Dash of Calabash

Thousands of pork-filled giveaways have been stuffed into a bloated, end-of-the-year spending bill working its way through Congress this week.Practicing a dead-of-night thievery long associated with big budget bills, the Democratic House leadership released this 1,482-page monstrosity in the wee hours of Monday morning and quickly scheduled floor debate by 6 p.m. that same day. That left budget cutters scant time to uncover how much fiscal skullduggery their colleagues had perpetrated.

The so-called catchall, omnibus appropriations bill, tipping the scales at $516 billion, contained 9,170 parochial spending projects, according to Sen. Tom Coburn, the Oklahoma Republican who has become the GOP’s chief waste fighter on Capitol Hill.

Read the rest of Donald Lambro’s article on Townhall.com

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Some polls show health care as the top domestic policy issue among the American electorate. It will surely be a major issue in the 2008 Presidential elections. According to Sally Pipes of the Pacific Research Institute, “Health care reform is hot this election season and Presidential hopefuls from both parties appear weekly with promises of reforms that will supposedly solve our system’s problems with universal coverage at affordable costs.”

Candidates probably won’t be looking too seriously at adopting the European single-payer model in the U.S., but they may find themselves looking a bit closer to home, namely Massachusetts. Should they? Ms. Pipes has her doubts:

“A recent overhaul in Massachusetts that expanded taxpayer-funded health insurance and requires individuals to purchase government-approved policies is proving particularly compelling to many, not the least because its architect, Mitt Romney, is a leading Republican candidate.

In reality, the Massachusetts mandate provides a poor model for the rest of the country - unless we are looking for an expensive expansion of government. It won’t achieve universal care. It has increased government spending, bureaucracy, and regulation. It most certainly will prompt increased taxes.”

Read the rest of her analysis here.

From Economist.com, an example of government inability to perform basic mathematics when budgets are involved:
“The office of Chicago’s mayor, Richard Daley, has released a preliminary budget of $5.6 billion for 2008—which would leave the city with a $218m funding gap. One reason for the shortfall is the slump in the property market, which has resulted in lower-than-expected tax revenues. City councillors fear this may force Mr Daley to renege on his re-election-campaign promise to stop increasing property taxes. Alternatively the city might close the gap with a combination of spending cuts, other tax increases (on cigarettes, perhaps) and layoffs of city employees.”