Meals on Wheels: Anatomy of a Fake Budget Cut

The annual budget for our bloated and sclerotic federal government consumes about $4 trillion of America’s economic output, yet President Trump so far has not proposed to reduce that overall spending burden by even one penny.

A few programs are targeted for cuts, to be sure, but I explained last week, that “taxpayers won’t reap the benefits since those savings will be spent elsewhere, mostly for a bigger Pentagon budget.” More worrisome, I also pointed out that his budget proposal is “silent on the very important issues of tax reform and entitlement reform.”

All things considered, you would think that statists, special interest groups, and other denizens of the D.C. swamp would be happy with Trump’s timid budget.

Not exactly. There’s so much wailing and screaming about “savage” and “draconian” budget cuts, you would think the ghost of Ronald Reagan is haunting Washington.

Much of this whining is kabuki theater and political posturing as various beneficiaries (including the bureaucrats, lobbyists, contractors, and other insiders) make lots of noise as part of their never-ending campaigns to get ever-larger slices of the budget pie.

And nothing demonstrates the vapidity of this process more than the imbroglio over the Meals on Wheels program. Based on news reports, the immediate assumption is that Trump’s budget is going to starve needy seniors by ending delivery of meals.

Here’s how CNN characterized the proposal.
The preliminary outline for President Donald Trump’s 2018 budget could slash some funding for a program that provides meals for older, impoverished Americans.
“Slash”? That sounds ominous. Sounds like a cut of 40 percent, 50 percent, or 60 percent!

And a flack for Meals on Wheels added her two cents, painting a picture of doom and despair for hungry seniors.
…spokeswoman Jenny Bertolette said, “It is difficult to imagine a scenario in which they will not be significantly and negatively impacted if the President’s budget were enacted.”
Oh no, “significantly and negatively impacted” sounds brutal. How many tens of thousands of seniors will starve?

Only near the bottom of the story do we learn that this is all nonsense. All that Trump proposed, as part of his plan to shift some spending from the domestic budget to the defense budget, is to shut down a pork-riddled and scandal-plagued program at the Department of Housing Development. However, because a tiny fraction of community development block grants get used for Meals on Wheels, interest groups and leftist journalists decided to concoct a story about hungry old people.

In reality, the national office (appropriately) gets almost all its money from private donations and almost all the subsidies to the local branches are from a separate program.
About 3% of the budget for Meals on Wheels’ national office comes from government grants (84% comes from individual contributions and grants from corporations and foundations)… The Older Americans Act, as a function of the US Department of Health and Human Services, …covers 35% of the costs for the visits, safety checks and meals that the local agencies dole out to 2.4 million senior citizens, Bertolette said.
In other words, CNN engaged in what is now known as fake news, publishing a story designed to advance an agenda rather than to inform readers.

My colleague Walter Olson wrote a very apt summary for National Review.
The story that Trump’s budget would kill the Meals on Wheels program was too good to check. But it was false. …it wouldn’t have taken long for reporters to find and provide some needed context to the relationship between federal block grant programs, specifically Community Development Block Grants (CDBG), and the popular Meals on Wheels program. …From Thursday’s conversation in the press, it was easy to assume that block grant programs — CDBG and similar block grants for community services and social services — are the main source of federal funding for Meals on Wheels. Not so.
And if you want some accurate journalism, the editorial page of Investor’s Business Daily has a superb explanation.
What Trump’s budget does propose is cutting is the corruption-prone Community Development Block Grant program, run out of Housing and Urban Development. Some, but not all, state and local governments use a tiny portion of that grant money, at their own discretion, to “augment funding for Meals on Wheels,” according to the statement. …So what’s really going on? As Meals on Wheels America explained, some Community Development Block Grant money does end up going to some of the local Meals on Wheels programs. But it’s a small amount. HUD’s own website shows that just 1% of CDBG grant money goes to the broad category of “senior services.” And 0.17% goes to “food banks.” …All of this information was easily available to anyone reporting on this story, or anyone commenting on it, which would have prevented the false claims about the Meals on Wheels program from spreading in the first place. But why bother reporting facts when you can make up a story…?
The IBD editorial then shifted to what should be the real lesson from this make-believe controversy
…this fake budget-cutting story ended up revealing how programs like Meals on Wheels can survive without federal help. As soon as the story started to spread, donations began pouring into Meals on Wheels. In two days, the charity got more than $100,000 in donations — 50 times more than they’d normally receive. Clearly, individuals are ready, willing and eager to support this program once they perceive a need. Isn’t this how charity is supposed to work, with people donating their own time, money and resources to causes they feel are important, rather than sitting back and expecting the federal government to do it for them?
At the risk of being flippant, Libertarian Jesus would approve that message.

