Showing posts with label government spending. Show all posts
Showing posts with label government spending. Show all posts

Friday, June 13, 2025

America Has a Perfect Storm of Opportunity to Save Herself From the RINOs in the GOP

The Missouri Compromise of 1820 was an attempt to deal with a problem that threatened to rip America apart, slavery. Although it didn’t address the underlying institution itself, it banned new states north of Missouri’s southern border from joining the union as slave states.

The delicate balance lasted until repealed by the Kansas Nebraska Act of 1854.

Although not explicit, the Act potentially opened up all of the west to slavery. For the north this was simply untenable and the result was the creation of the Republican Party, which formed in 1854 in the midst of the debate.

Of course, both were basically band aids over the real trauma that was destroying the nation, slavery.

The Republican Party was essentially the combination of the remnants of the Whig Party and elements of other peripheral parties. Six years later Abraham Lincoln would be elected the nation’s first Republican president. The party would go on to dominate much of American politics for the next half century.

In 1854 the Republican party came about as the result of America finally having to face a cancer that had been gnawing at it’s core since its foundation. In 2025 it should die for the same reason.

The cancer today is not slavery in the literal sense, but it is slavery nonetheless. In this case it isn’t blacks being held in bondage because of the color of their skin, but rather citizens being held in financial bondage by politicians who have no problem entombing them in a debtor’s prison from which escape is impossible.

The Republicans had a perfect storm of opportunity in 2025. They had just taken back the Senate, they held the House and on January 20th they took control of the White House. Not only that, they had perhaps the most motivated electorate in a century or more. The tens of millions of Americans who watched as the 2020 election was stolen and then suffered through four years of anti American and anti-common sense policies were ready to take back their country. And they did.

What’s more, this highly motivated electorate spent the first two months of the new administration watching as the Elon Musk led DOGE revealed the billions and perhaps trillions of dollars of waste fraud and abuse everywhere from the Treasury Department to USAID to the Pentagon and elsewhere.

With the new sheriff in town these voters expected that things were going to be different.

Not so much…

No, the Republicans, the party America hired to actually codify the savings and bring some order to federal profligacy showed themselves to be derelict, indeed borderline treasonous the first chance they were given. 

While we’re being told the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (BBB) is a good deal and it cuts spending, that’s simply a lie. Indeed it increases spending and adds trillions to the national debt.

In what seems like record time the Republican party has gone from the party leading America in a new direction to the Go Along to Get Along party. Indeed, coming to power with promises to cut spending, get the federal government under control and to slash deficits, they’re doing virtually none of that. America took the red pill and discovered that it was really a blue pill dipped in food coloring.

The BBB is nothing less than treasonous. It does nothing to address America’s existential threat: Federal spending and deficits. Today America’s national debt stands at over $36 trillion, or over 120% of GDP, the highest level on record. Of that $36 trillion, $29 trillion has accumulated since 2000, 24 years during which the GOP held the presidency for 12 years, the House for 16, the Senate for 10, and all three for 6. Regardless, the spending seems to always go up and the deficits continue to grow until today where every single American, from baby to centenarian, is on the hook for $102,000. That, in a nation where the average household income is $80,000.

And yet the Republicans, the party that’s supposed to represent financial responsibility has presented America with a budget that basically spends like a drunken sailor.

To put this in perspective, one merely needs to recognize that the Republicans had as their number one cheerleader for the last year the world’s richest and most successful man but with the presentation of this “disgusting abomination” they have made a literal enemy out of him. Addressing the Republican treachery head on, Musk suggested “In November next year, we fire all politicians who betrayed the American people.

Simply put, the Grand Old Party is grand no more. It is simply Democrat lite and should therefore sent to the dustbin of history.

Of course as we learned with Teddy Roosevelt and H. Ross Perot, third parties don’t work in the United States. The reality is, a new party doesn’t need to be started from scratch. Just as the GOP was built on the remnants of the Whig Party, a new party could be carved out of the decomposing husk of the GOP. Just look to how well that treacherous John Cornyn is doing down in Texas to understand how it’s possible to send swamp rats out to pasture.

