In The News

Control spending, yes, but who gets cut?
Congressman asked to explain factors considered when making cuts
The Ludington Daily News - Steve Begnoche
January 12, 2013

How does Congress decide what to cut?

Several of those attending the Ludington and Scottville Area Chamber of Commerce legislative committee session Friday at Book Mark with Congressmen Bill Huizenga, R-Zeeland, and Dan Benishek, R-Crystal Falls, in essence wanted to understand that. Some, like Erica Karmeisool, Ludington Area Center for the Arts executive director, asked the question in a nuanced way.

Karmeisool said continuing to cut arts and cultural funding leads to negative impacts on society and noted the increasingly important economic development role arts and culture can play, and she said is playing in Ludington. “Our arts and culture economy is flourishing,” she told Huizenga and Benishek, and then asked what are the factors used to make funding cut decisions.

Benishek said he talks to people daily who say the federal government can’t keep on spending the way it has been, but many say, don’t cut their area.

But if cuts aren’t made, he said, and the country goes broke, the already difficult decisions will be even more difficult.

At one point he suggested a better way might be for all portions of the federal government to take an across the- board 1 percent reduction in funding. Surely, he said, everyone could live with a 1 percent reduction.

“Everybody believes their piece of the pie is the most important,” he said. “I frankly don’t know the best way to do that. If we keep spending more money than we take in, we’re going to go broke. It should be a shared decision. We can’t keep doing what we’re doing.

“The economy is the most important thing. We have tax policy that encourages money going off shore. If the economy grows at 3 percent ... if the economy does well, revenue to the government increases.”

Benishek said federal revenue increases when taxes are cut because there is more economic activity in the nation after a tax cut. When there is more revenue, “the rest becomes automatic.”

“I’m sort of a fiscal conservative, we shouldn’t be depending on Washington for money,” he told Karmeisool. “It shouldn’t be taking money. It should stay here so you have more money to do more.”

He cited the U.S. Dept of Education, which he said has 20,000 bureaucrats spending money but not educating kids, as an example of a federal spending of money better left to state lawmakers local schools.

“Washington is not the answer to these problems,” he said. “Keep it here so state and local government can decide where it goes,” he said. “People in Washington are going to make bad decisions about your arts.”

Karmeisool explained most of local arts are supported locally. “We’re filling gaps,” she said of financial support. If cuts come down “everything is affected. If we don’t invest in our economy, if we don’t teach children and adults to be critical thinkers, creative thinkers, to think on their own to be entrepreneurial as the arts do, (what is going to happen),” she said. “When you cut that link we are tying one hand behind our back.”

Huizenga said that when he was a Michigan legislator, he was a Republican co-chairman of the arts caucus and supports the arts. However, funding is such that “everybody is going to feel a pinch, and I think everybody needs to. We have to get smarter. “ He said he wasn’t a fan of the federal education program No Child Left Behind because it has taken flexibility out of education. Ludington, he said, is different from Lansing, which in turn is different from Lincoln, Nebraska, but the flexibility account for those differences is diminished.

Karmeisool later told the Daily News she didn’t think the Congressmen really addressed her point of arts being a means of economic development in the community.

A MORAL CLIFF?

Chad Stewart of Custer, saying the nation has approached a “moral cliff” suggested a different spark for a strong national economy.

“A strong family will drive a strong economy,” he said citing the about 40-year-old Roe v Wade U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion, and federal funding provided Planned Parenthood as federal decisions that “go against my teaching.”

“We both voted to restrict funding for Planned Parenthood,” Huizenga replied, noting he’s also firmly pro-life. Portions of Obamacare in relation to certain kinds of health care benefits or mandates are proving to be a struggle for companies, schools, universities and hospitals.

“We just can’t be ‘no.’ We have to give alternatives,” Huizenga said noting he and his wife actively support a pregnancy center in Zeeland as a means to provide alternatives to Planned Parenthood or to abortions. “I think you’re right that has to be part of our discussion.”

Benishek agreed such matters are important. “A lot will come down to court battles,” he said.

With the Republicans only controlling the House, “we can’t change current laws ... Elections matter. We lost the last election. We lost the Senate, the Presidency.... We have to be out there and win elections,” Benishek said. “I’m very frustrated.”

“It doesn’t matter what you think, it is what your constituents think,” Karmeisool countered, saying she comes from a different side on the matter.

“American voters are conflicted,” Huizenga responded. “The American people voted for a divided government.”

He suggested everyone see the film “Lincoln,” which this week received 12 Academy Award nominations. He also recently read a book on George Washington.

