#government spending

[captain-casual]

Next up: Biden continues to be a crusty piece of shit who ignores his voters

Story here

[imkeepinit]

[commonsensecommentary]

“Currently, fewer than two-in-ten Americans say they trust the government in Washington to do what is right “just about always” (1%) or “most of the time” (15%). This is among the lowest trust measures in nearly seven decades of polling.”

(Not a surprise, is it?)

[opspro2005]

Government spending is out of control, and each and every one of us is to blame*

*Because we didn't rise up and aggressively punish/remove the thieves that are lining their pockets with our tax-dollars.

[robertreich]

The Truth About Corporate Subsidies

Why won't big American corporations do what's right for America unless the government practically bribes them?

And why is the government so reluctant to regulate them?

Prior to the 1980’s, the U.S. government demanded that corporations act in the public interest.

For example, the Clean Air Act of 1970 stopped companies from polluting our air by regulating them.

Fast forward to 2022, when the biggest piece of legislation aimed at combating the climate crisis allocates billions of dollars in subsidies to clean energy producers.

Notice the difference?

Both are important steps to combating climate change.

But they illustrate the nation’s shift away from regulating businesses to subsidizing them.

It’s a trend that’s characterized every recent administration.

The CHIPS Act –– another major initiative of the Biden administration –– shelled out $52 billion in subsidies to semiconductor firms.

Donald Trump’s “Operation Warp Speed” delivered over $10 billion in subsidies to COVID vaccine manufacturers.

Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act subsidized the health care and pharmaceutical industries.

George W. Bush and Obama bailed out Wall Street following the 2008 economic crash while providing about $80 billion in rescue funds for GM and Chrysler.

And the federal government has been subsidizing big oil and gas companies for decades, to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars.

Before the Reagan era, it was usually the case that America regulated rather than subsidized big business to ensure the wellbeing of the American public.

The Great Depression and FDR’s Administration created an alphabet soup of regulatory agencies — the SEC, FCC, FHA, and so on — that regulated businesses.

Corporations were required to produce public goods, or avoid public “bads” like a financial meltdown, as conditions for staying in business.

If this regulatory alternative seems far-fetched today, that’s because of how far we’ve come from a regulatory state to a subsidy state.

Today it’s politically difficult, if not impossible, for government to demand that corporations bear the costs of public goods. The government still regulates businesses, of course –– but one of the biggest things it does is subsidize them. Just look at the growth of government subsidies to business over the past half century.

The reason for this shift is corporations now have more political clout than ever before.

Industries that spend the most on lobbying and campaign contributions have often benefited greatly from this shift from regulation to subsidy.

Now, subsidies aren’t inherently bad. Important technological advances have been made because of government funding.

But subsidies are a problem when few, if any, conditions are attached — so there’s no guarantee that benefits reach the American people.

What good is subsidizing the healthcare industry when millions of Americans have medical debt and can’t afford insurance? What good are subsidies for oil companies when they price gouge at the pump and destroy the planet? What good are subsidies for profitable semiconductor manufacturers when they’re global companies with no allegiance to America?

We’re left with a system where costs are socialized, profits are privatized.  

Now, fixing this might seem daunting — but we’re not powerless. Here’s what we can do to make sure our government actually works for the people, not just the powerful.

First, make all subsidies conditional, so that any company getting money from the government must clearly specify what it will be spent on – so we can ensure the funds actually help the public.

Second, ban stock buybacks so companies can’t use the subsidies to pump up their profits and stock prices.

Third, empower regulatory agencies to do the jobs they once did — forcing companies to act in the public interest.

Finally, we need campaign finance reform to get big corporate money out of politics.

Large American corporations shouldn’t need government subsidies to do what’s right for America.

It’s time for our leaders in Washington to get this message, and reverse this disturbing trend.

[culturevulturette]

We're in a major argument with math. And math wins, every time.

[follow-up-news]

It's no exaggeration to say government money saved child care in the pandemic. As part of the 2021 American Rescue Plan, Congress approved a total of $39 billion for child care, an unprecedented level of spending aimed at ensuring essential workers could go to work. The majority — $24 billion — was directed toward stabilizing child care centers and home-based daycares, to guarantee they'd remain open and staffed. Colagrosso, who opened A Place to Grow 28 years ago, poured the money into wages and bonuses, repairs and a new HVAC system, playground equipment for what had been an empty field, and even a bus to take older kids to and from school and, in the summers, on field trips. Now that the September 30 deadline for spending the pandemic funds has passed, she and other child care providers are grappling with what they have to take back. "We're going to have to slow down payroll. We have to cut everywhere we can cut," Colagrosso says.

[pharosproject]

Spending your own money vs government spending

[leviathangourmet]

A series of government reports have documented how much of the trillions of dollars purportedly spent on “Covid relief” went to waste — ranging from the hundreds of billions in fraud (i.e., the “Great Grift”) to extravagant local government expenditures (e.g., renovating a minor league baseball stadium and replacing irrigation systems at golf courses).

But out of all that waste, most Americans would consider money spent on countering pandemic learning loss a legitimate use of government resources. (Mind you, many Americans, including this one, would question why public school unions insisted on keeping schools closed for endless periods of time, but that’s a separate story.) 

