Two bits of news this week may hit a nerve for those who still care about the federal spending: Monday’s story about why Wichita has so many streets torn up for construction, and Tuesday’s editorial about why Kansas State Department of Education seemingly has been handing out charter school-related grants to anyone who asks. In both cases, the motivation has to do with officials needing to use federal funding before it goes away. That’s why the city of Wichita already has spent more than $40 million on street projects this year, compared with its usual $50 million annually. And why the state hurriedly gave out $1,995 questionable grants to at least 16 entities to beat a Sept. 30 deadline. True, the inconvenience of the road construction soon will pay off in nice streets. But it makes you wonder what would happen to the federal budget if just once — for fun, if not fiscal responsibility — everybody with use-it-or-lose-it funds opted not to use them.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
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27 Comments
Rhonda – That is a very good question. What you would find is that the Federal budgets would decrease as well as state and local. This happens a lot.
Another thing that occurs is funding for a pilot program. The money comes in for 2 or 3 years and you get hooked on it. The next thing you know you now have to either cut the program or find a way to fund it yourself.
We don’t have to worry about the programs being cut. That just will not happen. But I agree with you that it would be nice to see it happen.
At one time I lived and worked in Rice County, about the end of the month everyday there would be a fly-over of F-4 Phantoms from Mc Connell AB. It was fantastic to watch as they would chase each other across the sky, afterburner full and the blue flames shooting out of the rear. They would do loops and other tricks.We would set at lunch watching the show, one day as I was driving the work truck. Suddenly I felt a vibration that grew and grew. Till my truck shook and became hard to drive, suddenly the roar became almost deafening, I rolled down my driver’s window just in time to see two F-4 flying so low over me that I could see the metal to metal joints on the underbellies.
One day I mention to a co-worker that it seemed odd that it was always at the end of the month. He told me as he had been in the Air force, that they were burning up they monthly fuel allotment. If they did not use it, the next month their allotment would be cut by the amount that they did not use the month before. That seem stupid to me….
Nothing new about spending before the end of a fiscal year. Actually, I kind of like especially when it comes to repairing roads. How better than with a date deadlines to get local politicians motivated to do something.
If we left local politico’s to their own will, they would be fat cat-in in other cities and smoozin for free dinners with giant constructions firms. Wait,nevermind, that already happens.
Fiscal responsibility and Government?
HA HA!
;)
In regards to road construction: Does anyone know what is going on at Kellogg/Rock? They have torn down some buildings but seem to have stopped any construction. To the west the freeway is done to near Governor; to the east they are progressing between Rock and the Turnpike. But the Rock interchange just sits there. What gives?
Ben! They are starting on it very soon. They are working on a detour route for the Kellogg traffic.
Kellogg will go underneath Rock Road, so that means that Rock Road will be a bridge. The overpass near the Turnpike is near completion and if you follow it going west, you will notice that they laid asphalt instead of concrete (meaning temporary) towards the Rock Road intersection, but it curves to the south. I suspect that the south most lanes of Kellogg will become the west bound lane. The frontage road in front of Eastgate mall will continue to be the east bound lane, but I suspect they will build an asphalt road to connect it to the one in front of Long John Silvers.
There was a dispute with Blockbuster for the use of land in front of it and that took awhile to negotiate, but I believe it’s done.
I have no idea how they will route the north/south bound traffic of Rock Road. I don’t think they are going to close it. As they tear down the Hotel next to Old Chicago, I believe the temporary intersection of Rock will be shifted west.
Thanks Joe. Fortunately I have figured out my own detour that avoids the intersection entirely. I guess I had expected them to be progressing on the north frontage by now. That will allow for west-bound traffic from east of Rock (where the frontage is done) one over to Rusty Eck (ditto) and then down the ramp onto the freeway.
Then, as you describe, the south frontage would become e/b Kellogg for a while.
It’s gonna be a long project; sure will be nice when it is done. Now if Spangles will just get a new store there …
And we’re shocked by this?
Typical bureaucratic mindset, because any bureaucracy is primarily motivated by its self-existance and growth. Spend the dollars, because if you don’t, then obviously you didn’t need them. Your budget may well then be cut.
Unfortunately, in some bureaucracies, this mindset is so prevalent that actually accomplishing anything is an afterthought; in fact, it could be argued that any gov’t bureaucracy that actually solves the problem it’s intended to solve has worked its way out of a job. A cynical soul might argue that is why after 40+ years of massive social welfare spending, we still have the poor; it is in the welfare bureaucracy’s (and a particular political party’s) interest to keep the poor poor.
No, I don’t really think it that the federal welfare bureaucracy is that nefarious. Usually.
Good point, GMC. Look at the bureaucracy surrounding the local courts.
We should outsource all that legal work to the low bidder.
