It’s fun to watch Leftist TV hosts get scorched. And that’s what happened to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.
Blitzer and other CNN hosts live in echo chambers, where they are rarely challenged. Because of that, their skillsets are mostly comprised of creatively agreeing with their guests. But occasionally a producer shoots for the stars and invites a contrarian.
That why Blitzer interviewed Trump Political Advisor Steven Miller, a man who has his sh*t together.
In their exchange, Wolf Blitzer spews the party line, saying that Democrats want border security.
CNN's Wolf Blitzer claims "Democrats support border security"
Stephen Miller: "They voted against Kate’s law, they voted against ending sanctuary cities, they voted against deporting MS-13 gang members [and] violent criminals, they voted…against a physical border wall" pic.twitter.com/vRcAVuUAv4
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) December 21, 2018
Partial transcript:
Miller: Democrats, all they have to do is support border security and the country would be funded.
Blitzer: “The Democrats support border security,” Blitzer interjected. “They don’t support $5 billion for a wall.”
Miller: “Could you identify Wolf for me, some of the kinds of border security you’re saying the Democrats support?”
Blitzer: Democrats all say they support border security, where they disagree with you is building a wall…
Miller: {interrupts} “With all due respect Wolf, they voted against Kate’s law, they voted against ending sanctuary cities, they voted against deporting MS-13 gang members, they voted against deporting violent criminals, they voted time and time again against a physical border wall to stop illegal entry.”
Miller: {continues} I mean where’s the evidence that you keep asserting they’re for border security; they haven’t been.They oppose closing loopholes for asylum that flood our cities with meritless claims.
Blitzer: I want to move on.
Miller: {continues} They oppose ‘catch and release’.
Let’s go back to Blitzer’s original contention, i.e. Democrats don’t want to spend $5 billion on a wall.
Here are just a few projects where we could divert funds. According to the CAGW, we could save billions with a few programs:
Eliminate the Rural Utilities Service:
1-Year Savings: $8.2 billion
5-Year Savings: $41 billion
The Rural Electrification Administration (REA) was established in 1935 to bring electricity to America’s rural communities. By 1981, 98.7 percent electrification and 95 percent telephone service coverage was achieved. Rather than declaring victory and shutting down the REA, the agency was transformed into the Rural Utilities Service (RUS) in 1994 and then expanded to provide loans and grants for other utilities including telephone service to underserved areas of the country. That mission was further expanded under the 2002 Farm Bill to provide broadband services to unserved or underserved rural areas, which are generally defined as communities with populations of less than 20,000. These services are provided in part through the Rural Broadband Access Loan and Loan Guarantee Program (BAP).
Some of the BAP’s wasteful projects include the $667,120 given to Buford Communications of LaGrange, Arkansas, (population 122) in 2009 to build a hybrid fiber coaxial network and a new community center. This equates to $5,468 per resident of LaGrange.
Surely with wireless technologies, we can reduce this tax or eliminate it altogether? Keep in mind, this is a recurring bill. And you can bet the majority of it is not going to the purpose we’ve been told.
Eliminate the Sugar Subsidy
1-Year Savings: $1.2 billion
5-Year Savings: $6 billion
The U.S. sugar program is an outdated, Soviet-style command-and-control program that uses import quotas, loans, marketing allotments, price supports, and tariffs to artificially inflate the price of sugar. The federal government establishes a minimum price for sugar in the U.S., which averages roughly double the world price. The government also imposes marketing controls, limiting how much sugar processors are allowed to sell. These allotments are enforced and administered by a small cartel of sugar processors.
A November 2017 analysis from the American Enterprise Institute found that, “The welfare transfer to sugar growers and processors is quite large in the aggregate, hovering around $1.2 billion. Losses to households are diffused, about $10 per person per year but large for the population as a whole, in the range of $2.4–$4 billion.”
No further explanation needed here. Sugar companies can compete on their own. And since the production of sugar is not a matter of national security, we can afford to look elsewhere for cheaper sugar.
Moreover, competition is good for all industries, as they improve production and process.
Reduce Medicare Improper Payments by 50 Percent over Five Years
1-Year Savings: $3.6 billion
5-Year Savings: $18.1 billion
Medicare is plagued with the highest reported amount of improper payments of any federal program. According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) FY 2017 Comprehensive Error Rate Testing report, the improper payment rate was 9.5 percent and the improper payment amount was $36.2 billion. Because of its chronic vulnerability to fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement, the GAO has for 20 years designated the Medicare program as “high risk.”
In a bipartisan effort to reduce improper payments and help stave off the impending bankruptcy of the Medicare Trust Fund, Congress first implemented a Recovery Audit Contractor (RAC) demonstration project for Medicare Parts A and B that ran from 2005 to 2008 and recovered more than $900 million in overpayments to providers. Congress enacted legislation to expand the program nationwide and make it permanent, a process that began in early 2009 and was fully implemented by September 2010.
In 2010, Congress further expanded the scope of RACs to include auditing for Medicare Parts C and D in the Affordable Care Act. The legislation also required states and territories to establish RAC programs for Medicaid, noting that the RAC program was a proven, valuable tool in reducing improper payments.
One would think eliminating fraud and waste would be a priority, particularly where billions are at stake. But not during the Era of Obama.
Sure the Obama administration finally addressed some of these issues. However, for the most part they ignored the massive money-drain happening in this system.
Eliminate Community Development Block Grants (CDBGs)
1-Year Savings: $3 billion
5-Year Savings: $15 billion
In the 1970s, many American cities suffered from destitution and blight. In 1974, Congress created the CDBG program in an effort to revitalize low-income areas in cities across the country. Three years later during the 1977 World Series, swathes of New York’s South Bronx burned to the ground as Howard Cosell narrated on national television.
