Posted on 07/29/2005 9:27:09 AM PDT by hinterlander
A panel of 36 distinguished public policy experts and scholars—ranging from Nobel laureate Milton Friedman to Eagle Forum President Phyllis Schlafly to former House Majority Leader Dick Armey—has selected the Internal Revenue Code as the No. 1 item on this year’s Human Events list of the Ten Most Harmful Government Programs.
The programs elected by our judges don’t just cost money, they also attack our values and corrode the spirit of liberty that makes America the greatest nation.
As in previous years, we initially asked our judges to nominate programs for the list. The judges were then sent ballots listing the nominated programs. They ranked their choices 1 through 10, with No. 1 being the program they believed to be “most harmful.” A program received 10 points for each No. 1 vote it received, 9 points for each No. 2 vote, and so on. The program with the highest. . .
(Excerpt) Read more at humaneventsonline.com ...
Can't argue with the list at all, especially not with the IRC clocking in at #1.
We need to be reminded of the damage inflicted by Johnson more frequently!
Aside from the sugar (never heard of that one before, so I can't really comment) I would love to see this trash get cut.
"The Tax Foundation calculates that it cost Americans $194 billion to comply with the code in 2002, and predicts that compliance costs will rise to $244 billion by 2007."
We are being taxed to pay for being taxed. It hurts just thinking about it.
Distinguished panel there...I haven't had time to read the fact findings but the actual Top Ten are "right on".
No doubt...and I thought double billing was illegal!
--not to pick at nits, but withholding taxes was suggested to the Roosevelt malAdministration by a Republidum of the day---I forget his name--
& FDR
And Bush43!
Sadly, the President doesn't support limited government.
Hall of Shame
2004—Medicare Prescription Drug Plan The Medicare prescription drug plan, or Medicare Part D, was enacted by a Republican Congress at the request of Republican President George W. Bush in 2003. It goes into effect next year and will cover most of the cost of drugs for seniors on Medicare. Medicare’s trustees have determined the cost of this program to be $8.1 trillion over the next 75 years.
Yeah, I would move title ix up there in place of the sugar subsidy. Although I bet this was just a holding space for all the boondoggle subsidy programs the government has come up with over the years. It seems that "free enterprise" simply cannot get started unless the government gives some sort of subsidy: Home mortgage deductability, ethanol, dary, water programs, federal land grazing, ... I don't know. Doesn't everyone have some subsidy?
True, but Nixon, George H.W. Bush and George Bush have been MAJOR accelerators of socialism in America--with George Bush being the biggest.
I myself would put the Department of Education in the top ten (a $70 billion per year waste of money).
The Medicare drug plan of 2004 was a pretty meaningless government program because the Federal government was going to pay the cost of prescription drugs for retirees in any case -- either in its role as guarantor of those private plans (since they're all going bankrupt anyway) or in its role as the "administrator" of Medicare.
The sugar thing was always the example used when discussing tariffs, subsidies, and special interests in my economics classes, so it's a pretty sweet deal for the growers.
BTTT
and
BUMP!
The federal government has no business setting itself up as a "guarantor of [any] private medical plans for retirees". The Medicare PDP expands the federal bureaucracy and shows that PresBush and the GOP are run by a bunch of "big-government" Republicans.
Constitutional provision: CPB spokesman Eben Peck said: “That’s a bigger question than I’m able to answer. You could probably ask the same question about any department or agency in the federal government.”
Wow! An honest answer! Dismantle FedGov!
Johnson and Nixon!
We have to ensure that we have a conservative nominee.
This is a profile of Mike Pence,who is a true conservative. We must get him nominated in 08.
There is nothing middle-of-the-road about Pence, who is one of the most conservative members of Congress. As a former talk radio host who says Rush Limbaugh was the inspiration for his radio career, Pence is among the most articulate communicators of the conservative message, both on talk radio shows in his district and on cable news channels nationwide.
Pence can usually be relied on to support the GOP leadership and President Bush, except when he stakes out positions to the right of them, such as when he led the charge in 2003 against a $400 billion-plus measure to provide a prescription drug benefit under Medicare. He said the costly drug benefit should have been accompanied by broader Medicare overhaul and should have focused on the poor instead of all seniors. A conservative revolt almost scuttled the bill.
