We at the Rio Grande Foundation usually tackle state and local spending here in New Mexico, but the Los Alamos labs are a major federal investment in the Land of Enchantment. I recently teamed with the folks over at the left-leaning Los Alamos Study Group to discuss some massively expensive spending projects that have been proposed for the Los Alamos labs.
Check out the article from the Los Alamos Monitor here.
The Contract From America is excellent, you can sign on here. Read the full Contract below. It is far stronger than the Contract with America.
The Contract from America
We, the undersigned, call upon those seeking to represent us in public office to sign the Contract from America and by doing so commit to support each of its agenda items, work to bring each agenda item to a vote during the first year, and pledge to advocate on behalf of individual liberty, limited government, and economic freedom.
Individual Liberty
Our moral, political, and economic liberties are inherent, not granted by our government. It is essential to the practice of these liberties that we be free from restriction over our peaceful political expression and free from excessive control over our economic choices.
Limited Government
The purpose of our government is to exercise only those limited powers that have been relinquished to it by the people, chief among these being the protection of our liberties by administering justice and ensuring our safety from threats arising inside or outside our country’s sovereign borders. When our government ventures beyond these functions and attempts to increase its power over the marketplace and the economic decisions of individuals, our liberties are diminished and the probability of corruption, internal strife, economic depression, and poverty increases.
Economic Freedom
The most powerful, proven instrument of material and social progress is the free market. The market economy, driven by the accumulated expressions of individual economic choices, is the only economic system that preserves and enhances individual liberty. Any other economic system, regardless of its intended pragmatic benefits, undermines our fundamental rights as free people.
1. Protect the Constitution
Require each bill to identify the specific provision of the Constitution that gives Congress the power to do what the bill does. (82.03%)
2. Reject Cap & Trade
Stop costly new regulations that would increase unemployment, raise consumer prices, and weaken the nation’s global competitiveness with virtually no impact on global temperatures. (72.20%)
3. Demand a Balanced Budget
Begin the Constitutional amendment process to require a balanced budget with a two-thirds majority needed for any tax hike. (69.69%)
4. Enact Fundamental Tax Reform
Adopt a simple and fair single-rate tax system by scrapping the internal revenue code and replacing it with one that is no longer than 4,543 words—the length of the original Constitution. (64.90%)
5. Restore Fiscal Responsibility & Constitutionally Limited Government in Washington
Create a Blue Ribbon taskforce that engages in a complete audit of federal agencies and programs, assessing their Constitutionality, and identifying duplication, waste, ineffectiveness, and agencies and programs better left for the states or local authorities, or ripe for wholesale reform or elimination due to our efforts to restore limited government consistent with the US Constitution’s meaning. (63.37%)
6. End Runaway Government Spending
Impose a statutory cap limiting the annual growth in total federal spending to the sum of the inflation rate plus the percentage of population growth. (56.57%)
7. Defund, Repeal, & Replace Government-run Health Care
Defund, repeal and replace the recently passed government-run health care with a system that actually makes health care and insurance more affordable by enabling a competitive, open, and transparent free-market health care and health insurance system that isn’t restricted by state boundaries. (56.39%)
8. Pass an ‘All-of-the-Above” Energy Policy
Authorize the exploration of proven energy reserves to reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources from unstable countries and reduce regulatory barriers to all other forms of energy creation, lowering prices and creating competition and jobs. (55.51%)
9. Stop the Pork
Place a moratorium on all earmarks until the budget is balanced, and then require a 2/3 majority to pass any earmark. (55.47%)
10. Stop the Tax Hikes
Permanently repeal all tax hikes, including those to the income, capital gains, and death taxes, currently scheduled to begin in 2011. (53.38%)
Are you concerned that your kids are being bombarded with pro-green propaganda in their school? If so, check out Balanced Education for Everyone. The organization is helping parents fight the bureaucracy and stop Al Gore and his extremist propaganda from providing one-sided fear-mongering to impressionable children.