The CDBG program was intended for infrastructure investment, housing rehabilitation, job creation, and public services in metropolitan cities and urban counties. Use of the grants was intended to be flexible, but more than $100 billion given away to local governments over the last 35 years has fallen short on both accountability and results. Buffalo, New York, has received more than $500 million in CDBGs over the last 30 years, with little to show for it, and Los Angeles handed out $24 million to a dairy that went bust 18 months later.
Anybody think this program actually works? Imagine the total price tag on this program since inception.
Businesses don’t build in crime-ridden areas with uneducated people.
Reduce the U.S. Annual Contribution to the United Nations (UN) by 25 Percent
1-Year Savings: $2.5 billion
5-Year Savings: $12.5 billion
The U.S. is the largest contributor to the UN, funding 22 percent of the regular UN budget and 28 percent of the UN peacekeeping budget. In FY 2016, the U.S. forked over $10 billion to the UN. The FY 2016 contribution represented a 57 percent increase over the FY 2009 contribution of $6.35 billion; the U.S. contributed $3.2 billion in FY 2001. Since 2001, the UN’s regular budget has more than doubled and its peacekeeping budget has more than tripled, a rate of growth that is much faster than the economies of its member nations.
I’m sure most of America would agree with this reduction. The UN treats America like a prostitute. We do the work, give them the money, then wait on our beating.
I’m confident the UN would survive even with our reduction of funding.
Eliminate Federal Subsidies for Amtrak
1-Year Savings: $1.9 billion
5-Year Savings: $9.7 billion
Since Amtrak was created in 1971, it has cost taxpayers more than $40 billion. The railroad was supposed to earn a profit but has continuously failed to do so. For example, a 2009 study found that taxpayers paid $32 in subsidies per Amtrak passenger. By booking a month in advance, it is possible to buy a round-trip plane ticket from New Orleans to Los Angeles and back for less than the $437.82 that Amtrak loses per passenger on a one-way trip between those same locations.
A January 2018 audit from Ernst and Young found that “the Company has a history of operating losses and is dependent upon substantial Federal Government subsidies to sustain its operations and maintain its underlying infrastructure.”
Imagine any private company operating like Amtrak. Amtrak has no reason to innovate. All they do is maintain. Consider the turnaround in the airline industry, where companies like Southwest Airlines operate at high capacity. Board an Amtrak train and look at the number of empty seats. Do you believe there is a bureaucrat responsible for filling those seats or lose his or her job?
But I won’t let the airlines off the hook. Check out this jewel:
End the Essential Air Service (EAS)
1-Year Savings: $130 million
5-Year Savings: $650 million
The EAS was created in the 1970s after airline deregulation in an effort to retain air service in smaller communities. Today, it provides subsidies to 153 rural communities in 35 states and Puerto Rico. Unfortunately, what was intended to be a temporary program has morphed into a funnel for subsidies to support largely empty flights that otherwise would never leave the ground.
According to a September 19, 2009, Los Angeles Times article, EAS “spends as much as thousands per passenger in remote areas” and “provides service to areas with fewer than 30 passengers a day.” Among the most absurd recipients of EAS subsidies is an airport in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, tirelessly defended by the late Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), from which just 18 flights leave each week. Johnstown is only two hours east of Pittsburgh International Airport by car.
A May 2012 investigation by Scripps Media “exposed one flight between Baltimore and Hagerstown, Maryland – just about 75 miles apart – [that] was so sparse the captain allowed the only other passenger who wasn’t our producer to sit in the co-pilot’s seat,” and cited two other flights on the same route with just one passenger each. The investigative team found that “A 19-seat plane from Cleveland to Dubois, Pennsylvania, about 180 miles east, had just one passenger as well.”
This has been good for commuter airlines, but bad for taxpayers.
While there are billions more programs that should be cut, let’s look at the cost of illegal immigration?
According to the Immigration Reform Legal Institute (IRLI),
Illegal immigration to the U.S. costs federal, state and local taxpayers a staggering net cost of $116 billion a year – an increase of some $16 billion compared to previous estimates – according to a new study released by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). The study is the most comprehensive to date on the cost to federal, state and local taxpayers of the nation’s 12.5 million illegal immigrants and their 4.2 million citizen children.
So not only do we have multiple ways to pay for the wall, but the wall would easily pay for itself.
President Trump can and will fund his wall, even if the feckless Republicans don’t back him. Here’s one way he can do it that references all the waste I mentioned earlier. Jason Chaffetz explains:
Each year the government spends hundreds of billions of dollars on things that are not specifically authorized by Congress. Both Democrats and Republicans have been complicit in this practice. …
The Democrats may feign exasperation with the president potentially spending “unauthorized” money on the wall, but they have enthusiastically participated in the budgetary games that will make it possible. During the Obama administration, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated $310 billion was spent on unauthorized appropriations in FY 2016 – the last fiscal year of his presidency.
The federal budget is enormous – more than $4 trillion each year, of which roughly $1 trillion is discretionary. It is Congress’s job to authorize programs and appropriate funds for them from this $1 trillion.
However, the budget categories under which programs are authorized and funds are appropriated are very broad, and since Congress doesn’t pass specific language about every last dollar’s use, discretionary funds are inevitably used for things that Congress never specifically funds.
Back to Blizer
Wolf Blitzer thinks of himself as professional. But he got blasted on minor points. That’s because he’s been told what to report. Blitzer, et al of the fake news aren’t required to consider the other side. They march to the beat of the Left.
There is no sane person in this country who wouldn’t want to protect our borders. America has proven we welcome everybody, but on our terms. In the old days, people coming made the country better. That’s no longer true, because of Leftists.
