j said...Good point.
Pawpaw, if we eliminate "handouts to individuals" we should also eliminate handouts to corporations. Didn't your fellow Republications just hand Exxon-Mobil several billion dollars?
Isn't it a handout when the government pays farmers not to farm? Isn't that the same as paying someone not to work?
Fiscal responsibility cuts both ways and I won't be one to say that a handout to one person (or corporation) is okay, while another one is not. A handout is a handout, and we shouldn't be guilty of preferring one over the other.
I dont' think I have ever covered it on these pages, but I am opposed to farm subsidies, too. Farmers grow our food, true, but I think that the market would do a better job of managing commodities than the government does.
One of the reasons that many Repubs, myself included is angry with Bush and Company is because of fiscal irresponsibility. He is spending money, frankly, at a rate that would make a drunken sailor blush. I am also disenchanted with our Congress as a whole for the same reason. Those guys are all for cutting pork, unless it is Their Pork.
There has to be a place in our budget for assisting the needy. I am not opposed to helping someone who is in dire and necessitious circumstances, but I am hard-pressed to show you where in the Constitution it is allowed. Therein lies the quandry. I am also hard pressed to show you where in the Constitution we got the idea that the Government could pay for anything except defense.
I know we need roads and bridges and levees and all manner of things that contribute to our common good, yet I am stymied as to the reasoning of those that would hold that the Government should provide everything for everyone. There must be some rational way to rein in out-of-control spending, and I wish that our Republican delegation in Congress would make dramatic inroads at cutting fat whereever it is found. Is that not what the Budget Committee is for?
Commenters are welcome to help me come to some rational conclusion here.
8 comments:
Pawpaw writes I am not opposed to helping someone who is in dire and necessitious circumstances, but I am hard-pressed to show you where in the Constitution it is allowed.
Where it's "allowed"?!
Well, as you know, the Constitution describes a Congress which is full of Reps and Senators who can make bills that become law. They are even allowed to make laws providing for the general welfare of United States Citizens.
Check out Section. 8. Clause 1:
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States...
I believe that could reasonably be interpreted as "allowing" for laws which assist disaster victims... etc.
>and general Welfare of the United States...
That covers disaster relief and welfare for the needy, I believe.
Some might consider that to be so.
As I recall history, that wasn't always the case. That the general welfare clause wasn't held to cover such things as local disasters. During Roosevelts push for the New Deal we find that the Courts start holding that the general welfare clause can be used for purely local purposes.
We all agree that spending is out of control, and yet it seems that every spending bill can be construed "for the general welfare".
How, for example, does spending money on a bridge in Alaska have any bearing on my welfare here in Louisiana? How does federal spending for an interstate highway in Hawaii have any bearing on the general welfare of a citizen in Vermont?
The Courts had to jump through hoops to allow New Deal spending. Those hoops today have become highway tunnels. Chipped in stome and open to anyone.
I'm open to a little fiscal responsiblity.
The Flood of 1927 changed attitudes about federal assistance well before the Roosevelts came around.
Despite the waste, the infrastructure investments (especially interstates) we've made as a country over the past 70 years have proven wildly successful and profitable to this country.
Jefferson thought the Louisiana Purchase was a good idea, but was bothered by the fact that there was nothing in the Constitution that allowed Congress to purchase it.
We've come a long way, baby.
cite:
http://americanhistory.about.com/library/weekly/aa030902a.htm
A while back I read about government warehouses somewhere up north in dairy cow country. Refrigerated warehouses. They store I-can't-remember-how-many tons of butter. Yes, butter, cow milk butter. Spread on toast butter. It costs you and me, etc., something like $1,000,000 per month to keep the warehouses going, electricity, salaries, etc.
j said... Yes, butter, cow milk butter. Spread on toast butter. It costs you and me, etc., something like $1,000,000
Probably not what they mean when they talk about guns and butter economics ;)
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