And Elon Musk should lead this charge.  Although currently on the outs with President Trump, in reality the two have far in common than not. He should spearhead the creation of this new party, one where financial discipline is, if not the raison d'etre, is a core element beyond compromise.  And the DOGE team has given them more than enough to work with.  Much like Newt Gingrich did in 1994 with his Contract with America, Musk et. al. should build on the DOGE recommendations and put together a new Contract of items that most Americans can agree on and use that to eviscerate the RINO wing of the GOP. 

Most Americans don’t like thousand page omnibus bills that no one can read and fewer can understand.  This new Contract should promise single department bills written in plain English.  Americans don’t like seeing budgets that go up year to year with seemingly zero correlation to the agency’s success or failure.  This new Contract should propose zero based budgeting so that agencies and departments have to make the case for their spending every year or every other year.

These and other no-nonsense policies will no doubt raise the ire of virtually the entire Democrat party, most of the bureaucracy and of course the swamp Republicans.  But they would likely resonate not only with average Republican voters, but they would likely appeal to many of the non-deranged elements of the Democrat party who are simply exhausted with the status quo of dysfunction.  And now is the time, before it’s too late.

One hundred and thirty five years ago slavery was an existential threat to the survival of the United States and it took a war and 600,000 lives to defeat. Debt figures on an accounting sheet might not sound like an existential threat, but make no mistake, they are. Whether Zimbabwe or the Weimar Republic or third century Rome, spending matters, deficits matter, numbers on an accounting sheet can eventually turn deadly. When this debt bubble bursts America will come apart at the seams and it will make the collapse of Venezuela look like a walk in the park.

But it doesn’t have to be. History doesn’t often pair a highly motivated public with the world’s richest man on the same side of an issue so clearly in need of fixing. It has now and we should seize the opportunity and take what little good that remains of the GOP and build upon it a new party that puts the needs of America above those of grifting, power obsessed politicians. That’s the kind of change Americans voted for.

Follow Vince on X at @ImperfectUSA

Sunday, October 6, 2013

Why the shutdown scares the petty vindictive little man Barack Obama

Despite the fact that the average federal employee earns $123,000 (2010 numbers) in salary and benefits while the average private sector employee earns $61,000, my sympathy goes out to those who have found themselves on the sidelines because of Barack Obama and Harry Reid’s shutdown. Despite the fact that they will likely get all of their backpay and perhaps a bit more, it’s always difficult to see people have their finances thrown into chaos. Nonetheless, big government is a cancer on productivity, and while a million federal employees are feeling the pinch of this impasse, tens of millions of Americans are feeling the pinch of no jobs, reduced hours and losing their healthcare because of big government and ObamaCare. Viva la shutdown!

The old saying goes: “Sometimes you have to break some eggs in order to make an omelet.” In this case a more appropriate characterization might be “Sometimes you have to break some eggs in order to put on a banquet.” Given that federal regulations are so costly to American businesses – and consequently to Americans themselves – the extended furlough or firing of the apparatchiks employed to enforce government regulations would allow for a resurgence of economic activity, leading to a return of American prosperity. According to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, federal regulations will cost Americans $1.8 Trillion this year or about $14,000 per household. How would you like to have an extra $14,000 per year to spend? Well, let’s be generous and suggest that 25% of the government’s regulations are both Constitutional and worthwhile. That would mean that the bonus would only be $11,500 per year. How much of a jolt do you think you could give your community if you and every one of your neighbors had an additional $1,000 a month to spend? I guarantee you it’s a lot more than an omelet.

This shutdown is 100% owned, lock, stock and barrel by Barack Obama and the Democrats. As wasteful as most of the government spending is, the House passed a bill that would fund every single piece of it other than Obamacare. The Senate rejected that and the President promised to veto it if it made it to his desk. They can whine as much as they want about obstructionism, but the fact is that they can have everything they want other than something that a majority of Americans don’t want. Cry as they might, the spilled milk has their fingerprints all over the bottle.