If you want to find out more and actually get involved, especially if you have children in school, drop us a line at info@riograndefoundation.org and we’ll help you work with Balanced Education for Everyone.
New Mexico has made some dramatic strides in making government more accessible to citizens and taxpayers. I congratulate deserving political leaders for their efforts and outline some ways in which further improvement could be achieve in this recent article.
This week over at the “Independent Forum” over at the New Mexico Independent, panelists were asked to discuss ways to improve K-12 education in New Mexico. Check out my response and the responses of others here.
Interesting to see a lack of responses this week, particularly from AFSCME’s Carter Bundy? Perhaps he doesn’t have his marching orders from his friends at the teachers’ unions yet and doesn’t want to get his government labor union crossways with the teachers? Or, maybe government employee unions like his don’t really care if statewide graduation rates are much better than 50%?
Liberty, the United States Constitution, the Bill of Rights, fiscal responsibility, the freedom to prosper–got a problem with that? Unfortunately, many of our political leaders seem to have forgotten what has made America great. A lot of New Mexicans will try to job their memories tomorrow.
Here’s the lineup for Tea Party Tax Day Rallies across New Mexico:
Albuqueruque: Menaul and San Pedro, 4-7 pm
Las Cruces: Young Park, south of Lohman, west of Bellamah Loop, 5-7:30 pm
Santa Fe: The Plaza 5-8 pm
Los Lunas: the River Bridge, 4-7 pm
Clovis: Curry County Courthouse, noon to 1:30 pm
Roswell: Pioneer Plaza (across from the Chaves County Courthouse) 11 am to 2 pm
Silver City: Gough Park, 10 am to 6 pm
Moriarty: Crossley Park, 11 am to 1 pm
Ruidoso: Wingfield Park, 415 Wingfield Street, 2 pm to 5 pm
Farmington: NOTE–SATURDAY, APRIL 17, 11 am to 1 pm, Gateway Museum
Check for updates at www.albuquerqueteaparty.com
We have certainly expressed no love for ObamaCare and its “passage” a few weeks ago. But, I’ll admit that I hadn’t seen this: ObamaCare imposes a 3.8% Medicare tax on unearned income including the sale of single family homes, townhouses, co-ops, condominiums, and even rental income.
As our friend Paul Guppy of the Washington-based Washington Policy Center (a fellow free market think tank) points out, ObamaCare’s other fees and taxes include:
Penalties on individuals. Individuals will pay a yearly penalty of $695, or up to 2.5 percent of their annual income, if they cannot show they have purchased a government-approved health policy.
Penalties on families. Families will pay a yearly penalty of $347 per child, up to $2,250 per family, if parents cannot show they have purchased a government- approved policy.
Penalties on employers. Business owners with more than 50 employees must buy government- acceptable health coverage or pay a yearly penalty of $2,000 per employee if at least one employee receives a tax credit.
And what of that pledge not to raise taxes on the middle class?
Check out this FAQ on the new real estate tax here.
This is good news. If New Mexico is to have a carbon cap, it should at least be done legislatively.
Recently, on the pages of the Albuquerque Journal’s business section, some students from the Anderson School at UNM made some salient points regarding the recent federal bailouts. While their points were largely accurate, they concluded by arguing that Congress should dump money that went to the automakers into “green energy” instead.
In a letter to the editor that was published in Monday’s Business Journal, I express my disagreement with the idea that Congress should pick winners and losers, regardless of their future prospects (as foreseen by politicians):
Reading the “Executive’s Desk” column from the various business students at UNM’s Anderson School (April 5) renewed my confidence in the next generation of business leaders. They made a compelling case against government intervention in the U.S. economy on behalf of specific industries and connected it directly to taxpayers’ pocketbooks and lower living standards. These are the inevitable fruits of massive government intervention.
