The ObamaCare Free Lunch

Founding Ideals ^

[agee]

Supreme Court – 03.28.12 An exchange between Justice Kagan and Lead Plaintiff Attorney Clement…

Clement had barely finished his first sentence when Kagan immediately asked him why it was coercive for the federal government to give billions of dollars in additional aid to the states. “There are no matching funds requirements, there are no extraneous conditions attached to it, it’s just a boatload of federal money for you to take and spend on poor people’s healthcare,” she declared. “It doesn’t sound coercive to me, I have to tell you.”

To that, Clement said the government’s money was still coercive because it assumed the states would take the money and that Congress was leveraging their prior participation in the program. Kagan pressed further with a hypothetical asking Clement if he’d accept a lucrative job. He said it would depend on where that money came from.

“Wow! Wow!” Kagan exclaimed in wonderment. “I’m offering you $10 million a year to come work for me and you are saying this is anything but a great choice?” Clement sharply replied, “Sure, if I told you, actually it came from my own bank account.”

[spintreebob]

“If the enough states get together and start rejecting the funding coming from Washington..”

great observation. There are practical steps to make it happen. The supplemental transportation spending bill that just passed Congress is an example. Chicago’s mayor Rahm immediately went out and announced Chicago will spend hundreds of millions on TRAIN STATIONS.

Solution:
1. Abolish the FEDERAL Dept of Trans.
2. Sunset in 5 years all transportation taxes (gasoline, diesel, tire, battery, airport, etc)
3. Tell all collectors of Federal transportation taxes to send the money directly to the state in which it is collected.
4. The states have 5 years to pass (or not) a replacement tax.
Losers:
A. Beltway lobbyists
B. Beltway politicians
C. Beltway bureaucrats
D. The highway from Mexico to Canada and other grandiose projects.
Winners:
1. Taxpayers, commuters, workers, drivers, ordinary people
2. State governors, legislators, bureucrats, lobbyists.
3. Blue states that ALWAYS send more to Washington than they get back.
4. Red states that chafe at the strings attached to money from cetnral planners.
5. Mass transportation. Fans of public transportation are concentrated in a few states. They will have more leverage over the money spent in their state than their diluted power in Washington.
6. Small projects to maintain and enhance existing highways.
6. Small contractors, including minority contractors, who are better positioned to handle small projects from small government.
7. Caterpillar and the makers of construction equipment.

Post Roads is in the Constitution. It is constitutional. But what was needed in past ages is not needed now. Transportation pork barrel projects have been a key mechanism to buy votes for big social-welfare programs that the politicians would not otherwise vote for. Repeatedly a big spending program is unpopular and the politicians would not normally vote for it. But then their favorite bridge to re-election is put in the upopular bill and ... well Santorum explained it best: You know its a bad bill but you vote for it anyway.

We need to structurally de-centralize, step by step.

[JSteff]

So are you saying that Romney would be more likely than o to make appointments than would obama?
Hardly likely it would be worse than what o would which is a certainty.