Now several new data points suggest that much of this money has likewise been frittered away, leaving a generation of American students far worse off.

Wasteful School Spending

An in-depth investigation by the education organization The 74 demonstrated that much of the $190 billion in federal funds has gone to projects that often will not directly help students learn. A series of public records requests discovered just some of the ways districts spent their federal relief dollars.

To begin, in Colorado, a charter school network “spent about $70,000 for an exterior fence at its Aurora campus so students and staff could eat outside despite concerns about proximity to the community’s rising homeless population.” While this expenditure says much about social policy in Colorado, it has practically nothing to do with reversing learning losses.

In California, Oakland’s school district used $1.6 million for a payment on a $100 million loan the district took out from the state of California in 2003 — well before the coronavirus hit. What’s more, the district in Stockton, California, “spent over $2 million on high-level central office positions, like a facilities director.”

Youngstown, Ohio, frittered away $5 million on equipment and supplies to provide free WiFi from utility poles — a project the district could never implement because the city didn’t own all of the utility poles in question.

And in Utah, the Granite Public Schools spent $86,000 on “accommodations” for a conference held at — wait for it — Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.

Call me crazy, but when the federal government gave out money to help public schools, I don’t think that sending a bunch of administrators to meet Donny Osmond was at the front of most taxpayers’ minds. What’s more, the school district publicly advertised and bragged about this extravagant expenditure of government funds, which demonstrates that public school employees need some lessons in political science — either that or they just don’t care.

In some respects, it’s a miracle that The 74 could even compile these examples of wasteful public school spending. In many states and districts, citizens can’t even track where districts’ share of the $190 billion in federal funding went — let alone how (if at all) it is countering the effects of pandemic learning loss. 

As one Fairfax County, Virginia, parent noted, districts’ reports on their spending are often “full of jargon and gobbledygook.”

Poor Quality Teaching

An even more troubling sign came in the form of another recent report, this one by the Center for Reinventing Public Education. Its study focused on in-depth interviews with leaders at five public school districts and found that even in districts that have dedicated resources toward stemming Covid-related learning loss, teachers and administrators faced an uphill battle to regain lost ground.

Broadly speaking, the report indicated that districts cannot keep up with the current curriculum, let alone try to undo the effects of Covid closures. Many teachers have left, substitutes and replacements remain scarce, skills have atrophied, and administrators lacked the time or ability to supervise teachers’ instructional methods until very recently.

Consider the following quotes from the report:

“$500,000 for tutoring, basically. Are you kidding me? That’s a lot of money. And nothing to show for it [in terms of impact on student learning].”

“We spent a lot of money on retention bonuses and ‘please stay’ payments. … You might as well burn that money because it didn’t bear out. People left anyway.”

“All these [tutoring] companies … accelerated their hiring and probably didn’t have time to appropriately train people up or go in and coach people on the job. They’re just placing people. And so we’re probably getting some B Team members.”

“I do think the first and foremost issue is ‘Do we have enough high quality teachers in our schools to do this work?’ And the answer is no right now for us.”

“There’s been a lot of protectivist [attitudes among district staff], like we can’t ask teachers to do anything else.”

“[We have teachers who lack] expectations for kids; that kids can be excellent.”

A demoralized workforce that cannot keep pace, and in many cases lacks the initiative to demand high standards of either its students or itself — that’s what $190 billion in federal funds has bought the American people.

Of course, teachers unions have no one but themselves to blame for the problems in public education post-Covid, having lobbied extensively to keep schools closed for most (if not all) of the pandemic. But the next generation of Americans deserves far better from their educational system. 

Some are getting it, even if they have to go outside the traditional public school system to do so. Here’s hoping that states will continue to expand school choice — a far better investment of taxpayer resources — to give people more options other than a sclerotic, wasteful, and ineffective public school bureaucracy.

[onenakedfarmer]

I'm probably not going to live long enough to see the US go full Mad Max/Road Warrior because of its greed and complete disregard for any human life valued below nine figures.

Please, when you get there, tell Immortan Joe I said hey.

[blackwolfmanx2]

Real Talk:

Oops! Sorry Hawaii, Massa Biden spent money on Ukraine instead.

[imkeepinit]

[commonsensecommentary]

More debt. And more debt. And still more debt. Soon enough, America as we know it is dead.

[indizombie]

To strengthen and justify their argument, a very common misconception is tossed around - that only around 3 per cent of Indians pay tax, with the implicit accusation being that the rest (97 per cent) are freeloaders. This taxpayer card is wielded by those priding themselves on their membership in this 3 per cent club to claim a greater say over government spending, and to denounce welfare measures targeted at the rest by pejoratively terming them freebies. But the fact is that every Indian is a taxpayer. The 3 per cent figure quoted is the approximate share of the population that pays income tax, which is only one of the dozens of ways in which taxes are collected in India… Since every Indian – who buys goods and services at the bare minimum – pays tax, and no one has a greater say over government spending on account of being the only taxpayers, we do not even have to use the rationale of redistribution to justify why the government must spend especially on those who do not earn enough to pay tax.

Rakshith Ponnathpur, ‘The rich, the rest and freebies: Unpacking a problematic narrative’, Deccan Herald

[govtshutdown]

At this point, it doesn't sound like a deal can be reached any other way, but I've been wrong before.

[fivecornerroom]