Phot by Amanda M Hatfield

Congressional members high tailed it out of Washington after passing a debt limit agreement, but Democrats Steve Israel and Tim Bishop wasted no time in holding a press conference at MacArthur airport on Long Island to blame Republicans for a crisis they created.

“They’re now injecting ideology into our runways,” Rep. Steve Israel, D-Dix Hills, said of Republicans in the House. “They’ve allowed Congress to return home without reauthorizing critical FAA airport safety.”

Wow, that sounds pretty serious. Those Republicans are at it again working hard to make America unsafe.

“Ask yourself if there’s a single company in this country that would solve a $16 million problem at the expense to their corporation of $1.2 billion,” said Bishop, a member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. “No, the answer is absolutely not.”

Tim Bishop, a man who has spent his entire career in academia and government is now an expert on what private businesses would do in a given situation. But as we have all learned by now, that when Democrats lips are moving and they are calling people terrorists (which you know are never real terrorists), hostage takers, racists, etc., etc. that they are probably covering up the real issue.

The Two Real  Issues

As you have probably guessed by now the issues are not safety and they are not about foolish fiscal management. The issues are a Democrat union power grab and wasteful spending. First, the union issue.

The House passed an FAA funding bill that the Democrats in the Senate, led by Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, stopped cold, and then, of course, blamed the Republicans. The labor issue was described by the New York Times as follows:

The House also passed a long-term F.A.A. bill that included a measure to repeal a rule of the National Mediation Board, which oversees union and labor issues in the airline and railroad industries. The new rule, which passed after President Obama appointed two of the board’s three members, reversed a 76-year-old rule and made it easier for unions to win a representation election. Under the old rule, workers who did not vote were counted as “no” votes; under the new rule, only those casting ballots were counted.

So we have a labor rule that had been in place since 1935, on how union representation elections would be conducted. President Obama appoints two far left members to the National Mediation Board and they reverse the rule. Unions represent only about 7% of workers in the private sector but they are bedrock supporters for the Democratic Party. While Obama tries to refashion America in his own image, the Democrats blocked this bill for that reason and somehow it is the Republicans who are the villains.  The Republicans keep doing what they were elected to do, they keep passing legislation in the House; the Democrats do not seem to pass anything and they block whatever legislation the Republicans pass. Who do you think is the problem?

Wasteful Spending

The other issue concerns funding for a program called Essential Air Service (EAS). EAS, by law, was supposed to expire twenty three years ago, but Congress keeps it alive. It was created after Jimmy Carter deregulated the airlines in 1978 as a way to ease the impact on rural airports by subsidizing them over the ten years after deregulation. The budget for EAS has grown from $50 to $200 million. This program should be eliminated. Those heartless Republicans wanted to cut $16.5 million from the program. The Republicans said that in the overall scheme of things it’s not a lot of money, but we have to start somewhere. Tim “I haven’t found a program I can cut” Bishop naturally jumped in to call the move foolhardy. Well, just what is the EAS?

Essential Air Service

This program subsidizes air service to 140 airports around the country. Here are some examples:

• An airport in Lewiston, Montana. In 2007 it reported that it averages 0.6 passengers per flight. In other words, for every ten flights, six of them had ONE passenger and four of them took off EMPTY! You, my fellow Americans are paying for this.
• Three airports in Kansas in Dodge City, Garden City, and Liberal (no pun) are all within 75 miles of each other and yet we subsidize all three
• Chuck Schumer’s favorites in Messina, Plattsburgh, Ogdenburg, and Saranac Lake are about as close to the large airports in Montreal and Ottawa as Stamford, Connecticut is to JFK airport in New York.

Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., issued a typical defense of EAS, which supports service to six airports in New York. “There is no question about it,” he said. “Access to air travel is good for businesses, good for jobs, and good for the financial health of the community.”

The politburo has spoken. The central committee of the Democrat party has decided which airports are important and which ones are not, the free market be damned.

Okay but what about places were there are no alternatives such as the 45 subsidized airports in Alaska? In Alaska there are no Interstate highways. The Alaska Railroad only runs from May to September, and air travel is the only transportation available to some remote areas. Surely these places deserve the subsidy. Do they?

In Alaska there is something called the Alaska Permanent Fund, which was created at about the time the North Slope opened up to oil exploration. It collects about 25% of the oil royalties and invests it for Alaska and Alaskans. As of 2008 there was about $28 billion in that fund. There is also the Permanent Fund Dividend which is an annual payment from that fund to Alaskans and in 2010 it paid out $1,281 to every Alaskan who was eligible. If 45 airports, that benefit Alaskans, are in need of a subsidy, why not use this fund to subsidize it instead of using the taxes of someone in New Jersey? The same should go for other states. It’s called the Tenth Amendment. If we eliminate this program, as Congress said it should be eliminated after 1988, we could save $200 million. If we can’t agree to save $200 million, how are we going to save $2 trillion?

