Legislative Inertia

Posted on October 21, 2005 | Comments Off on Legislative Inertia

Senator Tom Coburn offered several amendments to an appropriations bill yesterday. The most notable of these would have saved $454 million by cutting two dubious pork projects in Alaska. The fury Coburn aroused in his colleagues bordered on the absurd. Senator Patty Murray of Washington made threats to Coburn and anyone who voted with him. Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska actually threatened to resign on the Senate floor.

Keep in mind that, from the current $2.5 trillion federal budget, you need four decimal places before that $454 million even shows up.

The amendment failed by 15-82, a margin of 67 votes. The Senate can’t even bear to cut 0.02% of the federal budget without someone threatening to resign. Is it really that hard?

Grow up, children.

Excellent coverage of the whole fiasco is at The Club for Growth, The Daily Kos, and at National Journal.

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Intelligent Design

Posted on October 12, 2005 | Comments Off on Intelligent Design

Intelligent Design has become a trendy idea in the last few years. In short, it states that nature and life are simply too complex to have arisen spontaneously. A “designer,” i.e. God, simply has to exist.

How does anybody know that?

They don’t. Nobody does. Despite all of mankind’s achievements, we have yet to figure out the origins of life. Nobody is happy with this conclusion, so some people have simply made up answers to fill in the blanks.

That’s where every religion has gotten its unique creation story. That dissatisfaction is also the root of Intelligent Design. I want to know where we came from as much as anybody, but I’m afraid I just don’t know.

So let’s admit it. It’s not that hard. I know it’s not satisfying, but that’s the way it is.

There is a lot of excellent writing on Intelligent Design, especially by my fellow travellers at Reason. While they may be more eloquent than I, it’s frustrating that no one ever makes that single most persuasive argument: We don’t know. Accept it. It’s ok.

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Posted in Science, The Old Religion

The Tax Code

Posted on September 29, 2005 | Comments Off on The Tax Code

According to CNN, the federal tax code stands at nearly 100,000 pages, “with a word length that is about 10 times the size of the standard English version of the Bible.”

Wow.

Surely we can do better than that. Both parties complain about the complexity of our tax code, so why not do something about it?

Turns out they are, just in the wrong direction. Reps. Dreier and Berman are proposing a targeted tax break for filmmakers, and President Bush is proposing a tax break for casinos in the Gulf region.

I’m all for lower taxes, but this is ridiculous. Instead of a cut for a few people here and a few there, why not do away with all exemptions and special treatment and just charge everyone the same rate?

Tax avoidance would be almost impossible. The entire tax code could fit on one page. Imagine that, being able to do your own taxes. Tax rates would almost certainly go down due to popular pressure since everyone would have to pay.

The only downside is that H&R Block would probably go out of business.

Well, that and it probably wouldn’t do a thing about the real problem, which is spending. I noted some of the difficulties with that yesterday.

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Posted in Economics, Taxation

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Is this Grounds for Pessimism?

Posted on September 28, 2005 | 3 comments

The budget for the federal government is currently over $2.5 trillion. Just think about that for a second.

Now it gets worse.

Not too long ago, I attended a meeting on the Hill with several Republicans. They were very proud that they had proposed over $40 billion in budget cuts for FY 2006.

Then someone else at the meeting reminded them of two things. First, increases elsewhere more than negated their proposed cuts. Government was still going to grow. Second, $40 billion isn’t even a rounding error when you’re talking $2.5 trillion.

The Republicans were very offended when this was pointed out.

Then within two weeks, almost all of the proposed spending cuts were eliminated.

Now with the current round of hurricane relief spending, history is repeating itself almost exactly with the RSC’s “Operation Offset.”

So it goes.

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Posted in Economics, Political Animals

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Big Day

Posted on September 28, 2005 | Comments Off on Big Day

Today was a big day in Washington. Tom DeLay was indicted, John Roberts is on the cusp of confirmation, NASA was reauthorized at a mere $16.6 billion/year… and I have resumed my long dormant blogging career.

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Posted in Housekeeping

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