The Utter Incoherence of Mark Kirk

From the inbox:

Springfield, Ill. – Congressman Mark Kirk announced his five top priorities to control federal spending amid reports of troubling news for the national and Illinois economies.

“Billions in borrowing by the State of Illinois and trillions in borrowing by the federal government is unsustainable,” Congressman Kirk said.  “We must enact spending reforms before taxpayers pay even more for fiscal mismanagement. Illinois deserves a Senator who has a proven record of fiscal restraint.”

Congressman Kirk outlined five top priorities to achieve fiscal discipline.

• Enact a line-item veto,

Below he blasts the Illinois budget which has a line item veto.  How’s that working out?  There’s no reason to believe a line item veto would reduce spending.

• End earmarks,

This simply isn’t that much money.  The 2010 earmarks look to be coming in at around $11 Billion.  Fine, but it isn’t much in the larger context.

• Require a supermajority to spend beyond our means,

• Enact Senator Simon’s balanced budget amendment, and
• Reestablish the Grace Commission with special procedures to implement approved spending cuts.

These three are my favorite example of not having a real plan, but spouting nonsense.  It amounts to stop me before I spend again and majority rule sucks.  Three and four are essentially the same thing.  So it’s a four point plan, not a five point plan.

The Grace Commission was a joke and Reinventing Government during the Clinton administration was the actual initiative that implemented most common sense reforms like being able to buy computers on the market instead of by RFP.  More to the point, it’s unconstitutional.  The Grace Commission was a executive commission and to have it making budgetary decisions would require a rather drastic change to the Constitution.

What he doesn’t mention about the Grace Commission are some of the actual suggestions in the Grace Commission.  Like the one where military retirement benefits need to be reduced and length of service lengthened.  But Mark Kirk doesn’t want to vote on such an issue, he wants to give authority to a non-accountable commission to do the dirty work.  But my favorite part of the report is where it suggests that Congressional Oversight is simply too burdensome.  Essentially the Grace Commission wanted to gut Congressional power and oversight.  Many of the suggestions reduce accountability for government agencies and certainly the executive as a whole.  Given what we have just seen in the Gulf of Mexico, does anyone really want Congress not having a strong oversight role?

On Monday, the Civic Federation released a report estimating that the State of Illinois will pay an extra $551 million for its borrowing after the rapid fall of the State’s credit rating.  Last week, the Institute for Truth in Accounting reported that Illinois now owed over $120 billion – totaling $29,000 for each Illinois taxpayer.

“Treasurer Giannoulias has been outspoken in favor of more stimulus spending, raising the state income tax and a host of new government programs,” Kirk spokesperson Kirsten Kukowski said.  “He has been largely silent on the rapidly falling credit rating of Illinois and the new borrowing costs Illinois taxpayers must pay. It’s time for a change in leadership for the good of our state and our economy.”

Congressman Kirk became the first member of the House Appropriations Committee to stop earmarking for his district.  Kirk amendments took on funding for the Bridge to Nowhere and stopped $200 million in stimulus spending to re-sod the National Mall.  Kirk was a leading opponent of the stimulus, the FY09 Omnibus Appropriations bill (with 9,000 earmarks) and wasteful programs like the federal Sugar Program.

Alexi hasn’t been silent on the credit rating. He joined with Dan Hynes is specifically warning about this under the Blagojevich administration.  What is fascinating is how dumb Mark Kirk must think everyone is.  He cannot identify significant savings and instead of proposing specific cuts to federal spending he wants someone else to do his job as a Member of Congress–an unelected, unaccountable commission.

Further, he supports making the Bush administration tax cuts permanent.  He complains about the State of Illinois being broke, but he wants to pursue a policy that will bankrupt the United States according to David Stockman:

RAZ: So in 1985, Stockman left. Now these days, he’s still a conservative and still a Republican, but he doesn’t think his party is taking a responsible position on taxes any longer. At the end of this year, the Bush-era tax cuts are set to expire. Republicans want them renewed; Democrats want to keep the tax cuts for the middle-class, but not for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans.

Now, Stockman says they’re both wrong. And he says extending either of those cuts is tantamount to the government declaring bankruptcy.

Mr. STOCKMAN: We’ve had a rolling referendum on what we want in government and what we don’t, ever since the first Reagan spending cut program – which I was part of in 1981. And it seems pretty clear to me that by 2010, we’ve decided a lot of things that cost a lot of money, the American people want. I might not agree with that but apparently, they do.

So we’re spending $3.8 trillion in defense, non-defense, entitlements, everything else, and we’re taking in only 2.2 trillion. So we got a massive gap. You have to pay your bills; you can’t keep borrowing from the rest of the world at that magnitude, year after year after year. So in light of all of those facts, I say we can’t afford the Bush tax cuts.

Mark Kirk’s “plan” for reducing spending cannot identify any specific cut and his utter lack of a plan for revenues means he wants to pursue the exact policies at the national level that Blagojevich pursued at the state level, but thinks it’s okay to blast Alexi for the mess. I think that’s called projection.