But to be more serious, IBD raises an important point that deserves some attention. Some Republicans think the appropriate response to CNN‘s demagoguery is to point out that Meals on Wheels gets the overwhelming share of its federal subsidies from the Older Americans Act rather than CDBG.

In reality, the correct lesson is that the federal government shouldn’t be subsidizing Meals on Wheels. Or any redistribution program that purports to help people on the state and local level.

There’s a constitutional argument against federal involvement. There’s a fiscal argument against federal involvement. There’s a diversity argument against federal involvement. And there’s a demographic argument against federal involvement.

But there’s also a common-sense argument against federal involvement. And that gives me an excuse to introduce my Third Theorem of Government. Simply stated, it’s a recipe for waste to launder money through Washington.



P.S. For those interested, here is the First Theorem of Government and here is the Second Theorem of Government.

P.P.S. I started today’s column by noting that Trump hasn’t proposed “even one penny” of lower spending. That’s disappointing, of course, but the news is not all bad. The President has  endorsed the Obamacare reform legislation in the House of Representatives, and while that legislation does not solve the real problem in our nation’s health sector, at least it does lower the burden of taxes and spending.
Republished from International Liberty.
Daniel J. Mitchell

Daniel J. Mitchell
Daniel J. Mitchell is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute who specializes in fiscal policy, particularly tax reform, international tax competition, and the economic burden of government spending. He also serves on the editorial board of the Cayman Financial Review.
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3 Common Immigration Myths Debunked



In this past election, Trump’s supporters embraced his calls for increasing immigration restrictions in a country that already has restrictive immigration policies. Now that he is in office, President Trump is planning to “publicize crimes by undocumented immigrants; strip such immigrants of privacy protections; enlist local police officers as enforcers; erect new detention facilities; discourage asylum seekers; and, ultimately, speed up deportations.”

The fear of immigration is commonly based on three basic assumptions: “immigrants are not assimilating into our culture,” “illegal immigrants are hurting our economy and stealing our jobs,” and “illegal immigrants are criminals and terrorists.” All of these assumptions are myths.

Myth #1: Immigrants are not assimilating to our culture

Those who support restrictive immigration policy believe that current immigrants are changing our values and our politics, and are not assimilating like the previous generations of immigrants.

Assimilation is a process that takes time, but the claim that current generations of immigrants are not assimilating like they did in the past is false. Recent research from the National Academies of Sciences shows that current immigrants are assimilating as well as or better than previous generations.

Some Americans are concerned that immigrants are more inclined to support leftist views. However, like Americans, a plurality of immigrants identify as independent. Although immigrants tend to lean Democrat when they must choose between the two parties, this is primarily due to the Republican Party’s anti-immigration stance.

When it comes to specific policy issues, immigrants, like Americans, tend to align with the moderate position like the rest of America. For example, immigrants do not disproportionately support a larger welfare state, as Republicans claim. A Cato Institute study shows that 1st generation non-citizens and naturalized immigrants hold similar moderate policy positions as native citizens.

Myth #2: Illegal Immigrants Hurt our Economy and Steal our Jobs

The economic benefits of immigration, both legal and illegal, are vast. Immigrants fill shortages in the job market and pay taxes.

Some immigration opponents claim that they are a drain on government programs. However, research shows that immigrants contribute more in taxes than they receive in government benefits. Although the variables are too ambiguous to have a definite answer on whether they have a positive or negative impact on government spending, the positive economic benefits are unambiguous.

Since 2012, Mexican workers have been leaving the U.S. at a higher rate than they are arriving. This drop in Mexican immigration has had a negative effect on our economy. The National Association of Homebuilders estimated that the number of unfilled construction jobs in the U.S. almost doubled between 2014 and 2016.

The lack of available talent to fill these jobs has led to increased construction costs and depressed home building. Allowing only 5,000 working visas for foreign immigrants seeking lower-skilled jobs year-round makes it difficult to find legal workers.

