




Tuesday, May 17, 2016

Thieving Senators Are Another Reason Trump Has Risen

Here's the Nonsense:  A few of the senators who ran for the 2016 presidential nomination were true outsiders standing up for Americans and fighting for change.

Here's the Horse Sense:  We know that most politicians in Washington are worthless leaders for our nation.  Even those senators who claimed to be outsiders fighting for the American people did not take a stand against the thievery of taxpayers money.

Is it me, or did I miss something?  The people running for president in 2016 included many senators currently in office. Candidates like Senator Ted Cruz, Senator Marco Rubio, Senator Rand Paul, and Senator Lindsey Graham are all current Republican officeholders.  Some of them even claimed to be "outsiders" who weren't part of the Washington cabal.  

Many of these people claimed they were running to represent the American people and wanted to expose corruption in Washington.  Yet not one of them mentioned a huge theft from the American people.  They were not looking out for the American people.  

No, they either participated in or were accessories to the theft.  Their action, or inaction, wipes out any claim that they are outsiders working for the American people.   

Maybe I'm missing something, but it appears that we, the American people, have been swindled out of $4.5 trillion and counting.  

No one is being held accountable.  

In fact, these great "conservative crusaders" who claimed they were the single candidate running who would protect the American people and do what is right for us said nothing about the heist of our money.

You may remember back in 2009 when Congress and President Obama passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and it was signed into law.  The law was a $900 billion spending spree that would supposedly help America's economic recovery (a recovery that never really happened).  The spending was done in fiscal year 2010.

While the media and politicians claimed it helped the economy, no real improvement came as a result of it.  

Now, it's bad enough that the money was spent, no real substantive benefit came from it, and no one spoke up to say, "Hey, this was stupid.  We better not do this again."  

But what has happened since is far worse.  

It appears that the spending has been repeated every year since with no end in sight.  They are stealing the money of the American people and no one is standing up to stop it.

To understand what's happening you need to understand how our government budgets money.

Our government uses baseline budgeting instead of zero-based budgeting.  It's important to understand the difference to make clear what I think is happening.  

Congress put baseline budgeting into effect through the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 and amended it in 1987 when Congress changed the baseline to automatically keep pace with inflation. 

In using baseline budgeting Congress automatically assumes that every item in the federal budget will be an expenditure again the subsequent year. They also assume that every item will increase in cost.  So, their decision isn’t whether or not the expense should continue. In fact, it’s not even whether or not the expense should be increased. They assume it will be a continuing expense and that it will be increased. Their decision each year is how much to increase it. When they talk about spending cuts, they are really talking about how much less they will increase the expense than they had planned, not about actually reducing the amount of current spending.

On the other hand, zero-based budgeting simply means that each year when you do a new budget every item must be justified. No item is exempt and no item is automatically accepted as being funded under the new budget. This is the way that you make sure you are spending your money wisely. 

Since our government's budgetary process is a baseline budget system, every expense is repeated and increased the next fiscal year. 

 America has not had a federal budget passed since fiscal year 2008.  They have simply used the baseline budgeting system to continue to increase spending each year.  And the $900 billion spent through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is in addition to the other spending the federal government does.

But since they use baseline budgeting, that means that every expenditure is continued in the following years, including the extra $900 billion they spent for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.  The $900 billion they spent in fiscal year 2010 would have been spent again each following year (fiscal years 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015) and will be again in 2016 and thereafter if not stopped.

If this is happening, then where is that money going?  Why weren't the senators who ran for the presidency standing up pointing this out to voters?  And why weren't they making stopping this a key point in their campaigns?

They either support it or are turning a blind eye to it, which would make them an accessory to it.  Either way they are as bad as any other lowlife politician we can't trust.

This is the entire reason the Washington politicians cannot be trusted. 

And, while I doubt many Americans have thought about this expenditure, it is this kind of thing that has made most Americans realize that Washington can't be trusted and only someone from outside would fight for Americans.

This is the kind of thing that has caused the rise of Donald Trump and why, as the only true Washington outsider, the American people are looking to him for change.

You cannot say you're standing up for Americans and then allow a massive theft to continue.  You have to stand against the terrible abuse of power and outrageous spending if you truly want to save our nation.