Better still, the students went on to discuss the concept of “comparative advantage” which explains that the U.S economy can continue to thrive regardless of its prowess – or lack thereof – in specific industries and sectors like manufacturing because U.S. workers and companies do other things quite well.
Unfortunately, the students undermined their own case toward the end of their article by asserting that taxpayer dollars that were allocated to the auto bailout should instead be directed toward promotion of so-called “green” jobs. The idea that government schemes to create jobs are worthy of support is every bit as specious as the idea that saving auto industry jobs is worthy of massive infusions of taxpayer dollars.
If Congress wishes to build wealth and grow the U.S. economy, the best policy is to leave entrepreneurs and the marketplace as a whole, free to allocate resources. Picking winners and losers is both corrupting and a road to reduced standards of living.
Paul J. Gessing
President
Rio Grande Foundation
Our friends at the National Taxpayers Union regularly put out useful information on the state of America’s economy and the burdens our government puts on taxpayers and future generations of taxpayers. For a startling view of the debt burden, check out the chart below:
Rio Grande Foundation research has previously pointed to higher education as an area of tremendous bloat in terms of employment. According to the findings of this study, higher education in New Mexico is the most bloated of any state in the nation.
Where there is smoke, there is often fire. So, in today’s Albuquerque Journal, our adjunct scholar Kevin Rollins explained that there are wide disparities in terms of higher education costs among both State universities and community colleges. Efforts by legislators and the Higher Ed Department should focus on figuring out why such broad cost differences exist and what can be done to reduce costs. After all, with $80 million in potential annual savings, we could do a great deal to reduce or even eliminate state budget problems.
New Mexico government has gotten more transparent in recent years. The Rio Grande Foundation can take some credit for this, but the efforts of individual legislators like Sen. Sander Rue, Janice Arnold-Jones, and even Lt. Governor Denish cannot be discounted.
Nonetheless, there is still much to do and over at the Independent Forum this week, the panelists (including yours truly) offered their thoughts.
I did not always see eye-to-eye with Heather Wilson when she was in Congress. She was never fiscally-conservative enough for my tastes and was one of the worst-scoring Republicans year after year in ratings like NTU Rates Congress.
Nonetheless, I was thrilled to see her come out swinging in the Albuquerque Journal regarding the passage of ObamaCare and New Mexico Sen. Jeff Bingaman’s strong support for the “reform.”
Wilson writes convincingly of ObamaCare’s lack of any real cost controls:
The biggest problem with health care that Americans want addressed is spiraling cost. Year after year of cost growth at two or three times the rate of inflation makes it difficult for any business to offer insurance. One of the biggest reasons take-home pay hasn’t increased much over the past decade is that health care benefits are absorbing what would otherwise show up as pay raises.
The law passed does virtually nothing to address the escalating cost of health care. In fact, health insurance premiums will continue to rapidly increase under the new law, particularly for younger Americans. The law is based on an assumption that greater government control will put a brake on costs. But experience with both Medicaid and Medicare shows this just doesn’t work.
Consumer-driven care and more choices can help control cost growth. The cost growth for medical procedures where the consumer makes a decision — like elective plastic surgery, dental care, chiropractic care, LASIC, hearing aids and eye glasses — are much closer to the regular rate of inflation.
Although Wilson seems to have no plans to run for office in the near future, it was good to see her jump into the health care policy debate on the side of those who opposed even greater federal intervention in Americans’ health care.
Clinton was a fiscal moderate; Bush was a big spender. Unfortunately, Obama has taken Bush’s big-spending ways, expansion of government’s role in health care, and foreign policy and either locked it in or expanded it. If, by some chance, Obama reads the Albuquerque Alibi, I hope he reads my article this week.
So, to answer the question, no, I don’t miss “him” yet. I do miss this Democratic Party president though.
The folks over at Publius Blog have done some nice analysis of Mayor RJ Berry’s recently-unveiled budget and the prognosis is good. By way of summarizing, the budget “does not raise taxes and minimizes cuts in services.”