Five years ago, 53 percent of skilled-trade workers were more than 45 years old, and nearly 20 percent were aged 55-64. The skilled-trade workforce continues to increase. Trump's plan for stronger immigration restrictions and deportations will only exacerbate labor shortage problems in the skilled trades.

Myth #3: Immigrants are Criminals and Terrorist

Research shows immigrants and illegal immigrants are less likely to be criminals than the native-born. Immigration surged in the 1990s as the crime rate plummeted. In fact, higher immigration can correlate with lower crime rates, because an influx of low-crime immigrants added to the population creates a lesser chance to encounter a criminal.

The dramatic decrease in crime in Buffalo is a good example. In the run-down areas of west side Buffalo where Bangladeshi immigrants arrived, crime fell by 70%. Denise Beehag of the International Institute of Buffalo told NPR that immigrants, “were pretty much the only group that was moving into the west side of Buffalo.”

Also, immigration is not affecting the likelihood of being attacked by terrorist. Your chance of being murdered by anyone is 1 in 14,000. A Cato study found that over the last 41 years, your chances of being killed by a foreigner in a terrorist attack are 1 in 3.6 million per year. The chance of being murdered in an attack committed by an illegal immigrant is much less likely, 1 in 10.9 billion.

You are more likely to win the lottery (1 in 258.9 million) or die in a plane crash (1 in 11 million) than be murdered in a terrorist attack by an illegal immigrant.

Anti-immigration policies are based on myths about immigrants and their contributions to our country. We cannot claim to be the land of the free by closing our borders to those seeking to improve their lives by economically serving ours.

Brenden Weber

Brenden Weber
Brenden Weber is a recent graduate of the University of Iowa, with a degree in political science and a minor in philosophy. He has worked for various non-profit organization and is the founder and editor of Libertarian Reports. Follow him on Twitter @brendenweber3.
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Argentina Already Tried Trumponomics

Try to think of a country that elected a populist president: someone who wanted to boost manufacturing jobs, insists that domestically-sold products should be made domestically, and threatens to use tariffs to shut off foreign competition. How would that work out?

I am, of course, referring to President Cristina Kirchner of Argentina, not President Donald Trump.

It’s too soon for Trump to have implemented his economic plans, but we can see how Trumponomics will work by looking southwards to Argentina. It is a portent of the doom that awaits us.

Argentine Protectionism

President Kirchner pushed through laws mandating that certain items sold in Argentina must be made there. Presumably, if you try to sell a foreign made product at market value then the strong arm of the Argentine state will use violent force against you, including deadly force if necessary, similar to how Eric Garner was slain by the state for selling untaxed tobacco. That is the Trumponomics promise.

For one example, the Argentine law mandated that cell phones be built domestically. Imports faced a 35% tariff, exactly the same amount Trump has suggested would work for America. How did this turn out?

Results

As should be a surprise to no one, Apple completely pulled out of Argentina. This doesn’t mean Argentines can’t have the latest Apple gadgets since, of course, banning something never makes it go away: agorist-supplied black market iPhones now go for the bargain price of $3,500.

But some cell phone makes stayed. Remember BlackBerry? It’s the company that remained on the cutting edge of 20th-century technology, supplying the highest end 1999’s era communications gadgets while Apple was rolling out the iPhone. This eidos of mediocrity saw a Trumpian opportunity to keep their beacon of failure burning brightly.

They opened a factory on the tip of South America near Antartica where the manufacturing cost was 20 times more expensive than Mexico. The Argentine factories were so slow and inefficient that the fastest they could get models out was two years behind the Mexican-made product line, making the black market BlackBerries from Mexico leaps and bounds better than what could be purchased legally.

Naturally, keeping the superios Mexican BlackBerries from crossing the Argentine border was about as ineffectual as keeping Mexican Marijuana from crossing the US border.

It’s worth noting at this point a hidden cost to society to enforce all this economic destruction: the border and customs agents. I’m sure the Argentine taxpayers were forced to fund an army of well-paid agents doing an ineffectual job at preventing Argentines from enjoying low cost Mexican electric goods!

Muh Jobs!

Maybe I’m being unfair. The promise of Trumponomics isn’t lower cost goods. The promise is jobs. Did it live up to its promise in Argentina?

In a word: no.