Brad Pistonick would make a helluva good prosecutor, don’tcha think?
Speaking of spending money, I wonder what the total cost paid right now for retired Senators and Congressmen, and what is the average amount paid???
Capn:
Not that it’s on point (I’m not sure you HAVE a point to make relevant to the thread), or any of your business, but given what I’m making, I probably AM the low bidder!!
As to working my way out of a job; while that would be a nice thought, given human nature I don’t think there’s any danger of that anytime soon.
Hehe, GMC.
My point was simply that government is not evil or even a necessary evil.
It can accomplish great good when run by people who believe in it and don’t simply want to prove that it always fails (Reagan, Bush, Bush).
See for instance the tremendous rise in the standard of living for the masses we now call “the middle class” under FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy.
An FDR couldn’t possibly do today what they did then, because of all the government haters.
And sure enough, we’ve seen the middle class controlling less and less wealth since Reagan . . .
I was beginnig to wonder why it got so impossible to get across town. Now I know; there’s money to be spent!
If this issue is important to you Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma is your man.
Capn:
“Government is at best a necessary evil; at worst an intolerable one.” -Thomas Paine
Truer words were never spoken. And it is that idea, more than any other single thing, that is the undergirding of the US Constitution.
You presume that there is a causal relationship between certain gov’t policies and the rise of the middle class during that period. However, it may well be that the middle class grew coincidentially with those government policies, or even DESPITE them. There is a serious train of thought, for example, which holds that much of the New Deal, despite the New Dealer’s best intentions, actually lengthened the depression. Certainly the reality we must accept about FDR and the New Deal is that the New Deal did not end the depression. World War II did.
It’s not that I don’t believe in government (I see it all around me; it must be true!! ;-) ). I simply have great skepticism in the ability of government to find its own ass with both hands; it’s the nature of the institution. The bigger government is, the more that is true. And the federal government, consistently, and under the guidance of both parties, routinely reinforces that perception.
They are building a Spangles at Harry and Rock. I believe that is the replacement for the one on Kellogg and Roc.
You repeat the Reagan-Bush-Dole-Bush talking points very well, GMC.
There’s a test of your theory and a test of mine however.
What was poverty among the elderly before Social Security and what was it after?
Answer–40 and 10 percent. Surely you’re not going to argue that Social Security made poverty among the elderly WORSE?
What is the ranking of industrialized countries with nationalized health care compared with the United States?
Answer: 1-36th USA 37th
What is the productivity of the US per hour worked compared with other industrialized countries?
Number 1, number 2, number 3?
Answer: not even close. Norway is 29 percent higher, Luxembourg 26 percent higher, Belgium 11 percent higher, even the hard-drinking Irish, the pot-smoking Dutch, and the sissy French rank higher than the US (OECD).
I suppose you honestly believe that there’s no correlation between the high level of government involvement in people’s lives of these countries and their longer life expectancies, lower infant mortality, and higher standard of living.
But I chose to interprete the data logically . . .
Usual “talking points” blather. Yada, yada, yada. Whatever.
This thread isn’t about those matters, and I’m not gonna turn this thread into a discussion of SS, nationalized health insurance, etc.
Suffice it to say that SS 1) has had enourmous other unforseen impacts, not the least of which is that it’s destined to fail unless substantive changes happen, and 2) there are substantial social and cultural differences there; cross-cultural comparisons have little if any value. The US isn’t any of those places. And personally, I wouldn’t choose to live in any of those places, with the suffocating nanny state in place. No thanks.
Well, the issue isn’t whether you want to live there or not.
The issue is “does gov’t cause more problems than it creates?”
The conservatives say yes; the liberals say no.
I think the evidence backs up the liberal position a lot better than it backs up the conservative.
And I think anyone who isn’t already brain-washed into the conservative fantasy that less is more can see it too.
Unfortunately for us, the conservative fantasy gets a lot more air-time than any other view.
It wasn’t “smaller gov’t” or that people in the Gulf needed when Katrina hit. It wasn’t “a tax break” that would have helped stop the terrorists on 9-11.
BTW, Social security is not failing, it will not fail soon, and it isn’t in dire need of “reform.”
This is just another bullshit scare to you by the same people warned us of that other dire threat, the “tons and tons of Weapons of Mass Destruction” because they hate Social security and want to destroy it.
The imminite (sp?) collapse of Social security was forecast by Bush in the 70’s. He said it would be insolvent in 1988.
It is now the only part of our government that isn’t in deficit.
That argument has been de-bunked many times over.
Capn.
Keep believing that if you like. The ostrich sleeps well, I suppose. But if you are under 40, I’d advise generously saving to a good mutual fund, 401(k), or other savings plan. You’ll need it.
