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One Way the Government Wastes $100 Billion

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The national debt just eclipsed $22 trillion, so wasting $100 billion per year seems small in comparison, but a government watchdog says federal agencies are wasting huge sums of money to ensure they keep getting even more.

It’s called “use it or lose it” spending.  Agencies get a certain amount of money allotted each year in federal spending, and as the fiscal year draws to a close, the spending tends to ramp up dramatically.

“The federal agency heads spend down their budgets this year so they get the same or more money appropriated by Congress for the next year,” said Adam Andrzejewski, founder and CEO at openthebooks.com.

In September 2018 alone, Andrzejewski reports that federal agencies shelled out nearly $100 billion.  Twenty percent of of the annual budget went towards this spending.

“In the last week, federal agencies spent $53 billion on contracts.  This was roughly one out of every ten dollars spent on the year was spent on this last week,” said Andrzejewski.

Listen to the full podcast as Andrzejewski offers examples of how that taxpayer money was spent at the end of the year and what he thinks of President Trump’s budget blueprint that calls for a five percent spending cut in Fiscal Year 2020.

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Both Parties Ignoring Massive Debt & Waste

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President Trump never mentioned the national debt, the federal deficit. or wasteful spending in his State of the Union message, and Democrats also dodged the issues in their response.  A leading fiscal watchdog says that was a big mistake.

“I really think the president missed an opportunity here to take his own party to task on spending,” said Adam Andrzejewski, CEO and Founder of OpentheBooks.com.

Andrzejewski joined dozens of other conservative allies in taking out an ad in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, imploring Trump to address the issue.  The letter included many former lawmakers and public officials, including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese III.

The base of his party wants the president to hone the budget.  They want him to go after waste, fraud, corruption, and abuse,” said Andrzejewski.

Trump is hamstrung on the issue in multiple ways:  He refuses to reform entitlements and Democrats now control the U.S. House of Representatives.  Andrzejewski says the president is also facing stiff resistance within his own administration to his call for five percent spending cuts.

“We hear that the cabinet secretaries aren’t serious about the five percent cuts.  That’s the purpose of coming back to this topic to encourage the president to really make this a signature part of his administration,” said Andrzejewski.

Andrzejewski says Trump could also pressure Congress to cut way back on the $600 billion spent every year on grants.  Those grants include $1.4 to teach sex education to California prostitutes, and nearly a million dollars each for Cornell University to study where it hurts most to get stung by a bee and Harvard to breed pugilistic mice.

He also says taxpayers lost $136 billion on mistaken payments and that the average pay and benefits for a federal bureaucrat now exceeds $100,000.

Listen to the full podcast to hear Andrzejewski explain other bad habits in Washington that cost us money and how citizens must be the ones to demand better.

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Green Deal or Con Job?

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On Friday, supporters of the Green New Deal released details that one conservative analyst says is proof that the “green agenda” is not about the climate at all but rather a major push for a bigger and more powerful government.

“There’s some real tells in here. It’s not about the climate. There’s no assertion (about) what the temperature would be or that the temperature would be any lower.
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“It’s in the name of climate change but there’s something immoral about imposing policies in the name of averting a catastrophe that you don’t claim – and no one claims – would actually impact the alleged looming catastrophe,” said Competitive Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow Christopher C. Horner.

The Green New Deal calls for government-guaranteed jobs and health care for everyone, and safety net for those unable and even those unable to work.

The plan also calls for the end to fossil fuels by 2030 the hope that air travel would also be unnecessary by then. Supporters says paying for it up front is not critical because of the economic transformation resulting from an economy based on renewable fuels.

Listen to the full podcast to hear Horner discuss whether renewables can bring about an economic boom and why he believes just laughing off this proposal would be a very mistake.

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Sec. Zinke Exits with Mixed Record

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Ryan Zinke is officially out as Secretary of the Interior, and while President Trump looks for a successor, a conservative policy expert says Zinke’s tenure was marked by some excellent policies and a major missed opportunity.

“Overall, I’d give him about a C-plus.  It being a new year, let’s be generous – a B-minus,” said National Center for Public Policy Research Senior Fellow Bonner Cohen.

Cohen says he’s greatly disappointed that Zinke to change the government mindset on federal lands.

