February 9, 2010

Fiscal Insanity in the White House

Tim Wilson

With plans for record debt spending in the latest budget proposals, the promises of fiscal prudence by President Obama are understandably in question. He has forcefully defended his fiscal record, claiming all of his problems were inherited. Yet is impossible to reconcile his stance with the proposal snuck out yesterday by the White House for a new government Agency, especially as the Agency in question is being set up to "study and report on changing climate" at a time that serious questions are finally being raised about the whole Global Warming/Climate Change "crisis" (for a good example of what can be found on the topic, scroll down through Anthony Watts excellent blog or go to this excellent US government site courtesy of Senator Inhofe).

With serious flaws being made public on an almost daily basis in many of the claims of the reports of the United Nations infamous International Panel on Climate Change, and the scientific community finally revolting against the outlandish claims of consensus on mankind's supposed role in Global Warming, it is astonishing that this President would even consider wasting more public money on such an Agency (although admittedly it will produce a few more taxpayer funded bureaucrat jobs). It is not as if the existing agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), isn't already studying and reporting on weather and climate, so presumably this is an attempt to raise the profile, and hence the importance, of former Vice-President Al Gore's hobby horse (and financial money tree). But how many millions, or even billions, of dollars will this agency cost and what will it actually achieve? In many ways it represents an almost perfect allegory for big government - expensive, wasteful and pointless. Congress should certainly be held accountable if they waste any time before rejecting this proposal out of hand.

You might think, with record snowfalls in and around the metropolitan D.C. area (and more on the way), that Commerce Secretary Gary Locke might have better things to do than spout probable nonsense about how "Climate Change is real, it's happening now" (hat tip: he is technically correct, climate change is real and eternal - but nothing that humanity can do anything about). His priorities should be focused on creating jobs, perhaps by trying to do something about President Obama's recent State of the Union pledge that we will "double" our exports over the next 5 years (unlikely though that seems given that China, our largest trading partner, is cutting imports). Perhaps he believes that creating a new agency is creating jobs - even if they are taxpayer funded, expensive and unproductive (doesn't that just define most government?)

posted by : Nancy Kennon on February 9, 2010
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