First, it is illuminating that simply utilizing analogies to demonstrate how large a number is has some reactionaries on the Left up in arms.  Though Shermer does point out that the large number being discussed is the size of the President’s proposed budget, he does not get political at all.   At worst all he does is some math to show how much this spending would end up costing each American.  Too many of these alleged skeptics are letting the emotions of their politics cloud their vision.

Second, the responses illustrate once again that too many skeptics tend to suspend their skepticism when it comes to government, a phenomenon that I previously noted in a post about ClimateGate.  A commenter named Daniel put it very well:

I’ve often puzzled over the tendency of atheists, scientists, and skeptics to lean left. Maybe it’s simply a knee-jerk reaction to the sheer ignorance and stupidity displayed by the right. Whatever the case, I’ve noticed that most skeptics are NOT skeptical when it comes to politics- in fact, they seem to me to be even more gullible than their Neanderthalic, creationist, anti-gay counterparts on the right. For example, anyone who has read P.Z. Meyers’ blog will immediately notice that he is not the least skeptical of government bureaucrats or central planners. Shermer is a rarity- a libertarian skeptic, someone who’s not afraid to turn a skeptical, scientific eye on government planners.

This particular blog [post] is simply him to trying to put in perspective the gargantuan size of the Leviathan state, but I’m far more interested in the backlash he gets for simply by trying to comprehend the sheer scope and waste of government in America today.

There’s no reason why skepticism should stop at foot of Capitol Hill, any more than skepticism should stop at the threshold of churches and mosques.

For those of you who may be unfamiliar with Michael Shermer, I recommend an interesting post called The Other ‘L’ Word: Why I am a Libertarian.  If you have some time on your hands, you can read his much longer but very thoughtful post titled How I Became a Libertarian.  He starts the “L word” post with this:

In a nutshell, I am a libertarian because conservatives are a bunch of gun-toting, Hummer-driving, hard-drinking, Bible-thumping, black-and-white-thinking, fist-pounding, shoe-stomping, morally-hypocritical blowhards, and liberals are a bunch of tree-hugging, whale-saving, hybrid-driving, sandle-wearing, bottled-water-drinking, ACLU-supporting, flip-flopping, wishy-washy, Namby Pamby bedwetters. There’s a better way. Libertarianism.

As consistent as skeptics like to be, liberal skeptics have not yet figured out how to shine their logical skepticism on politics.  It perplexes me.

Shapiro then points out the inherent dishonesty of how they are presenting this ”freeze”.

First of all, I hate the “we’re saving $250 billion over 10 years” line. It is a piece of crass political rhetoric and I’m disappointed that the administration would use it. If they actually implement a three year freeze on the portion of the budget they’re talking about (which is a big if, but let’s assume the best), why measure the effects in the space of 10 years?

The answer is “To make the freeze look bigger”. They’re basically just basing the extended savings off of projected interest payments and “savings” due to the fact that the baseline on that portion of the budget hasn’t moved. It is setting a dangerous data precedent where politicians realize that all they have to do is calculate a projection out as far as they need in order to get the numbers they want.

Seriously.  This is a three year freeze but they stretch it out to ten years in their calculations simply because 10x is a larger number than the real number, a mere 3x.  Your intelligence is being insulted and it should piss you off.  The statist triad of Obama, Reid, and Pelosi tell you that they believe that you are a moron every single day with their shallow obfuscations and pathetic word games, such as their tortured destruction of the word ‘reform’.  They clearly confuse us with their myrmidons.

Shapiro also points out how ridiculous it is to claim that you are saving money simply because you are not spending it:

As a slapdash example, a politician could project that they will increase spending by 5% next year and then decide at the last moment to increase it by 3%. They could then spin that decision to increase by a smaller amount as a decision to “cut” their spending (which wasn’t real spending, only projected spending) by 2%.

I remember a version of this audacious dishonesty back when the GOP held the house in the mid 90s.  Medicare spending was slated to increase by something like five percent and the republicans wanted to instead increase spending by only three percent.  The Democrats and their fawning media spun it as the GOP slashing medicare spending.  For the most part, the leftist scare tactics worked.

Check out the Political Math Blog, and follow him on twitter at @PoliticalMath.

The Congressional Budget Office has been in the news recently for reporting higher costs for some proposed legislation than Democrat supporters of those proposed laws have claimed.  Essentially, the CBO’s charter is to go through a proposed bill in order to analyze its costs and the effects of that spending on the budget and national debt.  Douglass Elmendorf, the current director of the CBO, has come under harsh fire from supporters of health care legislation for his more critical financial analyses than those put forth by the statist propagandists Democrats who seek to take over the US health care system.