His conservative colleagues rewarded him in 2004 with the chairmanship of the Republican Study Committee, a group of almost 100 lawmakers that represents a powerful bloc when it chooses to assert itself.
Conservatives sometimes bit their tongues in the 108th Congress-especially as the deficit spiraled upward-so as not to damage Bush’s re-election bid. Now that Election Day has passed, a buoyant Pence is poised to lead a more organized and assertive conservative caucus. “House conservatives believe it’s time to put our fiscal house in order,” Pence says.
To that end, Pence opposed the 2004 highway bill as too profligate. While he and fellow conservatives were forced later that year to vote to increase the debt limit, they did so only after insisting that House GOP leaders hold to appropriations “caps” during end-of-season negotiations over a catchall spending bill. Pence was also among the dozen fiscal conservatives who insisted, throughout the 107th, on holding Republican leaders responsible for keeping government spending down. In 2001, Pence voted against a large education bill because, he said, it called for a 22 percent increase in federal spending. In 2002, Pence and his allies forced the leadership to adjust its timetable for considering annual spending bills, a move many of his GOP colleagues criticized.
A social conservative as well, Pence is staunchly anti-abortion and he opposes embryonic stem cell research. He was active in the debate on a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. Despite his zeal in promoting his views, he has a soft-spoken, placid manner. He remains in good graces with his party’s leaders despite his periodic opposition to their policies.
When he arrived in the House in 2001, Pence was named to the GOP whip team. In the 108th Congress, he was promoted to deputy whip and was given a seat on the Republican Policy Committee.
The 6th District has a large rural constituency, and Pence tends to the interests of the farming community from his seat on the Agriculture Committee. He also sits on Judiciary, and supported committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. in a bid to attach language to a major bill overhauling U.S. Intelligence programs to prohibit states from issuing driver’s licenses to illegal aliens.
Although Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain campaigned for Pence in 2000, the two had a falling-out over McCain’s push for campaign finance legislation. Pence eventually accused McCain of working too closely with the Democrats. The Indianapolis Star reported that Pence told his GOP colleagues, “McCain is so deep in bed with the Democrats that his feet are coming out of the bottom of the sheets.” Pence joined as a plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the campaign finance law enacted in 2002.
Drawing on his radio experience, Pence has set up a small radio studio in his House office where he records commentaries that are available on his Web site. He devotes several hours most weeks to appearing on local talk radio programs, and he encourages his colleagues to follow suit. “You’ve got to be willing to go in there and turn your face like flint to the wind,” Pence says. “And I think too few of my colleagues in the conservative caucus are willing to do that.”
A Democrat in his younger days, Pence made a run for the House in 1988 at age 29 with a challenge to veteran Democratic Rep. Philip R. Sharp. He lost by 6 percentage points. Two years later, he tried again, this time losing by almost 19 points. In the latter race, Pence ran a harshly negative campaign against Sharp. Pence later wrote an article, “Confessions of a Negative Campaigner,” in which he said, “Negative campaigning, I now know, is wrong.” He added, “It is wrong, quite simply, to squander a candidate’s priceless moment in history…on partisan bickering.”
It was during that period that Limbaugh captured Pence’s imagination. “I was inspired by those dulcet tones to seek a career in radio and television,” he recalls. Pence’s first radio show aired in 1989 in Rushville, Ind. He eventually built up a syndicated talk show that was heard on 18 stations across the state. On many of those stations, he said, he was Limbaugh’s “warm-up act.”
Pence’s years as a radio broadcaster and as host of a public affairs television show in Indianapolis kept his name before the public. When he decided in 2000 to run for the seat of GOP Rep. David M. McIntosh, who ran unsuccessfully for governor, Pence easily beat state Rep. Jeff Linder and four other opponents in the GOP primary. He then topped Democratic lawyer Bob Rock by 12 percentage points in November.
Redistricting after the 2000 census helped Pence. State Democrats who controlled the remapping process sought to bolster vulnerable Democratic Rep. Baron P. Hill in the neighboring 9th District. In shaping the new 6th District, the Democrats gave Pence some of Hill’s Republican-leaning rural territory in southeastern Indiana. They put forth an active challenger in Melina Ann “Mel” Fox, a farmer and party activist running for office for the first time, but Pence took a 29 percentage point victory in a race that was noted for its civility. In a 2004 rematch, Pence upped his margin to 36 points.
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