E-Newsletter No. 62 _____ February 2019

First, let’s discuss the facts about the “partial” government shutdown. ‘Unfortunately’ approximately 70% of the federal government’s spending (i.e., “mandatory” spending) was not affected. Therefore, Social Security checks, interest on the $21.97 trillion of debt, etc. were not affected. Prior to the shutdown, five of the twelve appropriation bills for fiscal 2019 had been passed into law – the Department of Defense (good); Energy and Water; the Executive Branch; Military Construction & Veterans Affairs; and Labor / Health / Human Services. Seven of the twelve appropriations had not been passed by the start of the fiscal year (as they were supposed to be, and we are already four months into the new fiscal year) – Agriculture; Financial Services; Interior & Environment; Transportation / Housing / Urban Development; Commerce / Justice / Science; State / Foreign Operations; and Homeland Security.

There has been a lot of press about how the shutdown was affecting the 800,00 federal employees who had been furloughed. Unfortunately, if you work for a truly dysfunctional entity (the federal government) these types of things happen. The “good news” for these federal employees is that we all knew all along that they were going to get their full back pay. So, what was the purpose of this partial government shutdown? Well mostly, this is because that is the law. Other than “mandatory” spending, if funds have not been appropriated, they cannot be spent.

This is what happens when Congress does not do its job on a timely basis. Actually, Congress has not been effectively / timely doing its job for many (20 +) years now. Government shutdowns are basically “Stupid is as Stupid does” simply because Congress has become politicized, and deeply divided and dysfunctional. Fortunately, there have been a number of proposals put forward by a number of people – Rand Paul, Rob Portman, Troy Balderson, Glenn Grothman, Brendan Boyle, and others – to fix this broken process. One of the more interesting proposals is entitled the “No Budget, No Recess Act” by Joni Ernst, James Lankford, and David Perdue, which says that if Congress misses its deadlines of passing a budget by April 15th, and passing all of the necessary appropriations by August 1st, then members of Congress can’t leave Washington DC until they get their job done. Unfortunately, the only thing missing from this proposed legislation is a provision whereby the salaries of members of Congress are suspended effective October 1st, if we enter the new fiscal year without all of the required spending bills in place. (We wonder how this key provision was somehow left out of this proposed legislation).

But an even bigger problem is the radical shift to the Left by the Democratic party. You have probably seen the various videos from several years ago, where Bill Clinton, Chuck Schumer, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Harry Reid, Dianne Feinstein, etc. all said that we need to halt the flow of illegal immigrants into our country, and that we needed effective border security. In fact, The Secure Fence Act of 2006 was passed with strong bipartisan support by both the House and Senate, and was signed into law by President George Bush. Unfortunately, Congress never subsequently passed the necessary appropriations to actually create a secure border and stem the flow of illegal immigrants into our country.

Now, evidently, in today’s world, border security has somehow become “immoral”, and our country should move away from the concept of maintaining its status as a sovereign nation. The Left’s agenda now appears to fully embrace the ideologies of “One World Order” and “Open Borders”. As we mentioned in our October 2018 newsletter, you can only imagine the flood of “refugees” that will occur if we have open borders, coupled with a mandatory minimum wage of $15 per hour. BTW – the preceding comment is not “racist” – it is just a (highly likely) prediction.

$5.7 billion dollars is immaterial in comparison to the estimated annual spending by the federal government and the states on illegal aliens. It is estimated that the number of people living in our country illegally is somewhere between 14 – 22 million. The estimates of government spending on immigrants range from $113 – $279 billion EACH YEAR. The estimate for effective border security back in 2006 was roughly $50 billion. Maybe that is the amount that should be back on the table for discussion purposes thirteen years later.

So, Congress has now punted these problems down the road to February 15th. Let’s see if Congress can come up with a solution to secure our southern border and keep the government open. Otherwise, we may need to go through the farce of yet another partial shutdown.

US Debt Clock – – January 1st – $66,739 per citizen / February 1st – $66,895