Cap’n, SS will be insolvent at some point in the next 20 years, absent some major changes; it is not actuarially sound, the current surplus is due to the contributions of the “Baby Boomers”, who will be drawing benefits over time, and the numbers of whom are not being replaced. Medicare is on thinner ice, as well.
Part of the issue is increased longevity vis-a-vis the (now) age 65 retirement age for full benefits. Yes, I know the age gradually increases over time (I believe I’m not eligible until age 66 yrs., 9 mos), but while there is some time to reform the system, each year that passes makes the reform more difficult.
One reform would be to look at difference between the life expectancy vs. age 65 when SS was enacted, and use this delta to set a “full benefits” retirement age. Another would be to remove the cap on compensation upon which the 6.2% OASDI amount is collected; another would be to treat SS benefits as other retirement pension payments, with a part of the benefit received treated as taxable income, a part as recovery of principal, if you will, irrespective of other income, with the amount of federal income tax paid thereon being added to the “Social Security Trust Fund”; another is increasing the contribution rate. No matter how you cut it, reform is needed, and soon, for those under age 40.
We’ve argued this over and over, Vaughn.
Look, Social Security is designed to pay you about 1/3rd of your income if you make about 30 – 80 thousand a year.
If you make less, it pays more, and if you make more, it pays less than 33 percent.
That means SS will always be solvent as long as you have 3 workers for every 1 retiree.
That’s what we have now–that’s what we’ll have in the future.
The only people who seriously research this and find that it’s “going to fail” are people who never liked it from the beginning (Republicans like Bob Dole) and want it to fail.
I seriously researched it a number of years ago and found that contrary to the media that keeps repeating the right-wing talking points, there is no social security crisis.
The only crisis will be if we try to “privatize” (I call it “piratize”) it.
Yes, more boomers are retiring. But what, they didn’t have any kids, no grandkids. The entire population of America is expanding. Three workers for one retiree. As long as that holds, there’s no problem.
The lovely thing about piratization is that it’s the worst of both worlds: tax dollars being spent with no public accountability.
Yup, exactly right, Rage.
You should see “Iraq for Sale” if you haven’t already, R.
That’s what they’re talking about.
*****
Actually, I realized I posted an error: it wasn’t Dole that voted against Social security. He’s not THAT old. He voted against Medicare.
It was Alf Landon who voted against Social Security if memory serves.
Yup, exactly right, Rage.
You should see “Iraq for Sale” if you haven’t already, R.
That’s what they’re talking about.
*****
Actually, I realized I posted an error: it wasn’t Dole that voted against Social security. He’s not THAT old. He voted against Medicare.
It was Alf Landon who voted against Social Security if memory serves.
Ah, yes, it was Alf Landon; he ran for Pres against FDR in 1936 and ran against SS at the same time. FDR was elected in a landslide.
Thomas Frank describes it as follows (from Harpers): “Social Security is, however, also the foundation of the welfare state. It redistributes society’s wealth, taking from some and giving to others. And it is the single most successful government program of all time, the bedrock on which the New Deal and Johnson’s Great Society were built. Its existence is a constant reminder that the free market once failed monumentally to provide Americans with the basic stuff of life. It is also a tantalizing suggestion that human intelligence can sometimes order things more effectively than market forces.
Social Security has thus traditionally annoyed the country’s owners far out of proportion to its subversive content. Those who prosper the most from laissez-faire capitalism have an objective interest in making Social Security seem to be in perpetual crisis, in constantly undermining it, in mocking it, in mystifying it, in spending its surpluses, in giving its Trust Fund away as tax cuts to the very rich. So has it been since the very beginning. During the presidential campaign of 1936, Republicans charged that the Social Security system, what with its identification numbers, was a step toward totalitarianism. Newspapers supporting Alf Landon, the Republican candidate, tried to sow panic by claiming that the Social Security system would require workers to wear numbered dog tags. Management left notes in workers’ pay envelopes alerting them to the imposition of the payroll tax and warning them that there was “no guarantee” they would ever see any benefits at all. “You might get this money back,” one of these notes read, “but only if Congress decides to make the appropriation for this purpose.”
Landon’s resounding defeat in 1936 helped to make Social Security the sacrosanct program it eventually became. Men of the far right, however, hammered obsessively at these charges for years. Assailing the welfare state as the first step on the road to Communist dictatorship was, by the late 1940s, an editorial standard in publications such as Reader’s Digest and The Saturday Evening Post. The other, somewhat contradictory, argument—that maybe government will just take all that tax money and then do nothing—proved equally durable. Carl T. Curtis, a Nebraska senator who only took breaks from his forty-year war on the welfare state to fight the labor movement and defend Nixon during Watergate, was fond of pointing out that “what Social Security benefits are to be paid, and on what terms, depend on the will of the federal government.” Which, to Carl T. Curtis, was a fickle and malignant will indeed.”