“Where I think he fell short is (that) Zinke is wedded to the whole idea of government ownership of land.  He opposes the transfer of these millions and millions and millions of acres of land, primarily in the west, either to the private sector or to the states in which those lands are located to dispose of and manage as they see fit,” said Cohen.

The government oversees more than 250 million acres of land, including 87 percent of Nevada and 63 percent of both Utah and Idaho.

“That puts enormous strains on local, rural communities because they have no tax base.  They can’t spend public funds on schools, infrastructure, roads, bridges because those funds have to come from private property taxes and there’s practically no private property in those places,” said Cohen.

But Cohen is thrilled with the results of Zinke’s efforts to boost domestic energy production.

“In keeping with President Trump’s policy of making the United States the world’s greatest energy producer, he opened up more areas on public lands for oil, gas, and coal exploration.

“This is excellent because it now means that the United States is the world’s largest producer of oil and natural gas.  We have overtaken Russia in natural gas production and we have overtaken both Russia and Saudi Arabia in oil production,” said Cohen.

Cohen is also generally pleased with Zinke for reining in the size of some huge swaths of land in the western U.S. known as national monuments.

“What was originally designed to protect sacred and cultural sites for Native Americans.  This simply became a political grab bag and an opportunity to go out and lock up more and more land.  The Trump administration cut this back,”Cohen.

Listen to the full podcast to hear more of Cohen’s assessment of the Zinke record and hear his list of people he considers excellent choices to lead the Department of the Interior going forward.

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Are Students Led Astray by History Book Bias?

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History textbooks for high school and college students increasingly show a bias that is impacting how teenagers and young adults view America and it’s role in the world, according to the Education and Research Institute.

ERI is sponsoring “The American History Book Project,” to point out and correct major factual errors and ideological bias in some of the most commonly used textbooks.  The first one in the cross hairs is “The American Pageant” by David M. Kennedy, Lizabeth Cohen, and Thomas A. Bailey.

ERI Chairman Daniel Oliver says “The American Pageant” is the first target because of how widely it is used, especially in high school advanced placement classes.

“So the best students are getting a very warped view of American history,” said Oliver.

And even when the details of history fade from memory, Oliver fears the bias in the textbooks lingers in the minds of students and informs their worldviews.

“They have a sense after reading textbooks like this that business is bad and government is good.  Government will protect you against greedy businessmen,” said Oliver.

Listen to the full podcast to hear what Oliver sees as the most egregious bias in “The American Pageant” and what he hopes to achieve by calling attention to the indoctrination he believes is going on in our schools.

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Country Time vs. Big Government, Media in Bed with Leakers, Suicide Crisis

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After discussing the Washington Capitals ending a 26-year title drought in the nation’s capital, Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America applaud Country Time for vowing to pay the fines and permit fees for kids hassled by the government for running lemonade stands without business licenses.  They’re also disgusted as a 57-year-old married man with a high staff position for the Senate Intelligence Committee is charged with leaking classified information to two reporters, including his mistress, who was then 22-years-old.  And they note this week’s high profile suicides of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain as the suicide rate skyrockets in much of America, and they implore anyone struggling to go on to find help.  Finally, they close on another somber note as they process the news that conservative columnist and commentator Charles Krauthammer has only weeks to live.

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Free Market Advocates Hail ‘Net Neutrality’ Repeal

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The Federal Communications Commission voted to reverse Obama-era ‘net neutrality’ regulations Thursday, cheering free market advocates and sparking fierce resistance from opponents who fear customers will be at the mercy of service providers.

The final vote, as expected, came along party lines.  Three GOP appointees voted for the change, while the two commissioners appointed by President Obama voted against it.

In recent weeks, critics of the reversal intensified their protests, claiming that reversing net neutrality would allow internet service providers to gouge consumers and force them into buying more of their products.  They also suggest removing government control increases the likelihood of fewer players in the industry.

However those verbal protests have escalated in ways that draw alarm, going so far as to publicize the names of FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s children.  Thursday’s proceedings were briefly interrupted by a security scare.

After the vote, the mainstream media posted alarming headlines.  “End of the internet as we know it,” stated the headline at CNN.com.

