Don't Hurt People and Don't Take Their Stuff: A Libertarian Manifesto by Matt Kibbe Page B
Authors: Matt Kibbe
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Former Obama administration Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner, who was confirmed by the U.S. Senate to enforce your compliance with complex federal tax laws, didn’t even see fit to pay his own taxes, 4 apparently believing himself above such prosaic responsibilities.
Back in 2011, it was revealed that House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi and other key members of Congress and their committee staff had played the market with the inside information of what their proposed laws would do to the stock valuations of certain industries. 5
This sort of behavior is emblematic of the contempt shown by Congress for the laws they impose on the rest of us. While the STOCK Act 6 purported to put an end to congressional insider trading, the substance of the legislation was later rolled back before being implemented, by unanimous voice vote. Members of the House were not given time to review the bill that Senate majority leader Harry Reid had sent over in the middle of the night.
“Rather than craft narrow exemptions, or even delay implementation until proper protections could be created, the Senate decided instead to exclude legislative and executive staffers from the online disclosure requirements” of the STOCK Act, reports the Sunlight Foundation. 7 So the bicameral vote that insisted that D.C. insiders comply with the same trading laws as the rest of us was public and virtually unanimous, but the gutting of the law carries few legislators’ names or fingerprints.
More egregious still are the constant attempts by members, staff, and federal employees to exempt themselves from ObamaCare. House Ways and Means Committee chairman Dave Camp wants to change that, offering a proposal that would place all federal employees, even the president himself, into the same exchanges required by the rest of the country.
“If the ObamaCare exchanges are good enough for the hardworking Americans and small businesses the law claims to help, then they should be good enough for the president, vice president, Congress, and federal employees,” Camp’s spokeswoman explained. 8
2. S TOP S PENDING M ONEY W E D ON’T H AVE
American families have to balance their budgets. The government should do the same. This is not rocket science.
Why is it so hard for Congress to balance the budget? The core problem, of course, is that they are not spending their own money. They are spending your money. The ghost of John Maynard Keynes provides them with a pseudo-intellectual rationale to “stimulate aggregate demand.” But we are on to them and know that the only real stimulus they are buying with borrowed money is for their own reelection prospects.
Given that, as of this writing, the national debt tops $17 trillion, it seems like common sense would dictate a few things:
• Stop new spending on new programs.
• Prioritize dollars and get rid of programs that don’t make the cut as top priorities in a world of scarcity.
• No sacred cows allowed until we solve the problem, so put everything on the table.
• Deal honestly with entitlements by acknowledging unfunded future promises.
• You can’t tax your way to a balanced budget without tanking the job creation that actually generates tax receipts.
I know, more radicalism. Harry Reid is so offended by these budget principles that if you agree with them, he thinks you are an “anarchist.”
So many in both parties have grown comfortable simply kicking the can down the road and rubber-stamping an endless series of increases in the “debt ceiling,” or short-term “continuing resolutions” that claim deficit reduction in future years while spending more today. But it’s really not that hard to map out a plan to clean up Washington’s fiscal train wreck. In fact, FreedomWorks “crowdsourced” ideas for a citizens’ “Debt Commission” that would balance the budget in just a few years. Senator Mike Lee tried to bring those ideas to his Senate colleagues in
Former Obama administration Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner, who was confirmed by the U.S. Senate to enforce your compliance with complex federal tax laws, didn’t even see fit to pay his own taxes, 4 apparently believing himself above such prosaic responsibilities.
Back in 2011, it was revealed that House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi and other key members of Congress and their committee staff had played the market with the inside information of what their proposed laws would do to the stock valuations of certain industries. 5
This sort of behavior is emblematic of the contempt shown by Congress for the laws they impose on the rest of us. While the STOCK Act 6 purported to put an end to congressional insider trading, the substance of the legislation was later rolled back before being implemented, by unanimous voice vote. Members of the House were not given time to review the bill that Senate majority leader Harry Reid had sent over in the middle of the night.
“Rather than craft narrow exemptions, or even delay implementation until proper protections could be created, the Senate decided instead to exclude legislative and executive staffers from the online disclosure requirements” of the STOCK Act, reports the Sunlight Foundation. 7 So the bicameral vote that insisted that D.C. insiders comply with the same trading laws as the rest of us was public and virtually unanimous, but the gutting of the law carries few legislators’ names or fingerprints.
More egregious still are the constant attempts by members, staff, and federal employees to exempt themselves from ObamaCare. House Ways and Means Committee chairman Dave Camp wants to change that, offering a proposal that would place all federal employees, even the president himself, into the same exchanges required by the rest of the country.
“If the ObamaCare exchanges are good enough for the hardworking Americans and small businesses the law claims to help, then they should be good enough for the president, vice president, Congress, and federal employees,” Camp’s spokeswoman explained. 8
2. S TOP S PENDING M ONEY W E D ON’T H AVE
American families have to balance their budgets. The government should do the same. This is not rocket science.
Why is it so hard for Congress to balance the budget? The core problem, of course, is that they are not spending their own money. They are spending your money. The ghost of John Maynard Keynes provides them with a pseudo-intellectual rationale to “stimulate aggregate demand.” But we are on to them and know that the only real stimulus they are buying with borrowed money is for their own reelection prospects.
Given that, as of this writing, the national debt tops $17 trillion, it seems like common sense would dictate a few things:
• Stop new spending on new programs.
• Prioritize dollars and get rid of programs that don’t make the cut as top priorities in a world of scarcity.
• No sacred cows allowed until we solve the problem, so put everything on the table.
• Deal honestly with entitlements by acknowledging unfunded future promises.
• You can’t tax your way to a balanced budget without tanking the job creation that actually generates tax receipts.
I know, more radicalism. Harry Reid is so offended by these budget principles that if you agree with them, he thinks you are an “anarchist.”
So many in both parties have grown comfortable simply kicking the can down the road and rubber-stamping an endless series of increases in the “debt ceiling,” or short-term “continuing resolutions” that claim deficit reduction in future years while spending more today. But it’s really not that hard to map out a plan to clean up Washington’s fiscal train wreck. In fact, FreedomWorks “crowdsourced” ideas for a citizens’ “Debt Commission” that would balance the budget in just a few years. Senator Mike Lee tried to bring those ideas to his Senate colleagues in
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