Certainly, it would make sense to eliminate or at least dramatically reduce the payouts for unused sick days. This is the kind of thing that should be addressed regardless of the budgetary climate.
Of course, the Mayor’s budget has a long way to go before it becomes law and there are policies like the unused sick days issue or, say, contracting out garbage collection, that might be helpful additions. Anyway, tell your Councilor what you think.
Sen. Steve Fischmann had an interesting piece in the paper today on education. The basic point is that there are too many people and entities with policy making power, there are too many standardized tests, and education dollars are not being spent wisely.
These are nice ideas, but our schools are not designed to effectively educate children. They’re socialistic in nature and seem to exist for the benefit of the teachers’ unions and bureaucrats. Fischmann’s fixes, absent serious structural reforms, will not be implemented and the system will continue to founder, failing thousands of New Mexico students at the same time.
We do have a model for success that has resulted in serious educational improvement, but Fischmann (and the rest of the Legislature, for that matter) are not seriously considering systematic reform.
Small investors in Vanguard’s Wellington fund are beating the high-priced professionals running over $30 billion of state investments. Our latest report at New Mexico Watchdog. Translate these competitive differences into dollars and you’ll see how New Mexico has been losing out on billions of dollars in investment returns. Maybe it would be better to convert this hoard into no taxes and then support the state off the diverse, vibrant economy that would follow. Just a thought.
I just love Rep. Mimi Stewart’s transparently-ignorant political stances. Her latest is a defense of the WARN Act, HB 180, which, in summary, would make it much more difficult for employers to let go of employees.
Of course, if all you look at is the visible consequence of a new policy, that being giving workers more time to prepare for unemployment or their transition to another job, then Stewart’s idea is hard to argue with. But, of course, policies have both obvious and not-so-obvious results. If you are an employer, say Gardunos, and you know that you are struggling to make it, you will be more likely to either not hire or start to fire workers, even if this is not the best thing for the company.
So, Stewart, in her infinite wisdom, would seemingly rather push Gardunos and others towards bankruptcy — including by not hiring needed workers — rather than allowing Gardunos and other companies that might be struggling to do their level best to keep going even in tough times. I’m sure Stewart and other backers of ill-advised rules and regulations would rather see unemployment north of 10% in New Mexico.
Jon Barela is running for Congress against Rep. Martin Heinrich, who, since the early days of the health care debate has been a strong supporter of a bigger government role in health care. Of course, Heinrich supported the recently-passed health care bill.
Thankfully, this November, residents of District One will have a stark choice to make when it comes to health care. Barela outlined his concerns about health care in an excellent opinion piece in today’s Albuquerque Journal. Among the many critiques that I and others have made regarding the legislation, I was most interested in Barela’s solutions. After all, it is one thing to stop Obama’s ill-advised expansion of government, but it is another thing to oppose Republican health care boondoggles. He lays his vision out towards the end of the article:
There is a better way to offer high quality, affordable health care in America, and it begins by discussing proposals that could win bipartisan approval, as well as the support of states, small businesses, and American families. Among other things, these include allowing for the sale of health insurance across state lines, encouraging small businesses to pool together to compete for lower insurance rates for their workers, significant tort reform to reduce the waste that is generated by junk lawsuits and defensive medical practices, and providing tax credits to individuals to use in health savings accounts.
I like what Barela says here, but there is one thing he forgot to mention. That is, ultimately America must replace its third-party-payment system when it comes to health care. Relying on employers for health insurance is just silly, but that is the way our system is set up and Obamacare only reinforces that absurd system. Hopefully, Jon Barela and what I imagine will be a significant majority in Congress come November will repeal Obamacare and go about dealing with this and other core issues.