Barack Obama is a petty, spiteful, vindictive little man. In order to make sure that Americans knew the shutdown was going on – because most probably wouldn’t notice as they have lives and are not part of the Democrat / Big Government / Mainstream Media Industrial Complex in the first place – Barack Obama chose to inflict the greatest amount of pain possible. If you’ve never been to Washington to see the WWII monument, it’s a beautiful, spacious open air monument with marble pillars, arches and fountains which is accessible 24 hours a day. You don’t need to buy a ticket to see it, there’s nothing for anyone to do to make sure you can enjoy it, all you have to do is just walk across 17th St. from the Washington Monument and you’re there. You just walk around, that’s it. Barack Obama decided to actually spend money to put up barricades so that you could not visit it during the shutdown. When veterans who actually fought in WWII came to see it and ignored his barricades, he spent more money to have the barricades tethered together and then employed horse mounted Rangers there to ensure that the heroes could not visit the monument to THEM! (Until the veterans announced their visits were protected 1st Amendment activities...) What’s worse, according to one Park Ranger: “We’ve been told to make life as difficult for people as we can. It’s disgusting.” If that were not enough, at the same time he threatened to arrest supplemental Catholic priests if they volunteered their time to conduct Mass for military personnel who have no priests available to them. He had police kick veterans and visitors off the Vietnam Memorial, which is literally an open air wall and a walkway dug into the ground. He even tried to close the ocean down in Florida. But if he wants to play golf the course on Andrew’s Air Force Base is open.

Like most things in Washington, words don’t always mean what they actually mean. A shutdown in plain English means that something is frozen, stopped, not functioning. In Washington parlance however, shutdown means that 83% of the budget is still being spent. So the shutdown which President Obama and the rest of the lefties are denouncing really only equates to 17% of the federal government, or about exactly what the government spent just a few short years ago.

Ronald Reagan endured half a dozen shutdowns at the hands of the stridently partisan Tip O’Neill and the world did not come to an end. It won’t end now either. This shutdown will not bring about Armageddon any more than sequester did. What it might do however is focus American’s attention on the fact that the nanny state is not as important as those in Washington would like us to believe. Many Americans might be surprised to discover that not only does the sun continue to rise during the shutdown, but the neighborhood supermarket still opens, cable TV is still on the air and their cars still run. Frankly, that’s a danger for Barack Obama and big government types of all stripes, because once Americans rediscover that they can survive without big government they just might start pushing back. And when they start the bell will soon begin to toll for much of what government has appropriated for itself over the last half century... and with it will go the confiscatory taxes that have made that encroachment possible. As such, don’t be surprised to see Obama and Co. continue to look for new ways to inflict pain on the American people. The question is, will the squishes in the GOP be able to stomach the fight long enough for Americans to come to the realization that they don’t need a nanny state to hold their hands from cradle to grave? Let’s hope they do.

Sunday, February 24, 2013

A normal person's perspective on the Sequester... Or How I Came to Love the Sequester

Everett Dirksen famously said “A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon, you're talking real money.” If his billion here and billion there added up to $44 billion then he’d have been talking about the Sequester that seems to be everywhere in the news today.

For those not familiar with the Sequester, it is the mandatory cut in federal spending set to take place on March 1st. President Obama essentially warned that the country would likely come to a screeching halt if the mandated cuts actually occurred. Among the damage would be: thousands of teachers and firefighters losing their jobs, 800,000 Defense job losses, nursing home cuts, cuts to Medicare, airports close, hundreds of thousands would miss out on flu vaccinations and cancer screening. Apparently the Myans were just off by a couple of months.

Back to the real money… $44 billion is a lot of money. That’s the kind of money Mark Zuckerberg looks at and goes “Wow”. When you imagine that the Sequester is going to cut that much from the federal budget that seems like a lot… until it’s not.

In 2012 the federal government spent $3.538 trillion. If nothing is done and the Sequester kicks in, in 2013 the federal government will spend $3.553… yes, that’s right, $15 billion more! Somehow, President Obama is trying to suggest that if the country does not figure out how to dodge this $44 billion Sequester bullet, the foundations of our society are going to come crumbling down upon our shoulders. (The total 2013 "cut" includes the aforementioned $44 billion plus $41 billion cut in future years but attributed to 2013.)

That simply makes no sense.

To put this in some perspective, imagine that instead of talking about trillion dollar federal budgets here, we use numbers in the form of your paycheck. Let’s imagine that your family had an income of $50,000 in 2012. While it might have been a challenging year, that’s up 15% from the $43,600 you earned in 2009. (Remember, we’re using government spending as the measure here. If we were instead using actual household income numbers, the $43,600 you earned in 2009 would have instead shrunk to $41,500 by 2012 rather than growing to $50,000). In 2013 you are expecting a .4% raise, taking your income up to $50,211.