“We have this unrealistic notion of what founding fathers went through,” he said.

It was not all rosy, sitting around campfires sing “Kumbaya.”

Rather, he said, there was a lot of dissent. “It was nasty and vicious. This isn’t a new situation.”

What is new, he said, is the 24hour news cycles and the media’s fascination with whatever doomsday clock countdown is going on, such as the recent fiscal cliff or perhaps the coming debt ceiling decision.

“We have a challenging time here in government,” he said. “ I hear it all the time people are frustrated... I’m frustrated, too.”

PHILOSOPHICAL DIVIDE

Rather than a partisan divide in Congress, Huizenga said it is a philosophical one about what is the proper size and role of government.

Today, Huizenga continued, 42 cents of every dollar spent is borrowed money. “We have put ourselves in a very precarious situation,” he said. The question to answer, he said, is no matter what program is being considered, is it so important we need to borrow the money?

He said everybody, including the defense department, needs to tighten their fiscal ships.

“We need to go through that pain now,” he said, noting the top five spending areas are medicare, medicaide, social security, defense and interest on the debt. That interest cost could skyrocket if, as will likely happen eventually, interest rates eventually increase. If not addressed those interest costs, if or when interest rates increase, “could swamp the boat.”

SHARE THE PAIN?

Ron Sarto asked if members of Congress are willing to lead by cutting their own salaries, benefits and expenses.

Huizenga and Benishek both stated reports of lifetime retirement and lifetime health benefits are no longer true.

“I’ve got co-pays, monthly fees. I’ve got five kids, somebody is going to the ER,” Huizenga said raising a sympathetic laugh while making his point that the old days are gone for health insurance, even for members of Congress.

“If lifetime benefits were true after just one term, why would anyone seek a second term?” Benishek said. “We have tried to walk the talk,” Huizenga said of leading by cutting. He said he runs his Congressional office with an approach akin to how he runs his gravel business. He’s allowed up to 18 Congressional office employees, at one time he was working with 13, he said. He said he underpays his staff by Washington, D.C., standards and that they are working under a pay freeze, adding not all members of Congress run their offices that way.

Benishek said the across-theboard 1 percent cut “has a lot of validity” and “might be a way to do it so everybody feels equal pain. I want solutions. It is very frustrating to pass something in the House and have the Senate do nothing . … That is very frustrating to me.”

Negotiations that should happen before the American public between members of the House and the Senate are held behind closed doors by leadership only.

“I have been taking tough votes,” he said. “Some think I was too liberal, some think I was too conservative ... I’m not going to make everybody happy. I’m just doing the best I can.”

OBAMA CARE RULES

Wayne Brown, a Farm Bureau insurance agent, asked about Obamacare rules saying he’s being asked by customers about those rules but no one has set any parameters yet. “We have a lot of clients that are very nervous about this,” Brown said.

“When they say they passed it without knowing what is in it. that is true,” Benishek said “The reason you don’t have the regulations yet is there is a very good chance it will fall on its own weight because government will not be able to produce the documents in time for you to implement them.”

“This isn’t the first time government has set unattainable timelines,” Huizenga said, noting Dodd Frank financial reform as a recent issue that had deadlines approaching before rules were set.

The government is often more aggressive about such rules before than with the know how to write the regulations, or if it’s even possible to write them in time, Huizenga said, calling it a game of chicken.

FARM BILL

Brown also asked if the farm bill, worked on but not approved in the fiscal cliff deal by the last Congress, is dead.

Benishek, who has a seat on the House ag committee this term, said the previous farm bill has been extended for 8 months. “I don’t know what is going to happen there,” he said.

That extension “is not great,” Huizenga said, but it is better than reverting to an old 1940s law as some feared would happen leading to $8-a-gallon milk.

Benishek said farmers have told them, that wouldn’t have happened no matter what. He said one farmer has told him Americans already pay $8 milk but we do so in two parts: one through our taxes, and the rest at the checkout.

“Do we need to subsidize farming?” he asked.

“We have to move away from that,” Huizenga said. “The other really, really big part of this is it is dubbed the ag bill, but 80 percent of it has nothing to do with agriculture” and those are nutrition and food programs that he said are important, but misplaced in the bill as they have been for many decades.

REACTION

“It was interesting,” Scottville chiropractor and former Mason County Board of Commissioner chairman Lew Squires said of the session. “We have to continually make sure we stay in tune with them to keep our local economy going . Communication is the key.”

“These are great,” Stewart said after. “This is what you need. To be able to interact with the people who represent you, that is important.”