This new CCO is a great idea for an ambitious politician to seize right now, perhaps a conservative firebrand like Michele Bachmann.

The Congressional Constitution Office would be a mandatory part of the legislative process.  All legislation that made it through the House or Senate would require an addendum from the CCO analyzing exactly where the US Constitution grants the legislative branch of government the power to pass the particular legislation (please see the 10^th amendment).  Rule changes stipulating that bills must be constrained to one similar topic would be required to make this work, for example no social program spending can be combined with a military appropriations bill, and would provide the side benefit of making the legislative sausage-making process more transparent.

The second part of the CCO would be its requirement to be completely transparent.  The CCO website would be required to show a graphical representation of the amount of money spent by government and the purported constitutional provisions involved.  Clearly this would consistently show that they use two basic approaches: the flawed “General Welfare” argument and their overreaching (and illegitimate) interpretation of the commerce clause.

If you look at the following breakdown of the 2009 budget from Wikipedia you can see that they break the spending numbers out into many agencies:

In order to get my arms around the truth of the spending versus the constitutional authority I decided to break the spending items out into three groups.  The first group consists of powers that are delegated to the legislative branch by Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution.  The second group are exercises of power that can only be justified by a dishonest interpretation of the General Welfare clause, and the third group are spending items that can only be justified by relying on the Interstate Commerce clause.  As a constitutionalist, I argue that only those items in the first group are legitimate, constitutional exercises of legislative branch power.

Article 1, Section 8:

Interest on National Debt (8.5%)

Department of Defense (16.85%)

Global War On Terror (4.75%)

US Dept of Veterans’ Affairs (1.46%)

Homeland Security (1.23%)

Dept of Justice (.66%)

NASA (.58%)

Dept of Treasury (.41%)

Judicial Branch (.21%)

Legislative Branch (.15%)

Executive Office of the President (.01%)

Total: 34.81%

General Welfare:

Social Security (21.05%)

Medicare (13.34%)

Medicaid and SCHIP (7.32%),

Unemployment, welfare, other mandatory spending? (11.77%)

Health and Human Services (2.3%)

US Dept of Education (1.93%)

HUD (1.26%)

Social Security Administration (.27%)

EPA (.28%)

National Science Foundation (.23%)

Corps of Engineers (.15%)

Other Agencies (.24%)

Other Off-Budget Discretionary Spending (1.27%)

Total: 61.41%

Interstate Commerce:

Energy (.82%)

Dept of Agriculture (.68%)

Transportation (.38%)

Interior (.35%)

Labor (.34%)

Small Business Administration (.02%)

Total: 2.59%

Interestingly, though my intent with this post was simply to propose this new agency, my own analysis of the budget breakdown illustrated some interesting points.

The dishonest statist’s best friend: the General Welfare Clause

When arguing with people on the Left, I have often made the statement that at least two-thirds of the federal budget is extra-constitutional, meaning that the legislative branch has no constitutional authority to legislate in those areas.  After breaking up the budget data into these three groups I can see that my previous gut feeling about that was not far off – by my count over 60 percent of the federal budget is justified with egregiously dishonest references to the General Welfare clause.  Note that the Left’s position on that clause is completely contradictory to the very clear 10^th amendment.  For example, CNS News asked Nancy Pelosi where the Constitution grants her the power to force Americans to purchase health insurance.  Her classic statist response was “Are you serious?”.

Interestingly, it is not hard to find a response to that General Welfare clause dishonesty from the founding fathers themselves, who presciently predicted that we would have charlatan politicians like Obama and Pelosi and Reid.  The man considered to be the father of the US Constitution, James Madison, specifically addressed this:

With respect to the words “general welfare,” I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.

 – James Madison

Interstate Commerce Clause

Though most observers are familiar with the argument that the Interstate Commerce clause is abused by the legislative branch to control things that it has no authority to control, it was interesting to find that (based upon my breakdown) they do not use that clause to justify spending as much as they use it to justify legislation that controls the states and usurps the states’ 10^th amendment protections.  FDR, no friend of the Constitution, managed to get the Supreme Court to overturn 150 years of precedent in the horrible Wickard v. Filburn decision, which held that Congress could regulate intrastate commerce  under the guise of interstate commerce.

When you think about it, it’s amazing how many of today’s problems in America were instigated by that statist jerk Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  I’d like to walk my dog around his grave until nature called.

While my proposed Congressional Constitution Office would not solve all of our problems it would clearly illuminate the perennial constitutional dishonesty that is par for the course for the United States Congress.  Obviously it will never pass because it takes away their power, but during an election year it could be used by savvy conservatives to show the contrast between conservatives and the socialists that now own the Democrat party.

Though he dropped it as soon as he was elected, didn’t candidate Obama espouse transparency in government?