Given those numbers, are you going to spend a week knocking on your neighbor’s homes telling them they have to demand the homeowner’s association roll back the dues because you only received a $211 raise this year? Are you going to call your relatives and tell them that you are going broke and that you may lose your house because you only got a $211 raise this year? Are you going to go to your boss and tell him that you’re probably going to have to stop working if he doesn’t give you another $500? Probably not.

If your situation were really as dire as the president suggests and that you were really in danger of losing your house, you’d probably find ways to cut your budget. Even if $40,000 of your expenditures were somehow shielded from cutting – In the case of the government cuts, they are mostly coming out of discretionary spending, half from defense (other than war funding) and half from the rest of the budget. That means that things like Social Security and Medicare payments are mostly exempt – you’d still have a pool of $10,211 from which you could cut the necessary $500. You might not like it, but you could probably eat at McDonalds more often and Chipotle less often. You might rent movies on Netflix rather than go out to the movies as often. You might even buy generic vegetables rather than Green Giant. At the end of the day you would probably figure out how to limit yourself to spending $211 more than you did last year without doing too much damage to your lifestyle.

But then you’re probably not Barack Obama. The president and his administration have suggested a wide range of disasters that will befall the American people if the Sequester goes into effect: There will be a shortage of meat, 125,000 people might become homeless, thousands of FBI would be lost, 100,000 kids would lose Headstart or childcare benefits, terrorist cables would go untranslated, workplaces would be less safe, the Pacific naval power would shrink by a third, firemen and police around the country would be cut, and nuclear waste would pile up. The president suggests all this will occur and much more. Indeed it seems as if America might simply collapse into anarchy if the president doesn’t get tax hikes passed.

Of course none of that actually has to happen. The president has the power to apply the cuts wherever he wants within the discretionary programs themselves. One might think that rather than closing national parks the president might look at cutting things like the Department of Energy program that spent billions of dollars on companies like Solyndra and Fisker. Instead of cutting job training for veterans the president might look at cutting the Obamaphone program that is providing free phones to millions of ineligible recipients. Or maybe instead of threatening to spend less money fighting terrorism he could figure out how to stop providing unemployment benefits to prisoners sitting in jails around the country. There is no doubt substantial waste on the military side as well, and rather than threatening to limit soldier's training perhaps the president could reconsider giving tanks and fighter jets to the Islamists running Egypt.

But that’s not the Obama way. The president would rather scare the dickens out of the country rather than face any limits on his orgy of spending. The Sequester is indeed a blunt instrument. It is however a tool for cutting government growth. Certainly not by enough. Certainly not in the most rational manner possible. But at least they are cuts – if only to the increase in spending.

The Sequester reminds one of the Base Realignment and Closure Commission program which was inaugurated under President Reagan. This was a program where expendable military bases were targeted for closure. Congress was forced to either take it or leave it and thus provided members with a way of escaping blame when a base closed in their districts. It too was a somewhat blunt instrument, but it worked. Given that the Sequester was the president’s idea in the first place, he should stop the demagoguery and embrace the opportunity to take a first step to getting a handle on government spending. Indeed, he should offer another Sequester, or a series of them that make actual cuts in spending rather than just phantom cuts in expected increases. By shielding members of Congress from the slings and arrows that sometimes follow cuts in programs that impact their districts, he would likely find greater support than he would in any item by item battle. Not pretty, but it could be effective. Not likely either because doing anything that actually benefits the country rather than Barack Obama would be unlike Barack Obama.

Monday, January 30, 2012

Imagine if Barack Obama gave you the $5,000 a year you're on the hook for...

I’m a huge fan of lotteries. It is one of the few taxes that citizens pay willingly. Spending a dollar for the prospect of winning a hundred million is kind of fun. And the fact that the state’s provide the fig leaf of responsibility by suggesting all funds go to support education makes players feel like they are doing their part to support the kids… Imagine, a way of taxing people that is actually voluntary!

Unfortunately however, most taxes are anything but voluntary, particularly those levied by the federal government. In 2011 the federal government took in $2.3 trillion in taxes. Not only did all of that get spent, but about $1.4 trillion more. And now Barack Obama is in charge of the spending machine. In the three years he has been President, Obama has spent over $11 trillion. That includes not only the $6.6 trillion Uncle Sam took in in taxes, but an additional $4.6 trillion that has been borrowed on your behalf, or at least for which you have the responsibility to repay. If we split that sum up amongst every one of the 310 million people in the country that would mean that Barack Obama has racked up $15,300 in debt on behalf of every American… in a mere three years.

