Money is fungible ….and finite. It appears that the political class either
doesn’t understand that or is willfully blind to those realities.
As someone that reviews and
assesses budgets in my professional life, I understand that cash is like oxygen
to an organization. If you want to
understand what an organization’s priorities are and where it is really going,
follow the cash. It tells you everything
about where an organization is headed. This concept applies in government as
well as in business. And in both places,
people will often go to great lengths to obscure where money is really flowing.
To understand some of the Obama
deals that Trump is unwinding, and to know exactly what the Obama
Administration was up to, all you need to do is follow the money. Often, the Obama deals were thinly veiled
redistribution efforts; others used public funds to finance left wing groups;
still others astonishingly funded terror operations and tyranny. When you add it all up, it paints a
disturbing picture of what the Obama Administration was attempting to
accomplish- all outside the bounds of the intent of the Founders, who intended
Congress to maintain power of the purse.
Number One. The Paris Climate Accord. Thankfully, dahling, we’ll never have
Paris. The pundits shrieked and stamped
their feet after Donald Trump announced that the U.S. would not abide by the
Paris Accord, complaining about the
abdication of U.S. leadership by pulling out.
The Paris Accord followed the Obama blueprint for international deals. The U.S. grants concessions and provides cash in the
hopes that others will act beneficently later with no meaningful enforcement or
remedy provisions in the deal. But if
you follow the commitments, you would see that the U.S. committed to reductions
in carbon emissions now (with the loss of approximately 1 million jobs), but reductions
by the other major emitters – India and China—would not start until the year 2030. What do you think would be likely to happen
when we ring the doorbell of the Chinese in the year and remind them of their
commitment? Only the hopelessly naïve
would trust that the Chinese would live up to their end of the bargain.
But an even more odious aspect of
the Paris Accord was the “green fund” under which the U.S. committed $1 billion
(not appropriated by Congress) while India and China committed nothing. These funds were to be used to finance “green
projects” in developing nations. The
Chinese would not fund directly but since we are borrowing (much from the
Chinese) to fund our deficit, we would be borrowing from the Chinese to hand money
over to an international body which would, in turn, finance “green projects” in
countries run by tinpot dictators like Maduro of Venezuela. What could possibly go wrong? Think 1,000 points of Solyndra.
Number Two. Joint Comprehensive
Plan of Action (JCPOA). The deal with
Iran preceded the Paris Accord. Trump
has not yet abrogated it but has “put Iran on notice” and initiated additional
sanctions. JPCOA was structured similarly
to the Paris Accord. We provide cash up
front, permit the Iranians to self-monitor and there would be no real remedies
or penalties if Iran is caught violating the deal. Obama detached this deal from all other
aspects of the relationship, including missile technology development. As part of the deal, the Obama administration
released Iranian funds held since the Iranian Revolution and shipped the
mullahs $400 million in cash. Not surprisingly,
Iran and Hezbollah have since gone on a military spending spree, and Iran
continues apace with its missile program.
Even John Kerry and Susan Rice admitted at the time that part of the
funds would finance terrorism. Of course
it would. Money is fungible. Iran has some sort of governmental budgeting
process. The additional windfall of cash
will be used to finance terror and Iran’s military. The U.S. may be the only nation in history to
finance the military buildup of a sworn enemy.
Number Three. Government financing of leftist groups. Attorney
General Jeff Sessions finally ended the Obama practice of using funds garnered
from fines and settlement amounts levied against banks and diverting these
funds to favored left leaning groups instead of back into Treasury where they
belong. This end around Congress was a
clever Constitutional avoidance maneuver, designed to circumvent Congressional
spending power. The government
threatened to sue large banks over transgressions related to the ’08 real
estate debacle and purported racial bias.
Rather than face protracted litigation and trials, banks settled these
claims. Bank settlements totaled in the
hundreds of millions of dollars. The Obama Administration sprinkled these funds
to various “community group” instead of sending the money back to Treasury. Of course, no vote by Congress was taken to
appropriate these funds.
Number Four. Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood is fond of spouting out
its misleading claim that only 3% of its services go toward abortion. The reality is that Planned Parenthood is
responsible for approximately one third of the abortions performed in the
U.S. Whether you agree with Roe v Wade
or not, abortion is a pretty nasty business and Planned Parenthood has gone to
great lengths to distort its business and suppress the callousness with which
the organization and abortion providers view these “services.” Planned Parenthood was caught on videotape
dickering over the price of fetus body parts, and in another recent video taken
at a conference of abortionists, the speakers glibly talked about fetuses being “tough little
buggers” and even guffawed at some of the practices. It’s
easy to see that some people do not want their tax dollars flowing to these
activities. But even worse, Planned
Parenthood donated $730,000 to the losing Democratic candidate in the 6th
Congressional District in Georgia. Since
money is fungible, taxpayers are funding a Democratic candidate’s campaign. If Planned Parenthood so desperately needs
taxpayer funds to finance their services, then how can Planned Parenthood be financing the
candidacy of a politician?
Fourth is NATO. Trump was blistered in the press for chiding
Angela Merkel for Germany’s failure to live up to its commitment to spend 2% of
its GDP on defense. Internationalists
like Richard Haass were horrified at Trump’s blunt criticism of Merkel (and
other NATO members) for not stepping up to THE COMMITMENTS THAT HAVE ALREADY
BEEN MADE. But why should the U.S.
taxpayer continue to underwrite Europe’s security, especially when Merkel has
opened Europe’s borders to Islamic immigration (which will add hundreds of
thousands of dependents on the European welfare state). Merkel won’t have to make hard budgetary and
policy choices as long as the U.S. is footing a disproportionate share of its
security. With the U.S. budget in
permanent structural deficit, this is simply no longer possible. The situation is made worse by the Obama
administration’s decision to end the “two war policy” –that is the policy of
maintaining sufficient readiness to fight two major conflicts
simultaneously. Obama ended this policy
just as risk of needing to fight two simultaneous conflicts has dramatically
increased. The U.S. is being challenged
daily by Russia, China, Iran, North Korea and radical Islam. Now, more than at any time since WWII, Europe
needs to choose more guns than butter if it wishes to defend itself.
Which brings me to Number Five and
this one is local. The Illinois
legislature, led by Democratic boss Mike Madigan corralled enough Republicans
to override Governor Bruce Rauner’s veto and passed a 32% tax increase with no
structural changes in operations. The
entire tax increase will be eaten up by required pension payments. But remember that money is fungible. The tax increase is a transfer of money that
would otherwise be available for taxpayers to fund their own retirement
accounts to the pensions of state employees, many of whom retired 10 years
earlier than workers in the private sector.
The net result is that private sector workers are slaving away to pay
for the comfortable leisurely retirement of others. And since higher education (education is
preparing the young for the future) in Illinois is one area that is being asked
to tighten its belt to provide for public sector pensioners (the past), the
state legislature is effectively robbing the future to pay for the past. In both instances, state government is taking
resources from currently productive
people and businesses and future productive people to make payments to past
political cronies to whom they have overcommitted. Illinois politicians have figured out how to
steal from our children’s piggybanks.
When you take the time to watch
where money is moving, you will see that Western governments are underwriting
Islamic immigration to the West, shortchanging the defense of Europe, financing
the killing of fetuses and leftist groups, draining education and productive workers to
pay for fat pensions for state workers, and most hideously and perversely,
financing terror.
If you want to truly understand
where politicians are taking us, always follow the money. The money trail will tell the tale. And this is, in part, behind the blind hatred
of Donald Trump on the left. He has
figured this out and is in the process of stopping the self-destructive
horrible deals that have been crafted by the political establishment.