In case you missed it, New Mexico Sen. Jeff Bingaman recently defended the health care bill that Congress passed in an Albuquerque Journal piece entitled “Health Reform will Benefit New Mexico.” Unfortunately, Bingaman seems ignorant of the bill’s real impacts to the point where he repeats the untrue assertion that “New Mexicans who like the insurance coverage they have can continue to purchase the same insurance in the same way.”
Well, apparently Bingaman doesn’t know that the bill will have dramatic, negative consequences on Health Savings Accounts. As an owner of one of these “consumer driven health care policies,” I know better. The folks at the Heritage Foundation provide a more thorough analysis of the Bill’s impact on HSA’s here. According to Heritage:
The Obamacare law limits these consumer-controlled accounts in two ways: it restricts the types of health products you can purchase with your HSA money, and it reduces the amount of money you’ll be able to put into your FSA.
Unsurprisingly, there’s a price hike, too. It doubles—to a whopping 20 percent—the tax penalty for withdrawing HSA funds to cover non-medical expenses.
That hardly sounds like “same insurance in the same way.” Of course, Bingaman’s entire article is full of lies like “the new law more than pays for itself.” That is simply not the case, even if we assume that Congress will make the future cuts necessary to achieve the assumptions laid out in the legislation.
As a member of the Senate Finance Committee, Bingaman is fully aware that this health care legislation is going to drive America into deeper deficits and increase health care costs for average Americans. Unfortunately, to Jeff Bingaman, the truth about health care reform is worth covering up.
On Channel 13’s 10pm news last night, I discussed the problems with, and potential savings that could be had, if Mayor Berry addresses the City’s policy of paying out full equivalent wages for unused sick days. The Rio Grande Foundation has done a great deal of research showing that New Mexico’s state and local work force is both bloated and over-compensated.
Changing this policy would seem to be an easy, if not politically-difficult, way to eliminate $9 million of the City’s $54 million or more deficit. Watch the story here.
The Obama Administration has announced that it would reverse a ban on oil drilling off most U.S. shores. In many ways this is a good thing. It opens 115 billion barrels of oil and 633 trillion cubic feet of natural gas to domestic production. This is all good news and in many ways it is long overdue.
The bad news is that Obama readily admits that he is going to use this decision as a tool to drum up support for his economically-devastating “cap and trade” legislation. While that may be a pipe dream, even this decision by Obama has some hidden negatives. These include pulling other areas from potential production. According to this article from the Globe and Mail, “But while it will provide new access to the U.S. east coast and eastern areas of the Gulf of Mexico – provided such plans are cleared on environmental grounds – the new strategy also cancels one planned lease sale in Alaska’s Bristol Bay, considered too environmentally sensitive, and delays two others.”
So, while it is good to see that Obama is not simply putting his head in the sand and universally opposing all oil and gas production, he has a long way to go before he earns any credibility as someone willing to pursue rational energy policies.
In case you missed it, the results of the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in mathematics and reading for grades 4 and 8 which is given every two years to students nationwide, were released recently. The results are not pretty for New Mexico.
According to the data sheet for Fourth Grade reading:
“the average score in New Mexico was lower than those in 43 states/jurisdictions, higher than that in 1 state/jurisdiction, not significantly different from that in 7 states/jurisdictions.” Worse, the all-important 4th grade reading score — studies show that if students don’t know how to read by 4th grade, they will continue to lag in reading-related learning areas — dropped from 212 to 208;
While eighth graders did slightly better in math and reading, New Mexico students were worse than at least 40 other states in both math and reading and typically scored better than only one or two other states. Scores tended to be equivalent to 7-8 others.
Combined with our statewide graduation rate of approximately 50% and the ineffectiveness of more spending, it would seem that policymakers should take a look at Florida where all students (especially Hispanics) are seeing rapid improvement.
The Rio Grande Foundation has been telling the political class for years that a disproportionately large public sector was stifling our economy. Turns our the Lt. Governor’s–and the Governor’s–own advisers have been saying the same thing. New report from New Mexico Watchdog.