spending – KenGeorge.org

Perceptions of the Trump Train

I like to think of myself as an observer. I watch, I read, I remember. I put my observations into “the big picture” and try to explain to myself what I see.

I was a very early supporter of Trump. When he came on the scene, I had already spent years studying and researching government. I saw the push toward globalism as a mistake. I saw the stagnant economy being orchestrated by special interests. And I saw the destruction of the middle class being done purposely. No politician, in my mind, could change the course we were on. Then came Trump and his blunt talk about immigration and trade. The two things that globalism has harnessed to advance its agenda. Oh sure, there are others, but these are the two biggies.

trump 3

I studied every issue, researched dozens of polls, looked at all the candidates, and came to an awful conclusion, that I pound all the time, as you probably know: Corruption is at the heart of all of America’s ills. From domestic spending to foreign policy, corruption drives all of government. Call it what you will….politics, the Deep State, K-Street lobbyists, or special interests….its corrupt, its unaccountable, and it appears to be unrepairable. Then came Trump…..a brash, uncouth braggart that claimed he could Make America Great Again. When I saw the reaction to Trump from so many, I immediately knew he would win. You see, Americans come in two flavors…..those that love America and those that hate America. The former is a majority, but the latter is growing from generation to generation. Those that love America, of course, have seen what has happened to the country. But its been like the proverbial frog in the pot being brought to a slow boil….we just haven’t noticed the heat being turned up. These folks, the lovers of America, wanted change. When George Bush senior was elected, they expected him to further Reagan’s policies. But I can tell you now, this is when it all began. The corruption, the globalism, and the shift in American status. When he didn’t live up to expectations he was thrown out. A new, fresh face, was elected to take over……as it turns out, one of the most corrupt individuals on the planet. His legacy was to institutionalize this corruption.

Let me stop here and explain something that my free trade friends never understood. Under Bill Clinton, we lived through some pretty good economic times. Clinton, to this day, gets credit for presiding over a robust economy. But did he? Yes, he did. But what is not understood, is our move to globalism had some terrific short-term benefits. You see, it didn’t start as a mass exodus of jobs, a loss of manufacturing, and profits held offshore. It started with lower prices. Los Angeles Port to Be Super-sized Millions of products were being shipped in at half the price of American made products. If you still had your job, you got a huge dividend……happy, happy, happy. But slowly, over time, government orchestrated the decline. I say orchestrated, because it was no accident that companies fled abroad. Unions were causing trouble, taxes were going up, regulations were out of control, and work ethic and worker demands were changing. Big business, who now looked at America as a market rather than a home, began the change. With massive government help, the multi-national was born. Companies, that their only interest is to make money and increase value, and to do it wherever and however they can, took over government. The slow boil had begun. Even when Obama came on the scene and ran for president, both flavors of Americans still wanted the change that Reagan had started. A strong, free market economy, a world super power, and a country based on its founding principles of honesty, hard work, and freedom. Obama promised “change”. obama trump The word itself was the right word. It appealed to the lovers of America, because it was what they saw as necessary. But it also appealed to the haters, as they saw it completely differently. While the former saw it as a return to ethics and accountability, the latter saw it as a social renaissance . An empowering of every minority group that expressed a grievance. For the most part, too many lovers of America ignored the past of Obama. They saw only that he was black and wanted the same things they did, and gave him their trust. Well, it not only didn’t work out for them, Obama was just as corrupt, just as supportive of the globalist’ agenda, and the change he promised was cultural, not economic.

Americans are still looking for change….at least the group that still loves this country. They are accused of wanting to return to some by gone era that no longer can be achieved….that globalism is here to stay and the culture must change with the times.

Trump!

So here comes Trump telling us he can give us that change. Of course he would get elected! After 8 years of Obama, a cultural apocalypse, and an economic malaise so destructive, the middle class has all but collapsed. Like all Americans that love this country, Trump saw the same things we all did. Immigration out of control, companies fleeing America, trade deficits at sustained, unprecedented levels, a foreign policy in retreat, radical Islam spreading, and yes, the swamp. In general, America in decline. Trump articulated the things we had been thinking and saying for years. Things must change. The same change that Reagan started and the last 4 presidents tried to stop. trump rally

But Trump did more than articulate. He spoke bluntly and without any political consideration. He spoke like a real person, like any one of us……the lovers of America! I must say, however, there is one thing that stands far above everything else, for me, when it comes to Trump. That is that he was truly honest. He had no ax to grind….he was rich. He had no special interests to satisfy…..he used his own money. He didn’t play political games…..he wasn’t a politician. This brings me to what I have observed. Trump enjoyed a very loyal, supportive base, of 30-35% of Americans. He also was trusted by another 20% that, like the base. wanted that change. So where are we now?