Circling back to Mr. Bishop’s remarks, “Ask yourself if there’s a single company in this country that would solve a $16 million problem at the expense to their corporation of $1.2 billion,” it is chutzpah at its highest. The FAA is losing $1.2 billion in tax revenue during this shutdown because Tim Bishop, Steve Israel, Chuck Schumer can’t stand the idea that their union power grab or their automatic pork would be curtailed. As a result jobs are on hold, construction projects stopped, because they won’t even allow a $16.5 million cut, let alone my suggestion to eliminate the whole $200 million. To hold a press conference to blame anyone but themselves is absolutely shameless, but then where is the news in that?

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.

When President Obama and his team stood before their supporters and introduced ObamaCare you could almost hear them sing in unison the Carly Simon song, “Nobody does it better…”.  They were going to bring us the health care we had been waiting for.  Magically covering every soul in America whether they wanted it or not.  If they did not, the government would be just like granny used to be, “Open wide, this won’t hurt a bit.”  Come to think of it, was that granny or… never mind.

One of the miracles of ObamaCare was to be health care for those with pre-existing conditions.  That such people could live in our country without health care was a blight that had to be corrected.  Despite the fact that many parts of ObamaCare don’t kick in until 2014, after all we have to get a running start on the tax revenues to get this beast off the ground, this was an issue that could not wait.

So the Health and Human Services Department was blessed with the ability to create their own insurance and get it out to the masses desperately waiting with hope, for change.  The temporary program, which runs until 2014 when the rest of ObamaCare kicks in, is only projected to cost a mere $5 billion.  Imagine that, the word “billion” preceded by a single digit number.  How frugal! How thrifty!  In return it would rescue 375,000 poor souls the first year and 400,000 per year afterward.  And woe be to any insurance company that dropped someone so they would be forced to go with the government program, they would get the bill!

With all of the glorious pieces in place Team Obama was ready to prove what they had said all along.  As soon as the American public sees ObamaCare in action they will not believe how they lived without it all these years.

So they travelled to North Dakota and signed up one person.  Yes, folks, one.  That is not a typo and it is not followed by the word “billion”, “million”, “thousand”, or “hundred”.  A solitary, single person in all of North Dakota.

Well that must just be an anomaly, there aren’t that many people in North Dakota anyway.  So the team moved on to West Virginia where they did better by a factor of four.  Four people, that is, bringing the program’s total to five.

Undaunted, they pressed on to a more populous state;  Minnesota, a state with 5.2 million residents.  Surely, they would find plenty of people to sign up for this great new program, and they did, relatively speaking.  They found fifteen people in Minnesota, which meant after quadrupling the program in West Virginia, they tripled it again in Minnesota.  I can hear Robert Gibbs extolling these numbers now, the multiples that is, not the raw numbers. Indiana was the next fertile ground to till.  And, as amazing as this may sound they found three times as many more people, sixty-three, in Indiana as they had in the other three states combined;  an overwhelming success.  Now they were ready for the big time, Texas.

In Texas, they would be fishing in a pool of 24.7 million people and lo and behold, they caught 393 of them.  Hot diggity!  By November 1, across the country they had signed up 8,011 people.  Okay, okay, it’s not 375,000 but it is not zero either.  Sheesh!  What a bunch of complainers. 

Not to let any failed program die a natural death, the Obama administration is prepared to tweak the program to attract more people.  It is going to cut premiums 20% and expand benefits.  When you are broke and you can’t get more broke fast enough, just remember you can always provide more costly benefits for less offsetting revenue to pay for it, to encourage more people to help you break the bank.

On a more serious note, here is how the Wall Street Journal sums it up.

Pre-existing conditions sometimes do lead to genuine hardships, and polls show that voters are worried about the relatively rare horror stories. More modest fixes could bring more stability to the individual market, while Republicans support a boost in funding for the high-risk pools that 35 states offer as a safety net. The government didn’t need to annex a sixth of the economy and create a multitrillion-dollar entitlement to help 8,011 people.

Well, Nancy, now that we know what’s in it.  Can we repeal the damn thing?

Baby's Not Happy About the Stimulus Bill She's Stuck With

The colorful brochure arrived in the mail today titled, “Fighting For Long Island.”  In it Congressman Tim Bishop extols the virtues of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and how much bacon he brought home for the district.  Inside the folder is a map of the 1st Congressional District with callout balloons showing all the locations where stimulus money will land.  On first blush one is tempted to think, good job Congressman!  But then I reached for the calculator.

By the Numbers

If you take the $787 billion and divide it by the 535 members of Congress (425 Congressman and 100 Senators) the stimulus bill works out to $1.47 billion per member.  That’s a lot of dough.  I then took out my calculator and tallied up all the monies on the map that “CONGRESSMAN TIM BISHOP Delivers Economic Recovery Funds To Long Island.”  Just to be sure, I checked my numbers three times and the projects added up to $274 million. That’s not good.  That means that our Congressman brought home less than 19% of his share, which means that a lot more backslapping members of Congress got more than their share.  Throw into the mix that every Republican voted against the bill and probably were not considered too kindly on the receiving end, then we really got short changed.

