Senator Jeff Kruse - March 15th, 2013

 

Senator Jeff Kruse
R-Roseburg, District 1

Phone: 503-986-1701    900 Court St. NE, S-211 Salem Oregon 97301
Email: sen.jeffkruse@state.or.us     Website: http://www.leg.state.or.us/kruse
E-Newsletter                  Number 1, Volume 1 

 Working Hard For You

 

 

MARCH 15, 2013

 

 

There has been a lot of conversation over the last couple of weeks around the issue of sequestration at the federal level and the impacts on Oregon.  It would be helpful to put this issue in context.  First we are only dealing with discretionary spending, so programs like Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security are not impacted.  Additionally we are talking about a 44 billion dollar cut out of a 3.55 trillion dollar budget.  Someone sent me a very good visual analogy which I think helps put this in perspective.

 

Let’s say you buy a McDonalds happy meal (burger, fries and a drink).  You count your fries and find you have 59.  Sequestration would be like not eating one third of one of your fries.  You bought the happy meal because you were hungry, but I would suggest you would have accomplished your objective even without that fry fragment.

 

Our President is simply playing politics with the issue.  We all know the amount of waste in the federal government is massive, but that is not the President’s target.  Instead he is choosing to cut things like military family education programs, regional airport towers and I heard he even stopped White House tours.  This is like a school district threatening to cut the football program if the levy is not passed.  I would suggest it is time for the President to stop campaigning and start governing.

 

The US House has proposed a budget which would increase federal spending by 3.5% a year for the next ten years with the hope of having a balanced budget by that time.  The President wants a 5% increase which could grow the deficit to almost 20 trillion dollars.  At this point these two positions seem to be intractable, which brings me to a question of why, over just one and one half per cent?

 

I clearly do not know all of the internal workings of the debate between Congress and the White House, but I can make an assumption.  I think the issue is Obama Care.  Obama Care is the law of the land and will be for at least the next four years.  In spite of all the new taxes incorporated in the Act (and we have not seen all of them yet), it clearly will take additional tax increases to fully implement all provisions of the Act.  Every time the Congressional Budget Office scores Obama Care the price tag goes up.  At the end of the day this could quite likely break the bank at both the federal and state level.

 

Have you ever wondered why Congress has not been able to pass a budget since Obama became President?  Keep in mind this includes two years in which the Democrats controlled the House.  I think it is because the President wants uncontrolled spending growth.  Congress has been forced several times now to increase the debt limit without any fiscal accountability.  Four years without a federal budget is unprecedented, and I am not sure we will even have one this year.  This is not the way it is supposed to work.

 

In my last newsletter I said there would be gun bill hearings this week.  I do my newsletter on Fridays and last Thursday that was what had been announced.  For some reason they were pulled off the schedule, but I think we will see them re-immerge sometime within the next couple of weeks, but probably only for Friday hearings. I also know Congress is trying to come up with some legislation, but we don’t know what yet.  Actually my greatest concern at this point is the pending purchase by the Department of Homeland Security of massive amounts of guns, ammo and armored vehicles.  This is a move I don’t understand and I will leave it to you to draw your own conclusions.

 

Sincerely,

 

Senator Jeff Kruse

  

 

 

 

 

 

If you are interested in reading my past newsletters please click on my webpage link below:

 

http://www.leg.state.or.us/kruse/

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