Trump’s support of 50-55% has fractured. There are still plenty of supporters, but some are beginning to show unsteadiness. That said, I suspect that many of these shaky supporters were never strong supporters in the first place. I don’t mean this in a critical way, but truly, they were looking for miracles. Before the election many of these were NeverTrumpers, Cruz At the 2013 Values Voter Summit. supporters, or libertarians that swallowed hard when he won, and waited. I saw it, personally. Republicans reluctantly admitting that Trump was doing conservative things and pushing for conservative policies. I say reluctantly, because they took every opportunity to find fault. Nothing was ever good enough. To this brand of supporter, short of a new American Revolution…..unless a full return to the constitution was implemented immediately, nothing could be accepted, no matter who was president. Then there’s the free traders I mentioned earlier. They still believe Globalism and free trade are synonymous. They think that globalism was and is inevitable and that we need to adapt. They accuse Trump of being an isolationist because he wants better trade deals. This leads them to conclude that Trump is stupid and out of touch. we the people Then there’s the supporter that looks at the presidency as a dictatorship. That a president should be able to get anything accomplished, after all, Obama didn’t seem to have any trouble getting his agenda implemented? Let me say this about the president. Undoubtedly, the POTUS has a lot of power. But it is far from unlimited. Unlike what the constitution outlines as presidential power, the president has the power given to him by the special interests. Does that sound like something you doubt? Of course you do. How can you make yourself believe that special interests literally control the president? Because they control the congress and the bureaucracy, thus limiting the president or empowering the president, whenever that power is needed to implement one of those special interests. Take for example Healthcare. Obama wanted to implement a national healthcare system, in 2008. Something every Republican opposed. So why do we have the ACA? Was it because a few Republicans made deals with their vote as we were told….or was it that the special interests wanted the very thing they said they opposed? Then fast forward…..why can’t it be repealed? The Republicans say they oppose it, but can’t get it done. Why? Because the special interests don’t want it repealed. So see this clearly……one president wants something nobody wants but gets it written into law, while another president wants to end it, which everybody wants, but can’t get it done. You need to see this for what it is. This is how the system works for every issue in America, of any consequence. But I digress. So many of Trump supporters can’t understand why he can’t get the ACA repealed…that he should be able to make deals like Obama did…..he should use the Bully Pulpit to convince the American people….yadda, yadda, yadda! This demonstrates the naivety of many Americans. They still haven’t grasped the premise that the government is absolutely corrupt. So they blame Trump. For Trump, its like trying to write a letter, with your hands tied behind your back. He is trying to work within the rules, while the cogs in congress are being turned by the engine of corruption. Finally, there are people who are just impatient for change that they were promised. They sit back, do nothing, and expect Trump….all by himself….will fix everything. They criticize everything he does, they say he’s not keeping his promises, they treat him like any other politician…but Trump is not that. Trump is like any one of us, only much smarter. He knows what the lovers of America want and is doing everything in his power to get us there. We must stay with him and we must stay focused on the corruption….speaking out often to make sure congress knows we know. Read the rest of my blog if you have any doubts….my 11 part series on the Clinton Foundation…..my three part series on the Uranium One scandal…..or the two-part essay on the deep state. It’s all there…..wrap yourself in the facts and spread them. I recently had the opportunity to talk to Congressman Jim Jordan about the Clinton Foundation. He asked me to send him what I had….I did. Will it matter? Probably not. He says the right things, seems sincere…but still no action. It will take thousands of us doing this to have an impact. But even then, we are up against more money than can even be imagined, and if you have learned anything about life as you make your walk through it….MONEY DRIVES EVERYTHING! Period!

