Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget, the White House’s budget office has a draft hit list that includes popular Democrat programs that are often used to promote their agenda. They don’t amount to much in the way of savings, about $2.5 billion, but they do eliminate programs that have been flash points between the two parties.
As they say, a billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon, you have a lot of money.
To Republicans, they represent waste and programs that the government should not be funding.
The left doesn’t think $2.5 billion is worth cutting but for the right, having a government support left-wing organizations and propagandized broadcasting is an important issue.
Expect a brutal fight in the media to keep the corporate welfare coming.
The list could change and this is only a draft. It includes the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, AmeriCorps, the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities, and the Legal Services Corporation, just part of a nine-program list Mulvaney’s office has compiled, reports The New York Times Saturday.
The legal services go for illegal immigration and other leftist causes.
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The Export-Import Bank is on the list along with government agencies.
The Ex-Im Bank was described by Club for Growth President Chris Chocola as “A slush fund for market-distorting subsidies that pick winners and losers in the private sector.”
The Export-Import bank, Ex-Im, as it is known, is a U.S. government agency that provides low-interest loans to exporters and guarantees to foreign buyers of American goods.
Some say Ex-Im is government interference in the private-sector lending market, helping big corporations like Boeing. It’s corporate welfare.
Boeing and its affiliates received $8 billion of the total of $12 billion in Ex-Im loan guarantees during the last fiscal year. It also helps small to medium-sized businesses.
The bank doesn’t put up taxpayer money upfront, but rather loan guarantees, for which the recipients pay a fee; taxpayers are on the hook only if the borrowers default. The bank’s accounting shows that it’s returned a profit to the government of $2 billion over the last five years. The projected profit over the next 10 years is $14 billion.
The bank has a default rate of less than one-quarter of one percent because of their cautious lending practices, supporters say.
However, it does pick winners and losers.
Some of the airlines complain that the Export-Import Bank is subsidizing its global competitors by financing their cheap purchases of American airplanes.
If Delta buys an American plane, they don’t get the export-import subsidy. They’re competing with a Virgin or an Emirates or another global airline that does get access because they are buying it in the export market.
John Murphy, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce senior vice president for international policy, says it gives U.S. businesses an opportunity to bid competitively and in some cases, they would not have been able to bid at all.
Not authorizing the bank would lead to tens and even hundreds of thousands of layoffs at small- and medium-sized companies that depend on the bank directly or that are suppliers to large companies, Murphy contends.
An anti-drug office is also on the list. The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy is a big government ad agency that puts out ads to try and convince kids to stay away from drugs. All government agencies advertise now and much of it is propaganda. Many view that aspect as wasteful. The anti-drug agency gives out grants to its favorite people. When the federal government gives grants they are serving as money launderers for tax dollars and they often do jobs the states should do.
Many of these agencies overlap with other agencies. and exist for their own existence.
All of the cuts have been on the Republican wish list for years and elections have consequences. Ask Barack Obama, he’ll tell you.
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