On the CNN cable channel, the bottom of the screen read, “Party-line vote ends rules to keep internet open and fair.”  On Twitter, the Associated Press reported, “BREAKING: The FCC votes on party lines to undo sweeping Obama-era ‘net neutrality’ rules that guaranteed equal access to internet.”

But is that what happened?

“Those folks obviously don’t need to know what they’re talking about to put out what they call news,” said former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who is now director of the Regulatory Action Center at FreedomWorks.

“What happened today is that the internet was returned today to the state of light regulation.  The word ‘light’ was used by Congress – you know the people who write the underlying laws for this stuff – way back in the nineties, that it had for its entire life until 2015,” said Cuccinelli.

Nonetheless, in recent weeks, critics of the reversal intensified their protests, going so far as to publicize the names of FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s children.  Thursday’s proceedings were briefly interrupted by a security scare.

“Violence is acceptable to many on the left to achieve their political goals.  Let me say that again.  Violence is acceptable to many on the left to achieve their political goals.  Those goals always involve more government control and power,” said Cuccinelli.

For those fearful of what a reversal of net neutrality might mean, Cuccinelli offers a challenge.

“I would challenge any of the conspiracy theorists on the left to identify one thing that was impaired before 2015 that was suddenly fixed by those regulations or in the whole two years since then that is suddenly imperiled again.  The answer is they can’t.  What has been provided is certainty of the freedom of the internet again,” said Cuccinelli.

But while opponents of the reversal face that challenge, critics might fire back by asking how the internet supposedly got worse over the past two years, thus requiring such a move from the FCC.

Cuccinelli says internet service providers slowed down the expansion and upgrading of their networks long before 2015 in anticipation of net neutrality from the Obama administration.

“Investment in the internet began to drop.  We’re talking hundreds of billions of dollars.  The internet doesn’t just exist.  It has to be built and the government didn’t build it.  Private entities built it and it’s expensive to build.

“So what the Obama administration was trying to do was tell people who built pieces of the internet what they could and couldn’t do with their own property.  If that’s your option, are you as likely to build stuff if the government’s going to tell you what to do with it.  Of course not,” said Cuccinelli.

“We were freed from that with Chairman Pai’s proposed and now adopted freeing of the internet, the actual freeing of the internet from government.  Leftists believe freedom comes from government,” he added.

But what about the concerns that rolling back federal regulations will be bad news for consumers?  Cuccinelli says there are still plenty of provisions in the law to help any customers being gouged by their service providers.

“When consumers are preyed upon on the internet, the [Federal Trade Commission] is still there and state attorneys general – something I know about – are there to police fraud and that sort of behavior, whether it’s on the internet or not.  That opportunity still exists,” said Cuccinelli.

He also says there’s little reason to worry that competition among service providers will suffer.

“The ability to capture market share with no one else having any option to close in on you doesn’t exist anymore because of technology,” said Cuccinelli, who asserts that there is a much greater likelihood of competition eroding with the government picking winners and losers with respect to the internet.

Cuccinelli says if any regulations need to be added, they should not spring up from government bureaucrats.

“Let’s do it in the accountable body, the Congress, the one people vote for,” said Cuccinelli.  “Although I hope they end up right where they are now, that Congress looks at all this and decides we don’t want more regulation on the internet.  That has never worked,” said Cuccinelli.

With one side proclaiming freedom reigns on the internet and the other dreading the future with net neutrality kicked to the curb, Cuccinelli says reality will prove who is right.

“Thankfully, we’re going to have years of experience without this Obama-era regulation in place.  People are going to see productivity is going up, more access, more opportunity, more products available,” he said.

Cuccinelli says when it comes to opportunity, expecting progress through the federal government is a proven failure.

“More regulation from government has never expanded opportunity, freedom, or productivity in the marketplace.  There’s no reason to expect it to happen on the internet,” said Cuccinelli.

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Heroes in Texas, Gun Control Push Ignores Facts, Leftists Mock Prayer

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David French of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America applaud the courage and heroism of the Texas man who exchanged gunfire with the Texas church murderer and the driver who happened upon the scene and chased the killer at high speeds to make sure no one else was harmed.  They also shake their heads at the instant gun control demands coming in the wake of yet another massacre, when the murderer should already have been ineligible to own firearms.  And they react to the increasingly common refrain from the political left for people of faith to stop praying in response to such carnage and “do something” instead.