I’d like to give that $4.6 trillion sinkhole a little perspective. Imagine that instead of that money going to failed green jobs scam companies like Solyndra or to university research departments to play World of Warcraft, something completely different happened. Imagine that on January 20, 2009 Barack Obama had knocked on your door, teleprompter in hand, and said “(Insert taxpayer’s name here) I’d like to thank you for giving me the opportunity to be your President. And to show my gratitude I’d like to give you $5,000 a year each of the next three years. Now, you’ll have to pay it back of course, but I’ll spread the payments over 30 years and give you an interest rate of about zero.” You think to yourself “If I don’t take the deal he’s just going to barrow it in my name and spend it on poetry readings or some such thing.” Deciding you could come up with much better places to spend the money, you respond “Thank you Mr. President. I’ll take the checks.”

Wow. He gives you the check. Now you have a $5,000 you didn’t have the day before. You start dreaming…”What am I going to spend my new found money on?” Well, if you were an average driver, who uses approximately 700 gallons of gas a year, you could pay for gasoline for the year and still have about $3,000 left over. You could then spend $720 on clothes, $1,000 on entertainment and still have enough left over to cover half of your healthcare expenditures. “Not bad” you think.

Now of course, that is just one $5,000 check. Given that the average American home has 2.6 people in it, the President quickly takes the $5,000 check back and gives you a $13,000 family sized check instead. You think “Wow, almost $40,000 over three years! Now that’s some serious cash!” At $13,000 the government just covered more than 80% of the total cost of what the average American family spends on housing. That’s pretty nice. At a rate that is lower than your mortgage as well. “This is going to be great” you tell yourself.

Then, suddenly, just as the President is about to leave you stop dreaming and start thinking about the big picture. “Mr. President! Wait! $13,000 a year for my family would be nice, God knows we could use it, but I don’t want to bankrupt the country or close down the government or endanger the national defense.” “Good citizen” President Obama calls you, “Don’t worry about that, we’ll make do with the just the $2.2 trillion or so we take in in taxes annually, which is, exactly what we spent way back in the ancient period known as 2004.” - remember this is a dream.

The wheels start turning in your mind… How different is your life in 2009 relative to 2004, and how much did a bigger government have to do with making it better or worse? Recognizing that the growth in government didn’t do much to make life any better over that time, you decide you can indeed live with a government budget circa 2004. “Ok, Mr. President, never mind, I’ll keep the money! Thank you!

Of course, that was all a dream. Unfortunately for you – and the rest of America – you are apparently too stupid to know what to do with your own money, or in this case, the money the government borrows but forces you to pay back. As such, no mortgage payments for you. No gas money, movie money, no check to cover your family’s annual food and insurance bills combined. No, unfortunately, while you are indeed on the hook for the money, guys like Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Barney Frank get to decide where all that money (and much more) goes…

Fundamentally that is the problem. And it’s not just money. Nor is it just the federal government. Increasingly it’s all levels of government and it’s seemingly about everything. Rather than parents being responsible for their kid’s fitness, schools have to ban burgers and pizza. Rather than drivers being able to purchase the kinds of vehicles they want, the government mandates auto companies sell cars no one wants and forces drivers to put inflation spurring ethanol into them. Rather than consumers and markets deciding what banks, and energy companies and health insurance companies should succeed, the government sticks its nose in virtually everywhere at almost every turn.

At the end of the day, few people could or would run their lives the same way the government runs the country – and unfortunately running the country is exactly what governments try and do. Fantasy budgeting and accounting, a distinct lack of accountability, a nonexistent correlation between success and continued funding, and a Pollyanna notion that all human problems and foibles can be obviated by government fiat.

Whether we get another four years of Barack Obama (God help us…) or a first term of one of the big government “conservatives” currently vying for the GOP nomination, voters should understand that the deficits and the regulation creep and the basic suffocation of the capitalist system that made America great will not be put asunder until we nominate and elect a President who:
  1. Recognizes that the power of the federal government is constrained by the Constitution, particularly the 10th Amendment;
  2. Understands that role of government is to do only those things which citizens cannot do themselves and nothing more;
  3. Has the intelligence to know where the line between the two is;
  4. Has the courage to tell voters to begin acting accordingly.
That doesn’t sound like too difficult a task. One wonders why the GOP can’t seem to figure it out.

