minimum tax." This is a remarkable performance from someone who has never met a payroll, whose most important management duty of his life has been organizing senate office Christmas parties, and who made his first buck-stops-here decision only ten weeks ago. The lightness of this resume is even more startling compared with three of his four immediate predecessors: multiple term governors of the largest, second-largest, and 30th-largest states. Even the incredibly incompetent George W Bush was managing partner for 5 years of a private sector entity with a $60 million annual payroll.

Next, the Post notes that Mr. Obama and the Democrats in Congress "want to spend more on education, energy and other popular programs." A quick computer enabled search of the United States Constitution shows that of its 8,000 words, not one of them is 'education' or 'energy'. Could the Democrats be proposing evading the Constitution?

Ah, but you say: "General welfare clause" to which James Madison, in his Federalist #41 wrote: "Some [Constitution critics] ... have grounded a very fierce attack against the Constitution, on the language in which it is defined. It has been urged and echoed, that the power to "provide for the... general welfare of the United States" amounts to an unlimited commission to exercise every power which may be alleged to be necessary for the... general welfare.... "Had no other... definition of the powers of the Congress been found in the Constitution... the authors of the objection might have had some color for it.... But what color can the objection have, when a specification of the objects alluded to by these general terms immediately follows, and is not even separated by a longer pause than a semicolon?"

And sure enough, following that semicolon are 17 specific clauses defining what Congress can do, but again no mention of the words education or energy, nor health, homeland, housing, transportation, agriculture, or security, either.

Next The Post grumps that neither Mr. Obama nor Congressional Democrats "want to level with voters about the need to pay for such programs (Education, energy, etc) through increased taxes." Even this proposition gets cloudy when you consider that the Commerce Department's 2009 Statistical Abstract of the United States shows 65% of the $2.3 trillion total of the US government income in 2007 came from the bank accounts of a very small portion of voters, employers, and even this group is further special in that it can pass on the cost of these taxes to their customers, a pretty much constantly growing segment of a growing national economy, all but eliminating the need for ballot box influence.

A national political commentator recently suggested that rather than the federal government spending $trillions to jump start the economy, wouldn't leaving that 65% of federal income undisturbed with the voters do an even better job? But of course that would allow no 'redistribution', and on top of that, the voters might save it instead of spend it - a practice you could never accuse the federal government of.

According to generally accepted, natural, fundamental laws of economics, what the President and Democrat Leaders of Congress are proposing will only make things worse, unavoidably leading to the country failing, at which point the President can announce (with the aid of his ever present teleprompter, confident smile, and perfect delivery): "The country is too big to fail. To prevent it, we are nationalizing the entire economy: every private sector organization is hereby made a unit of the federal government, every citizen, and non-citizen, are now employees of the federal government, everyone has equal income, and healthcare. May the force be with us."

Arnold H Nelson 5056 North Marine Drive Chicago, IL 60640