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America’s Stunning Civic Illiteracy

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A new survey shows huge swaths of the American people don’t know the most basic tenets of our government, and a Hillsdale College politics professor says the lack of knowledge is playing a huge role in the politics of outrage and violence since the perpetrators have no idea how our system works.

Earlier this month, the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania released a survey showing a dismal comprehension of constitutional basics.  A third of Americans could not name a single branch of government.  Another 27 percent could only name one.  Only 26 percent could list the legislative, executive, and judicial branches.

When asked to name one of the freedoms enshrined in the first amendment to the Constitution, 37 percent could not name any.  Forty-eight percent did come up with freedom of speech, but when asked to name another, only 15 percent could name freedom of religion, 14 percent cited freedom of the press, 10 percent knew of the right to assembly, and just three percent were aware of their right to petition the government to address their grievances.

Hillsdale College Politics Professor Adam Carrington says these numbers are pretty consistent with what we’ve seen in recent years.

“Polls have shown this consistently.  This is not an anomaly.  This is a consistent lack of knowledge of that by which we are supposed to govern ourselves.  So it’s a fundamental and massive problem,” said Carrington.

Carrington says the problem is especially acute given the responsibility placed in American citizens to run their government.

“If we were in a monarchy, I would say it doesn’t matter at all, but we’re a republic, where people rule through laws and they particularly rule through the Constitution.  For those who exercise the people’s rule to be held accountable, you actually have to know the standard by which you’ve established to hold them accountable,” said Carrington.

In addition, he says ignorance about our system feeds the rabid political environment we’re in today.

“People believe that what’s constitutional is what I like and what’s unconstitutional is what I don’t like, and that’s just not the way that our system of government works,” said Carrington.

Carrington says critical concepts like the separation of powers and checks and balances are part of the genius of our system, and when people are clueless about these ideas and why we have them, politics become toxic and even dangerous.

“I think when people are ignorant of how those things work, they basically get frustrated with the system and reject the very things that make it effective.  I think that’s why you see some people wanting to turn to violence, some people not understanding the way the system is supposed to work,” said Carrington.

“This kind of government can’t survive, at least for long, unless you have that bedrock principle of government of the people and a people who are worthy of governing themselves,” said Carrington.

How did our civic illiteracy get to this point?  Carrington sees a couple of prime factors, starting with the greater emphasis on education being a pipeline to a good job and an almost exclusive focus on the STEM subjects of science, technology, engineering, and math.

He says there’s nothing wrong with those subjects but insists education is about much more than that.

“A place like Hillsdale and other places that have an older view of education and say, ‘Well, no, actually learning to be a good citizen is an essential part of education.’  Sure, you can be a nurse or a teacher or a lawyer in your day job, but when are you not a citizen?  I think that lack focus has caused a massive problem as far as our civic literacy,” said Carrington.

But in addition to schools steering the focus of education away from citizenship, Carrington says another troubling reality to consider.

“I think it is also due to a rejection by many of the American founding and of the Constitution.  Some people believe it’s not worth studying, not just because they are focused on getting jobs as the role of education but they’ve rejected the very principles that undergird the Constitution itself,” said Carrington.

Nonetheless, Carrington says education is the key to turning this civic illiteracy around.

“It has to be through education and I think it has to become a commitment of the society in general.  It has to be a commitment of our curriculum in our schools.  It has to be something that’s taught in entertainment and that’s taught in homes,” said Carrington.

In recent years, Hillsdale College has offered free online courses on the Constitution and other aspects of our system of goverenment.

“Hillsdale’s really been trying to push civic education, having online courses and other things, because until the people know their own government it’s not going to get better.  I think there has to be a concerted, dedicated effort to doing that,” said Carrington.

He encourages anyone who feels like they’re lacking in civic knowledge to rectify that by learning about our founding and helping to turn civic literacy in the right direction.

“Hillsdale has tried to offer a lot of free resources and classes online – on the courts, on the Federalist Papers, on the presidency, on the Constitution – to try to give you the resources to bridge that gap, so that you can be a good citizen.  You can be a knowledgeable citizen that can take part in the kind of renewal of self-government that we so sorely need,” said Carrington.