Money In vs. Money Out

Although there are many people who like to believe that Uncle Sam is really some independently wealthy tycoon who showers his nieces and nephews with his largess, the sad reality is that the money all comes from us.  So I wondered how much do we send to the Treasury?

The federal government does a pretty good job of concealing how taxes are broken down by congressional district, which is understandable as accountability at election time can be problematic.  In 2004 the First Congressional District in New York ranked 60th in the nation in average income tax liability per tax return, at $8,310 per return.  What percentile is that?  Let’s see 60 out of 435 comes out to be about the 14th percentile, well above the midpoint.  How much stimulus did our esteemed representative bring home?  Somewhere around the 81st percentile well below the midpoint.  So the bottom line is that our Congressman voted to have his constituents pay a very large share of stimulus money that will go to every other part of the country, while we spend years working off the debt.  Brilliant!

Historically, New York gets about $0.79 from the federal government for every $1 that New Yorkers pay in taxes.  So why do New Yorkers keep overwhelmingly electing Democrats to Congress who love to increase taxes that ultimately end up being sent to other states?  Who are they working for (perhaps themselves)?

The Stimulus Was Really About Jobs

So let’s not get bogged down in costs when it’s jobs we’re really talking about.  After all, passing the stimulus would keep the unemployment rate at 8% instead of 9% without it.  Oops, it’s already at 9.5% and climbing.

Of all the projects identified on the map of the district, one had an actual figure, in bold, stating that it would create 1,000 jobs.  That’s a nice figure, but let’s put it in perspective.  There are about 233,000 people employed in the district. At a 9.5% unemployment rate that would mean about 22,135 jobs have been lost in this recession.  So creating 1,000 jobs equates to about 0.4% employment.  The particular project that was identifed with creating these 1,000 jobs was getting $184.3 million in stimulus money or two-thirds of all the stimulus in the district.  That works out to us spending $187,300 per job created.  Call me a conservative, but somehow I think that if we cut taxes by $184.3 million we would create a lot more than 1,000 jobs.  But what we will have to do is raise taxes to cover the $184.3 million that we are spending to create these jobs which will probably turn right around and kill them or an equivalent number.

What Federalism Means to Me

Here is a “top ten” list of stimulus projects compiled by Senator Tom Coburn [R-OK]:

1. “Free” Stimulus Money Results in Higher Utility Costs for Residents of Perkins, Oklahoma
2. FutureGen: The Stimulus Earmark that Wasn’t, Becomes the Costliest Pork Project in History
3. Little-Used “Shovel-Ready” Bridges in Rural Wisconsin Given Priority Over Widely Used Structurally Deficient Bridges
4. $800,000 for little-used Johnstown, Pennsylvania airport to repave a back-up runway; the “Airport for Nobody” Has Already Received Tens of Millions in Taxpayer dollars
5. $3.4 Million for Wildlife “Eco-Passage” in Florida; Project Still May Take Years to Finish
6. Nevada Non-Profit Gets Weatherization Contract After Being Fired For Same Work
7. Non-Existent Oklahoma Lake in Line for Over $1 Million To Construct a New Guardrail
8. Taxpayers Taken for a Ride: Nearly $10 Million to be Spent to Renovate a Century Old Train Station that Hasn’t Been Used in 30 Years
9. Ten Thousand Dead People Get Stimulus Checks, Social Security Administration Blames a Tough Deadline
10. Town of Union, New York, Encouraged to Spend Money It Did Not Request For a Homelessness Problem It Does Not Have

Now if someone in Florida (No. 5) want to spend $3.4 million for a wildlife “eco-passage” (i.e., roadway tunnel for turtles)  project, fine.  The good people of Florida can pay for it.  If the people of John Murtha’s district  want to spend $800,000 (No. 4)  to repave a backup runway in Johnstown, fine.  Let those folks pay for it.

If it doesn’t cross a state line, or have a benefit for ALL Americans, it’s not the federal government’s business.  That is my litmus test for federalism.  There is nothing more idiotic than having me pay for your project while you pay for mine.  Because it comes down to a perpetual power grab where those who stay in the government the longest get everyone to pay for their projects (so their constituents will re-elect them) and everyone else gets the bill.  Just ask yourself how many federal functions have been moved to West Virginia (Robert Byrd 50+ years in the Senate).  How much pork goes in to John Murtha’s district (38 years in Congress).

Spinning it for All it’s Worth

So look for the brightly colored brochure from your Congressman crowing about how many stimulus dollars they brought home, but just remember, if your Congressman hasn’t been serving for 20 years, he or she probably got fleeced and you got screwed.  Enjoy holding the bag.