With all the black market BlackBerries crossing the border, legal sales of the BlackBerry crashed until all the factories closed up. This happened within two years of the first Argentinian BlackBerry coming to market. The end result was higher prices, worse products, a lower standard of living, and massive job losses. So much for all those jobs the government promised!

So that’s Trumponomics in a nutshell: economic recession, unemployment, cell phones north of $1,000, and still no iPhones. But at least President Kirchner didn’t bankrupt Argentina by building a giant futile wall along its border.
Republished from Libertas.Liberty.Me.


David Libertas
David Libertas is a writer for Libertas.Liberty.me.
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The Shotgun Marriages Forced on Breweries

Relationships should be built upon voluntary choice, promoting mutual respect and mutually beneficial outcomes. In these unions, both parties are better off with each other than they are alone. Voluntary relationships can create tremendous value to this world; however, these only exist when parties are free to associate, finding cooperation at the right time, place, and manner.

If this makes perfect sense in personal relationships, why is there a disconnect when we think about business relationships, such as between breweries and distributors? More specifically, why does North Carolina impose a distribution cap on local brewers?

Forced Affiliation

North Carolina law forces brewers to hand over 100 percent of their distribution rights to a third party once they produce 25,000 barrels.

In a voluntary market, breweries frequently find themselves in need of distribution services outside of their own capacity. Breweries may be growing too fast for their self-distribution efforts, they may be unfamiliar to a new market, or decide they can cut costs by using a third party.

Other entrepreneurs see this opportunity and offer their expertise in distribution, competing against other distributors to help solve the problems that breweries confront. Often forgotten, in a voluntary market, distributors are also competing with the breweries’ right to say “no” and keep distribution in-house.

Forcing relationships between breweries and distributors makes at least one party in the relationship worse off. But that is exactly what North Carolina has mandated upon brewers via multiple antiquated regulations. Wholesaler and big-beer company lobbyists are using the law to benefit themselves at the expense of smaller brewers and consumers. These groups have framed the debate, pitting what should be two mutually beneficial parties against each other.

Lobbyists and legislators have utilized adversarial tactics to make brewers and distributors look as if they are at war with each other. There really is no other outcome if policy continues to use the strong arm of the government to penalize and take away the rights of brewers to self-distribute their product over 25,000 barrels.

Relationships in which one party benefits only at the expense of the other party are usually called “zero-sum.” A zero-sum mentality fails to see how both parties benefit from voluntary interactions.

Absent coercion, zero-sum relationships rarely if ever exist. If one party were to suffer or be made worse off in a relationship, then it wouldn’t happen or it would quickly end. Mistakes are made and bad things do happen, though in a voluntary market there are always choices elsewhere.

It’s “Greedy” to Control Your Own Creation

In addition to self-distribution, there are many other liquor- and beer-related laws in need of reconsideration. As it stands now, breweries have few rights if they make a mistake when forced to pick a distributor. Laws supported by the wholesalers make ending a relationship with a distributor either illegal or so expensive the brewer is forced to maintain the inefficient partnership.

Trouble is, no brewer wants to make it look like distributors aren’t wanted. In a free and voluntary market, the two industries can benefit tremendously from each other.

However, wholesale union leaders are very happy to make it look like the breweries are the problem. Wholesalers fought raising the alcohol limit cap that passed in 2006. Now they allege that brewers who operate at the 25,000 barrel cap are trying to push out smaller brewers and destroy public health. All because, apparently, it is “greedy” for business owners to sell and market their own creation the way they see fit.

It seems hypocritical to insinuate that another party is controlling or greedy when in fact it’s wholesalers who use government force to push brewers around. And it’s not just in North Carolina. Check out wholesaler claims in FloridaMassachusetts, and Texas over the past few years.

As long as we allow government the power to destroy beneficial relationships, lobbying will go on. It is time for brewers to get their rights back, to choose their own methods of distribution. Then, once the government is out of the way, distributors and brewers can finally find the relationship they are looking for, at the right time for both, ensuring our beer is made and distributed by a happy marriage–not one born of cheap political tricks.
Reprinted from Opportunity Lives.
Greg Pulscher

Greg Pulscher
Greg Pulscher is a contributor for Opportunity Lives and works for the Civitas Institute. Hear more from Greg on his weekly podcast Free to Brew, available on Stitcher and iTunes, or follow him on Facebook.
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