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Feds, Insurers Creating Fearful Doctors

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Tightfisted insurance companies and dizzying government bureaucracy are squeezing the art out of medicine, forcing doctors to use one-size-fits-all approaches with patients, and needlessly putting the lives of patients at risk, according to a patient advocate and “My Life is Worth It” Co-Founder Bob Tufts.

Tufts pitched in the major leagues, went on to become a Wall Street executive, and now teaches at Yeshiva University.  He says he never missed a day of work in 30 years before getting a series of small colds a number of years ago.  His doctor ordered tests that confirmed Tufts was suffering from multiple myeloma, a cancer of the bone marrow.

Thanks to excellent instincts by his doctor and the embrace of a novelty drug therapy including thalidomide, Tufts says he felt largely back to normal within nine months.

But he says his experience is far from normal, starting with doctors willing to do extra tests to hunt down possible ailments.

“They’re getting scared to do it because many doctors have been forced, due to the cost of electronic health records and all the government mandates into hospital systems.  And the more you’re into a system, they’ll over-regulate what the doctor can and cannot do,” said Tufts.

He says the art of medicine is lost as a result and doctors are instead practicing the science of medicine and simply treating patients based on the odds.  Tufts says if he lived in the United Kingdom or some other country with government-run care, he’s probably be dead.

“When I was diagnosed, my drug was just approved for off-label use in the United States.  It was not approved in the UK.  And frankly, for front line use it was not approved until much later,” he said.

“Considering the way my cancer was high-risk, by the time I’d have begged, borrowed or whatever to try to get this drug and maybe used other ones which were harsher, I’d probably have been dead under the [National Health Service] and [National Institute for Health and Care Excellence] system,” said Tufts.

He says anytime the government gets involved in making the rules and paying the bills, the health care priorities move farther and farther away from what’s best for the patient.

“Unfortunately, as we have more and more government use and control of health care, it becomes a budgetary issue, as we’re seeing in many of the debates going on.  The more the government controls, the more it’s on a budget line and people start thinking about what that number is on the line and look at people as little pixels on a chart, not as humans trying to fight to survive,” said Tufts.

“We create a bureaucracy and what does a bureaucracy do?  It feeds upon itself.  It creates more layers and makes it more confusing for patients and anyone who enters this Byzantine system,” said Tufts.

And Tufts sees that frustration up close.

“Let the doctors practice the art of medicine and the science of medicine as opposed to spending 50,000 a practice to fill out these forms.  It drives me crazy.  Even though I love my oncologist, of our 15 minutes together, over half is spent looking at the computer entering codes so he can be paid appropriately.  That’s nonsense and a waste of time and money,” said Tufts.

But Tufts is clear to point a major finger of blame at insurance companies who increasingly challenge their responsibility to pay for novel courses of treatment.  He says the insurers force patients to jump through cruel hoops in an effort to save money.  Again, it’s not something he’s been faced with but many of the people he helps deal with it every day.

“You found out how other people were being basically denied care by step therapy or fail first.  You are to take the older, cheaper medicine for at least 30-60 days before they would allow you to try another medication,” said Tufts.

“I had a dear friend who they did that to who had terrible neuropathy, who the insurance company made go through the hell of pain for 30 days before they gave him the meds.  What was the cost difference?  Four dollars.  Over four dollars, they made a man suffer,” said Tufts.

At other times he says insurers force patients down an unnecessary, far more expensive track.

“[They are] making people go to the hospital and having the liquid transfusions as opposed to, in my case, being able to take a pill at home.  The cost out-of-pocket of going to hospitals twice a week for a transfusion versus taking a pill every day.  Those two things really got me going and I found out I was really fortunate compared to many other cancer or rare disease patients,” said Tufts.

And Tufts says the bean counters at the insurance companies are making doctors’ lives miserable too.

“I have personally seen my oncologist get on the phone and, in my early stage of treatment, and spend 15-20 minutes arguing with an insurance company that, ‘This person needs this treatment.  This is what I recommend.  This is a standard of care,’ and having the hemming and hawing  and seeing the time wasted by my doctor basically having to beg for me to keep the care that would keep me alive,” said Tufts.

Tufts says he would like to get lawmakers in a room and “knock heads” until they agreed on solutions for the current health care system.  He also thinks doctors and patients should be helping to draft legislation and that lawmakers should not just rely on number crunchers to arrive at a final bill.

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