Let me address one current news item that will come to demonstrate how far the corrupt government will go to stay in power and maintain the status quo. Recently, Judge Roy Moore, won the republican primary in Alabama. He defeated Mo Brooks, a sitting congressman, and Luther Strange, the republican establishment’ selection. He won fair and square in a deep red state, with a large majority of lovers of America. I could almost hear the voters words as they made their choice…..Mo Brooks is a politician…Nope!, Luther Strange is the establishment….Nope! Roy Moore….a long serving, principled judge, who absolutely loves America. Yes! Money flowed into Luther’s coffers…but it wasn’t enough. Now what I want you to see is how to look at what happened next in the context of corruption. First, you have to understand something. The republican congress hates being in the majority. At least, today, with Trump as president. You see, it was good when Obama was president because he could block whatever they did, same with the democrats…..when they had the majority and Obama was president, they too failed to move the people’s agenda. That’s how it works. They blame the other party for their perceived failures, when really they didn’t fail, everything went according to plan. They want and have adapted to a divided government. It allows them to blather on about doing the people’s work, while they continue to serve their masters……the big money special interests. But what does this have to do with Roy Moore, you ask? Everything. right AFTER Moore wins the primary, a poll comes out showing him with a 17 point lead over the democrat in the upcoming special election in December. All through the primary, the establishment told the voters that Moore couldn’t win against the democrat….then why is he 17 points up? luthor strange Time to take him down. Out comes the accusations, from so long ago that nothing could be proven one way or the other….a classic she said he said. But what is telling is that 15 minutes after the allegations were made a bevy of sitting republican senators felt compelled to weigh in and try, convict, and sentence Roy Moore to oblivion. The calls for his stepping aside were thunderous…from the right! But think of this: Senator Menendez is on trial for corruption and pedophilia and not a peep from anyone that he should resign. In fact, they’ve been trying to figure out how they can get his vote back in the senate. If that’s all there was you might just call it hypocrisy, but there’s more. The senate recently put forward their tax “reform” plan. I put reform in quotes because this is far, far from tax reform…but that’s another story. In this tax plan, the corporate tax rate has been lowered from 35% to 20%. Almost everyone agrees that this is needed. Great! Then why does McConnell insist pushing it back until 2019, after the midterm elections? Because he fully expects and wants to lose the majority in the senate. This will allow the democrats to block this tax reform, so everything can stay the same. Once again democrats and republicans working to maintain the status quo. But now you question me….if everybody wants this, why would he want to stop it? Just like the ACA, everybody wants it but the special interests. In this case, the giant multi-national corporations. Think of this. The multi-nationals like Wal-Mart, Microsoft, Apple, Dow, and dozens of others are making gazillions of dollars with the tax system we have. They pay almost no taxes, meet no regulations and pay no high labor rates. Meanwhile, all your American competitors are strapped with all those things. If you think about it….as I have….its beautiful. What a great strategy. Once they lose the senate, Trump will become neutralized for the most part. They then can campaign on Trump’s inability to keep any of his promises in 2020, and be rid of him in January of 2021. The establishment wins. And you can bet your ass, that they are working right now on a plan to make sure what happened in 2016, never happens again.
pile of money
I hope you can see from this example, just how politics and money has destroyed our democracy. Our government no longer works to protect our rights or serve our needs. It simply is a product to be bought by those with the most money.

Rest assured I will continue to do my research and present the facts to anyone that will listen. But I am not hopeful that we can change anything. We’ve changed the people, we’ve changed the party, we’ve protested, campaigned, called, written, posted, and complained. But still, nothing changes. There was a time when right here I would right: “Not until we……”, but I just can’t do it. There is nothing we can do as a people who can change things short of revolution….but even that might not be enough. Its one thing to fight a government that’s corrupt and tyrannical….its quite another to fight 50% of the population that thinks everything is perfect and should continue….the rubes on the left that can’t find their ass in a snow storm with two hands. Our best hope is to stay on the Trump Train, pick up as many stragglers as we can and ride that train for as long as we can. Trump is doing his part….we have to do ours.

Reconcilliation

A budget resolution process

appropriations committee

In my continuing effort to provide a site with simple, understandable information, here’s what I know about reconciliation. The reconciliation process is a congressional budgetary process, by which spending and taxing issues can be addressed. This process, requires a budget resolution to be part of it. The purpose of “reconciliation” is to provide instructions to committees that provide appropriations for various aspects of a budget. Their work, then, becomes part of the budget resolution.

The most commonly known fact about reconciliation is that it is a process by which any bill proceeding through congress this way, cannot be filibustered in the senate. This means any bill brought to the floors of the House or senate require only a simple majority for passage. However, not just anything can be passed through this budgetary process. Any item contained in a budgetary reconciliation bill, must affect, in some way, spending, taxing, or debt limits. This is not to say that extraneous items are totally off-limits. Technically, anything can be passed through reconciliation…..if there is no objection! In today’s political climate, this is highly unlikely. If an item is included that is extraneous, and it is objected to, it is deemed “not germane” and must be removed. This can only occur in the senate. It takes 60 votes to over ride an objection.

Reconciliation also has other rules that make it a unique process. It can be used a maximum of 3 times in a fiscal year. Once each for spending, taxing, or debt ceilings. If taxing and spending are dealt with in one bill, that is considered using it two times. I wonder why we never hear about that third qualification? Since the republican control both chambers of congress, it would seem reconciliation could be used to pass a bill that prevents a debt ceiling increase. Its comical, that when they were in the minority, they railed against a debt ceiling increase, but now, magically, it’s needed! Imagine that!

