Patriot Update

Back in the August debates, former Speaker Newt Gingrich said some pretty prophetic words about the Washington Supercommittee, which never did come to a bipartisan agreement.

Gingrich said:

I think this ‘super committee’ is as dumb an idea as Washington has come up with.  The idea that 523 Senators & Congressmen are gonna sit around for 4 months while 12 brilliant people, mostly picked for political reasons, are gonna sit in some room & brilliantly come up with a trillion dollars or force us to choose between gutting our military and accepting a tax increase is irrational.  They’re gonna walk in just before Thanksgiving & say, ‘We can shoot you in the head or cut off your right leg, which do you prefer?’

In that same debate Gingrich suggested they scrap the committee & assign every subcommittee the task of finding savings, adding “And they should do it out in the open through regular legislative order and get rid of this secret, phony business!”

Somehow, at the last minute, they’ve reached some type of compromise.  For months the Democrats refuse to cut entitlements but feel very generous in cutting our military budget and the GOP refused to raise taxes.  Meanwhile we’ve been stuck in a dangerous downward spiral that had already caused our credit rating to drop this summer.

So now, supposedly, we get the Keystone Pipeline project back.  If Obama is truly serious about jobs creation, it’s the only thing that makes any sense.  Before the compromise, the previous deal was that the oil deal from Canada was “delayed”, despite the fact that supporters said the pipeline could significantly reduce U.S. dependence on Middle Eastern oil and provide up to a million jobs.

Ironically, I kind of wish the folks in Washington had consulted with Conservative game show host Chuck Woolery months ago about balancing our budget.   In a very straightforward, common sense way, Woolery recently created a video offering ways he proposes to cut out some of the PORK from our budget, including the following cuts:

• $90 million free mail for Congress
• $146 million per year 1^st Class Airfair Upgrades for Federal workers
• $3.6 billion per year to run the UN
• $200 million travel allowance for President
• $30 billion farm subsidies
• $30 billion department of energy
• $1 million per year for albino squirrel studies
• $77 billion Dept. of Education
• $10.7 billion per year Environmental Protection Agency (GREEN HEADS SPIN!)

I also believe it’s time we work on eliminating aid to foreign countries—beginning with all the Middle Eastern countries that DESPISE the United States and want all of us dead.

I looked into how all this foreign aid got started and it basically began in a good, positive way with the Marshall Plan about 50 years ago.

Originally, the Marshall Plan sought to help the suffering people of Europe rebuild their countries which had been devastated by World War II. However in 2011, foreign aid doesn’t help the US.  Acc. to an MSU report:

• Over 2 trillion dollars has been spent on US foreign aid since World War II; this amount equals 40% of America’s national debt.
• It could have been used to fight poverty in the US.
• Giving out foreign aid does not improve our national security. According to the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, many countries that receive US foreign aid often oppose pro-American actions and resolutions in the UN.
• Pakistan is suspected of using US aid money to finance their nuclear-weapons development program.
• Billions of dollars of aid have gone to the former Soviet empire, which fought a Cold War with us for 45 years.
• American taxpayers, the people who have had to foot the bill for foreign aid programs, overwhelmingly oppose foreign aid and favor large cuts in it.
• US foreign aid has not helped the countries who are recipients. According to a Clinton Admin report, most of Africa & parts of Latin America, Asia, & the Middle East are economically worse off today than they were 20 years ago, despite receiving significant amounts of US foreign aid.
• According to the UN Development Program, 70 developing countries that are aid recipients are poorer now than they were in 1980; 43 are worse off than they were in 1970.
• According to the US Agency for International Development, only a very small fraction of countries that begin to receive American aid in the 1950′s and 1960′s have become economically non-dependent.
• Foreign aid increases the likelihood that the recipient government will embark on inefficient spending instead of research and development, and investment. In fact, about 75% of foreign aid money goes to into bureaucratic institutions, solely helping the elite (not the truly needy) of the recipient country.
• The most successful developing countries have been the ones who have refused aid or who have been cut off from aid.

Another thing we could/should cut out is Planned Parenthood.  According to a Heritage Foundation report, from 2002 to 2007, Planned Parenthood and its affiliates took in a net income of $388 million more than they spent on programs and services.  Even in the midst of the recession, the president of the organization still received more than $337,000 in an annual salary and tens of thousands more in benefits and allowances.  Planned Parenthood is receiving a rolling, annual bailout, which they don’t seem to need.

Even after Andrew Breitbart filmed undercover video of fake pimps bringing in underage girls to Planned Parenthood offices nationwide, they STILL continue to receive government funding.

Along with Planned Parenthood, we should also cut out funding for NPR.  Again, despite Andrew Breitbart’s undercover footage of NPR execs trying to make multi-million dollar deals with the MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD they continue to receive government funding.

And finally we have the Department of Education.  YES, liberals, I love children and my mother was an amazing high school English/Speech/Spanish teacher for over 44 years.

The Department of Education has little to do with truly caring about children OR teachers.

According to the Heritage Foundation, since 1985, inflation-adjusted federal spending on K-12 education has increased 138 percent. Yet, indicators of educational improvement such as increases in academic achievement and graduation rates have remained flat.

Despite the evidence that more spending is not the answer to increasing academic achievement, Obama wants to increase funding for the Department of Education, topping $77 billion.  The budget increase comes on top of last year’s $100 billion stimulus package for the Department of Education.

The solution to all of this—in my simple, humble opinion—is that rather than increases in federal spending, threatening to tax us to death and/or threatening to defund our military, take away people’s Social Security checks etc, Congress and the Obama administration should focus on streamlining and reforming all federally funded programs to better serve the American People.

Hopefully the big Washington Compromise will work—but even typing those two words together just doesn’t seem to make much sense these days…sigh.