The Winter 2000 Update
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Federal Budget, Waste & Other Matters

"The only surplus in town is the social security surplus..." Concord Coalition
The Budget Bill contains $375 million personally requested by Senate majority leader Trent Lott of Mississippi, to start building a $1.5 billion Navy carrier at his home state's shipyard.  The Navy had not requested money for the ship but Lott and his staff pressed the Navy support the request.  NYT 10/7/99
"According to the budget office's estimates, the surplus could be as large as $1.9 trillion over the next decade.... before expectations run amok, some realistic accounting is in order.  As the budget office is careful to point out, the $1.9 trillion surplus will materialize only if Congress adheres to the spending caps enacted in 1997, or freezes discretionary spending for 10 years, a policy many Republican have endorsed.  Let's be clear.  The polar ice caps will melt and flood New York before Congress accepts either of these starvation diets.  To stay within the spending caps, Congress would have to cut discretionary spending -- programs like defense, Head Start, and the F.B.I. -- by about 11 percent. "  R. Reishauer, director of Congressional Budget Office from 1989-1995.  NYT 1/28/00
"The Congress is making a mockery of the Federal budget.... Congress is relying on the lowest spending estimates it can find.  And it is using accounting sleight of hand to spread this year's budget into next. ... all they are doing is passing responsibility on to the next President and the next Congress.  The tragedy is that they believe they can fool the American people.  In the end, they can only fool themselves."  Leon Panatta, former Director of the OMB and former chair of the House Budget Committee  NYT 10/21/99
"We are fortunate to be alive at this moment in history.  Never before has our nation enjoyed, at once, so much prosperity and social progress with so little internal crisis or so few external threats.  Never before have we had such a blessed opportunity -- and therefore such a profound obligation -- to build the more perfect union of our founders' dreams.  B. Clinton's State if the Union Address, 1/27/00
"Mr. Clinton spoke with all the expansiveness of a man who had hit the lottery or answered Regis Philbin's million-dollar question." R.W. Apple, Jr., on Clinton's address  NYT 1/28/00

The number of Americans without health insurance rose last year by 883,000 to 44.3 million despite a strong economy... a growth of more than 4.5  million since Clinton took office in 1993 promising health care for all...  For the most part the uninsured are not the poorest of the poor who tend to be covered by Medicaid... indeed 75% of those without heath insurance work at least part-time [The Real Tragedy Is This:  Those who work get the Same medical attention as those who don't... And must forfeit all their assets before getting extensive care offered for free to those who never worked!!]  Hobie 2003 Postscript:  We now are aware of another tragedy:  those without a health plan pay "retail" which is several times the costs negotiated by insurers... a circumstance that at least one medical professional has called "immoral."

"That many students in America -- often those most in need of excellent teachers -- are taught by unqualified teachers is a reprehensible form of publicly sanctioned malpractice."   Report by the Am. Council on Education which found that nationwide more than half of students in 7th-12th grades were taught science by teachers who were unqualified.   NYT 10/25/99
59% of all aspiring teachers failed a state test for new teachers in Massachusetts
"The Pentagon is having trouble recruiting qualified soldiers and thinks the solution is a bidding war against private industry.  But if we are concerned about staffing in the military, we should concentrate instead on the nation's crowded classrooms.... Too many of our best and brightest are languishing in neglected schools where they are taught by underpaid teachers.  By  the time these students head to a recruiters office-- be it the military's or a corporation's -- they don't have what it takes to be a soldier or a skilled worker today.  A 10 year program that included repairing every broken-down public school in the U.S., fully financing Head Start, and reducing class size in kindergarten through 3rd grade would cost  a total of $23 billion a year.  Canceling the unnecessary F-22 fighter jet, scrapping plans for a new generation of attack submarines designed to hunt submarines that were never built, and reducing our stockpile of nuclear weapons to a still devastating 1,000 warheads would easily cover these costs."  J. Shanahan, retired 3-star admiral.

Why do decent people do indecent things to be elected and remain in office?

"President Clinton and his crew -- as President Nixon and his did -- consider themselves morally superior to those who disagree with them, and thus feel justified in lying and law-breaking to get their way.  Reagan, more of a classic American idealist, viewed his enemies as deluded or misinformed rather than evil, susceptible to being swayed."  E. Achorn 10/2/99
"Alexander Haig opened by lamenting that the Law of the Sea Treaty was something we didn't like but had to accept, since it had emerged over the previous decade through a 150 nation negotiation.  Mr. Haig then proceeded to recite 13 or so options for modifying the treaty -- some with several sub options.  Such detail, to put it mildly, was not the president's [Reagan's] strong suit.  He looked increasingly puzzled and finally interrupted: 'Uh, Al,' he asked quietly, 'isn't this what the whole thing was all about?'  'Huh?'  The secretary of state couldn't fathom what the president meant.  None of us could.  So Mr. Haig asked him.  Well, Mr. Reagan shrugged, wasn't not going along with something that is 'really stupid' just because 150 nations had done so what the whole thing was all about -- our running, our winning, our governing?  A stunned Mr. Haig folded up his briefing book and promised to find out how to stop the treaty altogether."  K. Adelman, Wall Street Journal 10/5/99

And finally we cannot ignore the biggest real threat to our common future:  the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, e.g.
Iraq ordered 6 lithotripers (state of the art kidney stone breakers); with an order to buy 120 extra switches, at least 100 more than the machines would ever need.  The high-precision electronic switches can also be sued to trigger an atomic bomb.... the advanced atomic bomb design Iraq likely got from Pakistan would use 32 such switches... so their order would outfit 3 bombs... joining what UN inspectors believe 9 other bombs...  Hobie 2003 Postscript:  Interesting that we never heard about this in the intense post-war search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq... faulty intelligence, or.....

"If we were being attacked by space aliens we wouldn't be playing these kinds of games."  B. Clinton on educational opportunities foregone
"The scandal isn't what's illegal.  The scandal is what's legal."  M. Kinsley
"We have no one too blame but ourselves.  In the end, democracy is all about standing in front of the mirror."  R. Norton former Republican speech writer
"Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all -- the apathy of human beings."  Helen Keller

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