Monday, July 25, 2011

The Debt Ceiling and the Democrat's Xbox War on Poverty

The debt ceiling talks fell apart on Friday as President Obama insisted on $400 billion in new taxes to pay for more government spending. Imagine if he didn’t have to spend those $400 billion over the next decade.

Is it possible that there is $400 billion of waste in the budget somewhere? Where might that be? How about amongst the impoverished?

What do most Americans think of when they think of the word poverty? Homeless is likely at the top of the list. Lack of adequate or any food is probably not far behind. Not enough money to have heat in the winter might be another. Lack of medical care. There are no doubt others, but those likely the things most Americans think of when they think of the poor. And that’s not by accident.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 30 million Americans are living in poverty. That number has remained largely stable for decades. When the nightly news reports that fact and couples it with pictures of people sleeping on grates around the National Mall or a woman and her children huddled in a homeless shelter, most people with a heart feel like there must be a problem if such poverty can exist within the borders of the richest country on the planet? Unfortunately however that is base manipulation.

The Heritage Foundation recently reviewed a variety of government data and found a picture much different than what the left would like you to believe. They reviewed data from the Census Bureau, the agency that defines how many people are living in poverty, and the Department of Energy, that produces a survey looking at what amenities people have. Looking at the poor through DOE data paints a slightly different picture than what the media paints with Census Bureau data.

According to DOE data, 99.6% of poor households have a refrigerator, 97.7% have at least one TV, 97.7% have a stove & oven, 81% have a microwave, 78% have air conditioning (vs 84% for the general population) 64% have a DVD player, 63% have cable or satellite, 54% have a cell phone (vs 76%) 29% have a video game system (such as Xxox or Wii) (vs. 31%). Forty-three percent of all poor households own their own homes and the average poor American has 16% more living space per capita than the average person living in France, Germany, the UK or Japan. While households with such amenities may be considered poor, they can hardly be considered to be living in poverty in the clearest sense of the word.

The goal here is not to diminish the notion of poverty in America. Indeed there certainly exists poverty in the true sense of the word: According to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development a person classified as living in poverty had a 1 in 25 chance of spending at least one night in a homeless shelter during 2009 vs. 1 in 195 for the average American. And there really are families that end up in homeless shelters with no other place to go. At the end of the day, statistics are statistics but life is life. If you are one of the people who are living in a homeless shelter or on the street or hasn’t had anything to eat or can’t find a safe bathroom, it doesn’t matter what the average square footage a European gets by with is. What matters to you is what is going on at that exact moment.

And that’s where the problem as defined by progressives and Democrats comes in. By defining poverty so broadly they do a disservice to the truly poor. How? By perpetuating programs that send resources to those do not need them. Every time a taxpayer stands in line at the grocery store and watches a welfare recipient talk on her cell phone and pay cash for cigarettes and lottery tickets while using food stamps to pay for food it diminishes support for all government programs. It also keeps dollars from those programs which target the truly needy.

Rather than having programs that could help those with significant problems, we have welfare programs that simply perpetuate more welfare. Between 1965 & 2008 the United States spent $15.9 Trillion in its War on Poverty (vs $6.4 on all real wars) yet 10% of the population is considered to be living in poverty today.

Despite the War on Poverty’s abject failure, it goes on. And here’s where it hurts. Even now amidst the toughest economic environment in half a century, with urban unemployment in the double digits, when the government has to borrow a trillion dollars to pay its bills President Obama and the Democrats continue to play politics. When the GOP seeks to reduce government by cutting wasteful programs, the left accuses them of wanting to cut the safety net out from under America’s most vulnerable. That’s John Edwards lie of Two America’s all over again, and it’s still a lie.

The DOE’s numbers clearly demonstrate that there is a distinct difference between those considered poor and those in need of real help. While the most effective strategy would most certainly be to eliminate all government welfare programs and allow private charities to take over, that is unlikely to get by a donkey led Senate or the progressive in the White House. More realistically, by painting an accurate picture of poverty in the country, Uncle Sam could more precisely tailor programs to help the truly needy. Doing so would help those in need by being more effective, it might help restore the American taxpayer’s opinion of government in general and would save hundreds of billions of dollars just at the time when America finds itself broke.