So to the point of this discussion……let me put it in the context of the failed AHCA and the coming changes to Obamacare (ACA). A vast majority of republican voters, and supported by the efforts of the Freedom Caucus in the house, wanted a “full repeal” of the ACA. The ACA is a very complex and comprehensive law. It covers thousands of topics, many having nothing to do with taxes or spending. A full repeal could never go through reconciliation. Just to be clear, the so-called 2015 repeal passed by both houses and vetoed by President Obama, was not a full repeal. Even the AHCA that was pulled from the House floor, recently, may not even gotten through the senate intact. It is to be seen that any compromise the republicans agree on, may still find difficulty getting through the senate.

If you would like to read more about reconciliation, here is an understandable site:
http://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-budget/introduction-to-budget-reconciliation

Just a short follow up to answer my final two questions that precipitated these explanations. Those final two questions asked:

4. Do you know the difference between majority rule and super majority rule?
5. As it applies to intelligence gathering do you know what the ‘gang of 8’ is?

Most of my friends said they knew what this meant……but so we all are sure.
In the context of the current political climate: Each state elects its representatives. A state has a number of House representatives equal to approximately, 1 for every 700,000 residents. That number changes, based on the total population of the United States. The number of House members is fixed at 435. So a simple majority in the House is 216, or 50% +1. In the Senate, each state elects two senators. A simple majority in the Senate is 50 +1. Since there are exactly 100 senators, there can be a tie. Ties are broken by the Vice President, providing the 50 +1 required to form a simple majority.

A super majority is often used in the context of a filibuster, but also finds itself in several parts of the constitution. A super-majority is a number of votes required in congress to pass certain types of legislation or confirmations. There are three types of super-majorities: 3/5, 2/3, or 3/4. The House has no super-majority requirements. All legislation is passed by simple majority. The senate must have 3/5, or 60 votes, to stop a filibuster (a cloture vote), for example. 2/3, or 66 votes are required to confirm appointees or ratify a treaty. And finally, 3/4 of the state legislatures are required to vote in the affirmative to pass any amendments to the constitution.

The last question was in the context of intelligence gathering. There are 16 intelligence gathering and analyzing agencies. Each has a head, and to date, only two of those heads have been appointed by president Trump. The rest are career personnel. These agencies collect what’s referred to as “raw data” as well as “metadata” for virtually all communication in the entire world. There is very limited access to this raw data. Technically, there is only one person from each agency that can view any raw data. If that person analyzes that data to be important for national security reasons, and others must have access to it, a warrant from the FISA court must be obtained. A similar procedure exists in law enforcement, but a criminal court is used for the warranting process.

In addition to the 16 people mentioned above, eight members of congress can review raw data upon request. But even they, are not allowed to see the exposed names of American citizens in intelligence data collections. Those eight members of congress are:

Speaker, Paul Ryan
House Minority Leader, Nancy Pelosi
Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell
Senate Minority Leader, Charles Schumer
House Intelligence Committee chairman, David Nunez
House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member, Adam Schiff
House Intelligence Committee chairman, Richard Burr
House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member, Mark Warner

These men are referred to as the “gang of eight”. The people in these positions change, but the positions allowed to see communication intelligence do not.

Regular Order

How is spending supposed to happen in congress

appropriations committee — A meeting of the House Appropriations Committee at a “mark-up” session

This blog is a follow-up to the previous one on the filibuster. It is in response to a question I asked on a recent FB post. “Do you understand what regular order is, in the congress?” As I stated then, much misinformation was being spread, seemingly because of a lack of understanding as to how the legislative process works. This is my attempt to educate as many as I can about that process. My last blog post discussed the senate filibuster, in the context of passing the AHCA (American Health Care Act) This post will discuss what I know about “regular order”. It certainly is not comprehensive, but made to be as concise as possible in the context of passing a Health Care reform bill.

THE BUDGETING PROCESS

Every year congress must pass a budget. This is a resolution not a law. A budget resolution sets the annual limits to spending. There are some portions of spending that, simply by law, cannot be set. This is called “mandatory” spending or like many like to call them entitlements. These are things like Medicare, Medicaid, Interest on the debt, and yes, Social Security. I’m not judging whether or not these things are entitlements, just that they represent mandatory spending that can’t be budgeted. These 4 categories represent almost half of all spending…..they cannot be cut without changing the underlying laws that created them.

