All posts by Thomas L. Knapp

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The Scandal Isn’t Post-Presidential Speaking Fees, It’s Political Pensions

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English: President Barack Obama speaks to a jo...
English: President Barack Obama speaks to a joint session of Congress regarding his jobs plan, the American Jobs Act (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As former US president Barack Obama’s second term drew toward its close last July, he exercised his veto power for the eleventh of 12 times, shutting down “The Presidential Allowance Modernization Act of 2016.” The bill, which easily passed both houses of Congress, would have reduced former presidents’ pensions and staff allowances dollar for dollar if their other incomes exceeded $400,000 per year.

In the wake of Obama’s decision to accept a $400,00 fee for a Wall Street speaking engagement this September, the bill’s sponsors plan to reintroduce it. But neither the speaking fee nor the veto are what we should be noticing. The real scandal is how lucrative retirement has become for American politicians.

Under the aptly named Former Presidents Act, former presidents receive pensions equal to the salaries of cabinet secretaries. Right now, that’s more than $200,000 per year. They also receive $150,000 per year for staff and office space. That’s not counting the costs of Secret Service protection security for life, managing their monuments (the construction of presidential libraries is privately funded but the government pays their costs of operations to the tune of nearly 20 times those pension costs), etc.

Members of Congress are also eligible for pensions after as little as five years in office. Those pensions aren’t quite so lavish as rumor sometimes has it, but for politicians with long careers they can exceed $100,000 per year. As of 2013, the average congressional pension  was about $60,000 per year.

Why on Earth should politicians receive taxpayer funded pensions at all?

More than half the members of Congress are already millionaires when they are elected to office, and most of them can expect great job offers as lobbyists and so forth after they leave.

Whether a president is wealthy or not prior to his inauguration, he’s certainly going to be after leaving office. That $400,000 speech of Obama’s is chump change compared to the $65 million joint book deal he and former First Lady Michelle Obama signed barely a month after moving out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue (Bill Clinton and George W. Bush apparently only knocked down $10 million each on their books, poor guys).

There’s good reason to treat Congress, the presidency and the vice presidency as, to steal a line from James Madison in The Federalist #62, “an assembly of men called for the most part from pursuits of a private nature, continued in appointment for a short time” — as temporary “public service,” not the kind of lifelong career from which one “retires.”

As of 2015, the median US household income was (according to the US Census Bureau) $55,775. Why are those households paying former members of Congress that much or more, and former presidents nearly four times as much? Their paychecks should end when their terms in office end.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Trump is Right: “Shutdowns” Are Good for America

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English: Donald Trump speaking at CPAC 2011 in...
English: Donald Trump speaking at CPAC 2011 in Washington, D.C. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

If he’s remembered for nothing else, Donald Trump will go down in history as the first president to think out his policies in public, 140 characters at a time. That may not be a bad thing. In fact, I think we should strongly consider a constitutional amendment limiting Congress to 140 characters per law. Hold that thought …

“Our country needs a good ‘shutdown’ in September to fix mess!” the Donald suggested in a tweet on May 2, in a fit of pique over the US Senate’s 60-vote cloture requirement. That requirement forced Republicans to negotiate with Democrats over a stopgap spending bill, in turn requiring Trump to give up on some of his policy goals for the short term to avoid the dreaded “shutdown.”

The president’s reasons for rattling the “shutdown” saber are wrong  — the harder it is for Congress to spend money, the better! — but his instincts are right. “Shutdowns” are much-needed opportunities for Americans to look more closely at, and hopefully re-think, the federal government’s true role.

As you may have noticed, the word “shutdown” comes with scare quotes both in Trump’s tweet and in this column. That’s because the federal government never really shuts down.

When a spending impasse in Congress brings about a “shutdown,” what happens is that “non-essential” government services cease operation and “non-essential” government employees go home home on unpaid leave (unfortunately, the impasse usually ends with them getting paid for the time off).

Let that sink in for a moment.

“Essential,” per Webster’s, means “[i]mportant in the highest degree; indispensable to the attainment of an object; indispensably necessary.”

If the services shutting down aren’t indispensably necessary, why is the federal government providing them the first place? If the employees who get sent home aren’t indispensable to the attainment of the federal government’s object(s), why are they warming office chairs in Washington?

If these things aren’t essential, why are taxes withheld from your paycheck every week to pay for them whether you want them or not?

If Trump stands firm in September and forces a “shutdown,” pay attention to what stopped happening and what didn’t. Did you really need the things that stopped to start again? And as for the things that kept on happening, did you really need them either?

You’ll likely be surprised to discover how irrelevant Washington, DC is to your life and disgusted at how much you’re paying in taxes for how little you get that you actually need.

Trump often tells us that he’s not a politician. Maybe that’s true. Politicians fear and loathe government “shutdowns” — not because of the momentary delays in their grand schemes, but because there’s always a possibility that you will suddenly realize how little you need them.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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“National Security”: The Last Refuge of Vote-Buying Politicians

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Bethlehem Steel works, "Watercolor in sep...
Bethlehem Steel works, “Watercolor in sepia brown, white and gray, on buff paper. Signed May ’81.” (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

More than half a century ago, Congress passed the Trade Expansion Act of 1962.  Since mid-April, US president Donald Trump has twice invoked one of the law’s nearly forgotten provisions, ordering Commerce secretary Wilbur Ross to investigate the possibility that steel and aluminum imports “threaten to impair the national security.”

If Ross says they do and Trump agrees, the law empowers him to “take such action, and for such time, as he deems necessary to adjust the imports of such article and its derivatives so that such imports will not so threaten to impair the national security.”

Keep in mind that when a president orders “investigations” of this sort it’s not for the purpose of arriving at the truth of the matter, but rather for the purpose of getting the answers he wants to hear so that he can claim justification for doing the things he wants to do.

 

For that reason, I can confidently predict that in the near future we’ll see restrictions on the importation of aluminum and steel, in the name of, but not actually for the purpose of, enhancing “national security.” In fact, those restrictions will have exactly the opposite effect.

Trade is one of the best guarantors of peace. Economist Otto T. Mallery perhaps overstated it a bit in saying that when goods don’t cross borders, armies will. But it should at least be obvious that when goods DO cross borders, armies are less likely to cross those same borders. Merchants and customers who are happy with each other don’t look for fights with each other.

If “national security” is just an excuse, what is the real reason? Why does Trump want to ban — or at least drastically reduce — steel and aluminum imports?

If you have to ask why, the answer is usually “money.” In this case, it’s “money and votes.”

Trump’s narrow victory in last year’s presidential election came down to a few tens of thousands of votes from Rust Belt workers who believed he would “bring the jobs back.” He wants to keep his promise — or, at least, he wants to keep their votes for his party in 2018 and himself in 2020. He also wants the financial and political support of American companies benefiting from captive steel and aluminum markets.

But of course there’s a catch. If American companies don’t have to compete with foreign steel and aluminum producers, they can raise prices. Let’s play a little game invented by 19th century French economist Frederic Bastiat. It’s called “That Which is Seen, and that Which is Not Seen.”

Seen: More workers, with more jobs, making more money in the steel and aluminum industries.

Not seen: The things you won’t be able to buy because you’re paying more for products made of steel and aluminum.

Donald Trump is buying the votes and support of American steel and aluminum (and timber — he just slapped a tariff on the Canadian lumber that constitutes 1/3 of the American market) workers and employers. And he’s buying those things with your money.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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