The second kind of spending is called “discretionary” spending. These are the things congress can set yearly spending levels for. The biggest of these is defense and represents about 1/4 of spending. So these 5 categories now represent 3/4 of all spending, leaving only 1/4 of the budget that must carry any cuts to all spending. In the budget resolution, it is taken into account what mandatory spending must be made, then the numbers of all other spending will be debated and set, then enacted into law through a budget resolution.

Let me just say something about spending limits and just how they arrive at the amounts. At one time in the US, budgets were set by actual laws that looked at revenue as a limiting factor to spending. That changed in the 70s when “baseline budgeting” was invented. Baseline budgeting is a system of budgeting that looks only at the previous years spending to set the following years amount. Typically, whatever was spent the previous year will be increased by 1-8%. The previous year’s spending becomes the “baseline”, and it is assumed that the amount needed for the next year will be more. Rarely do they cut the previous years budgeting number, but merely the rise from the baseline. So don’t be fooled, when they say they are “cutting” the budget of a program, they are merely cutting the amount of increase, not the underlying baseline.

Once the budget resolution is set, this is when Regular order is supposed to begin. This budget resolution “authorizes” the money to be spent. Next is the necessity to “appropriate” the budgeted amount into various spending programs. For example, if the budget resolution authorizes ten billion dollars to be spent by the Department of Education, just how that money can be spent has to be done in the appropriation process. In the government there are 12 such appropriation categories.

Agriculture,
Commerce, Justice, and Science,
Defense,
Energy and Water,
Financial Services,
Homeland Security,
Interior and Environment,
Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education,
Legislative,
Military and Veterans,
State and Foreign Operations,
Transportation and Housing and Urban Development.
During regular order, each category of discretionary spending is sent to a committee that will debate and decide how the money should be spent, in accordance with the budget resolution. In this committee, priorities are discussed and just how the money will be spent is decided. Once they have completed what’s called the “mark-up”, the appropriation is sent to the floor of the House where amendments can be offered then the bill is voted on. By the way, the House is the only body that can originate spending. Of course the senate has its own process, but the actual origination of any spending must start in the House. Once each body has an appropriation bill approved, both bills wind up in a final conference committee. This is a committee chosen by the speaker of the House and minority leader and the leaders of the senate. It typically contains about 24 members chosen from all 535 congressmen, some republicans and some democrats. The conference committee then attempts to merge the two appropriations bills into one final bill. They also can make changes. When they are finished…they send that one bill to both chambers for further amendments then a final vote is taken. This then becomes the spending for the next year. This long and tedious process is supposed to be done 12 times in 1 year. It rarely happens! Even in a good year of regular order, only 3 or 4 new appropriations are completed. When an appropriation bill is not completed, before the deadline….which is October 1st, no spending can take place in that area not appropriated for. When this happens, typically a continuing resolution is agreed to. A continuing resolution (CR) is simply a document to continue the spending from the previous year, with an appropriate increase from the baseline, if that money was authorized in the budget resolution. When CRs are implemented, spending can never decrease and changes to programs cannot be made. Everything remains the same.

Presidents Obama and Bush, the men who presided over the creation of more debt than all other presidents combined

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention here something few people know. It is the reason why the national debt under Obama grew at its fastest rate in the history of our country. In fact during the 8 years of president Obama, more debt was added by the congress than all debt acquired in our history. That means that from 1787, our beginning, to 2000, the beginning of the Bush administration, the debt….. that is every dollar the US government had borrowed since 1787 had risen to 4 trillion dollars. That’s 213 years of borrowing. During the Bush term congress more that doubled this to over 9 trillion. And…….are you ready?, under the Obama term, congress doubled it again to over 19 trillion. The reason for this explosion in debt was due to the continued use of CRs and not regular order. In 2009 congress passed the largest stimulus spending in our history….$887 billion. This money had to be placed in the budget resolution for that year. Well guess what? No appropriations were made after that year.

Harry Reid

For 4 straight years Harry Reid refused to pass a new budget resolution, so congress was continually forced to pass CRs to keep the government funded. These CRs contained the stimulus spending amounts, adding a trillion dollars of debt each year.

Ok, enough bashing. What does this have to do with the AHCA. In my next post, I’ll be talking about reconciliation. But for now, know that regular order is the process of creating a budget, authorizing money to be spent, then appropriating that money to be spent in various ways. It is a complicated, tedious, and lengthy process. But it is the most important function congress has…..and it hasn’t been used for decades the way it is supposed to be. Paul Ryan promised his members and the people, that congress would return to regular order. He is trying. Understanding regular order is highly important to understanding the AHCA repeal and replace legislation. It will become more clear when I discuss reconciliation……stay tuned.

Paul Ryan