Des Moines Register. April 19, 2018
GOP is party of soaring deficits, not fiscal responsibility
Tax cuts supported by Republicans, including Grassley and Young, worsen federal finances
Leading up to the 2016 presidential caucuses, Iowans cared about fiscal responsibility in Washington. A 2015 Des Moines Register Iowa Poll of likely caucusgoers found 94 percent of Republicans wanted candidates to “spend a lot of time” talking about the federal budget deficit.
Presumably they also expected winning candidates to act on the issue if elected.
Well, President Donald Trump and the GOP-controlled Congress certainly acted on federal spending, deficits and the national debt - by driving up all three.
The federal budget deficit, which is the annual amount by which government expenses exceed revenues, will climb to $1 trillion in 2020 with yawning deficits to follow in subsequent years, according to a new report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The national debt, which is the accumulation of those annual deficits, will hit $25 trillion by 2027.
“At that level, debt held by the public would be the largest since 1947,” according to the CBO. That followed the United States financing World War II.
Iowa voters should remember this when casting ballots in the upcoming November election. They should remember it every time Sen. Chuck Grassley, Rep. David Young or other members of our Washington delegation talk about their dedication to “fiscal responsibility.”
That dedication simply does not exist. The campaign rhetoric is a bunch of malarkey. Their actions, namely supporting government-starving tax cuts, are ushering the country toward economic pain that may be felt for generations to come.
The CBO notes “laws enacted since June 2017,” including the GOP-crafted tax cut in December and spending bills, “are estimated to make deficits $2.7 trillion larger than previously projected between 2018 and 2027, an effect that results from reducing revenues by $1.7 trillion (or 4 percent) and increasing outlays by $1.0 trillion (or 2 percent).”
In other words, that major tax cut the GOP insisted would pay for itself actually worsens, not improves, the federal government’s economic future. This is hardly a surprise. A government, just like a household, faces repercussions when it significantly reduces its income and increases its spending.
Americans will feel these repercussions going forward. They will feel it when money that could be used for education, veterans or infrastructure is instead used to pay interest on debts; when the country’s credit rating is jeopardized; when there is an economic downturn and the federal government has little money to pump it up; when taxes are raised to maintain federal programs people rely on or, worse, when taxes are not raised and the programs are cut.
Amid all this, Washington Republicans continue to offer up more ideas to spend more money, whether for a wall at the Mexican border or on federal subsidies to reimburse farmers who will be hurt by tariffs proposed by Trump.
These politicians don’t talk about where the money for these ideas, or meeting basic federal responsibilities, is going to come from. They don’t talk about how their anti-immigration sentiment and worker shortage damage companies and hinder economic growth, which can also reduce government revenue.
Instead they prattle on about balancing the federal budget. Perhaps this will be the year Iowa voters hold them accountable for their hypocrisy.
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Dubuque Telegraph Herald. April 19, 2018
We can stay silent no more on source of our discontent
Occasionally an issue comes along that demands editorial comment, even when it seems little can be done to change the outcome
The Telegraph Herald Editorial Board has grappled with one of those issues recently. We have weighed the pros and cons and determined that rarely has there been an issue that garnered so much discussion and discontent in the community. After great deliberation, we have arrived at one conclusion:
It’s really time for winter to be over.
Oh sure, it might get into the 50s today. Gee, thanks, April, can you spare it? This lukewarm weekend will come on the heels of some pretty awful ones.
Just this week saw a winter storm warning for several area counties, begging the question, is it really a winter storm warning if it happens four weeks into spring? And then there’s wintry mix - the meteorological term for that snow-rain-sleet combination that no one enjoys. This April might demand a new name for that one, too.
If complaining about the weather seems to be at an all-time high, that’s probably because it really has been colder than normal. Some fun, if frigid, facts from the National Weather Service:
Seventeen of the first 18 days in April have been below-average for temperature.
April’s average high temperature has been 39.2 degrees. The normal high this time of year should be nearly 60.
April has been colder than March. And at 43.5 degrees for an average high, March was no walk in the park, either.
Through April 18, six days in April saw high temperatures that never got above freezing. In March, only three days saw high temperatures that failed to reach 32.
Remember last year? The high temperature on April 18, 2017, was 71 degrees. This April 18 brought us the aforementioned winter storm warning, wintry mix and general winter irritability.
Though it might not seem like it, this really will pass. While it’s hard to remember a season where snow and ice wreaked such havoc on track and field meets, spring planting, prom plans and Major League Baseball, the sun will warm our corner of Earth before long.
Until then, we must try not to take out our frustrations on the people we encounter every day - or on other drivers on the road.
Soon the cancellations will have subsided, the robins will be hopping around on green grass, and we can all go back to complaining about other things … like crabgrass, loud motorcycles and the Cubs.
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Sioux City Journal. April 19, 2018
Legislature should address backlog at state crime lab
A backlog of 250 days in testing of “rape kits” at the state Division of Criminal Investigation crime lab in Ankeny should be unacceptable to not only victims of sexual assault, but to all Iowans.
A wait of eight to nine months, or longer, for results of a test during the investigation of a rape report isn’t good enough. This state must do better.
This is no indictment of the crime lab because the lab is, in fact, stretched thin. Over the last four years, the lab’s $6.4 million budget remained largely the same, but it saw an increase of more than 30 percent in requests from law enforcement agencies for analysis of evidence, including “rape kits.”
A bill under discussion during this year’s legislative session seeks to address the problem.
The legislation would provide additional funding for the crime lab, as well as for the state’s court system, through an increase in court fees and fines. If passed, the bill would produce $2.1 million for the crime lab and $8.4 million to upgrade technology for the state’s court system in the next fiscal year, according to an April 12 story from The Journal’s Des Moines bureau.
We support the bill, which passed the Senate and awaits action in the House (the bill is before the House Ways and Means Committee). In tight times, this bill meets an important need related to funding without putting additional pressure on the state budget.
The crime lab would use new dollars next year to immediately hire and train between four and six criminalists, allowing the lab to reduce the 250-day backlog for testing of “rape kits” to 90 days within three years, the Journal bureau story reported.
That’s a significant improvement.
And a goal this Legislature should meet.
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Quad-City Times. April 16, 2018
At RICo, can-kicking is all they know
Gripe, nitpick and stall.
This past week, Rock Island County Board showed yet again why it’s the region’s most dysfunctional government.
Rock Island County Courthouse is dilapidated, unfit for its intended purpose and a tax suck in a county struggling to pay its bills. It’s chock-full of cancer-causing asbestos. Study after study - dating back more than two decades - has detailed its deterioration. Even conservative estimates place rehab costs at more than $20 million.
The courthouse has to come down, and that’s been true for years. It’s the only way. The sheriff says so. Any county board member with a modicum of respect for the taxpayer says so. The county’s top judge successfully sued because the courthouse was in such bad shape.
And yet, a small, vocal minority - propelled solely by an unwillingness to lose a protracted political squabble - again scuttled a plan that’s been years in the making.
The resolution before the county board’s Governance, Health and Administration Committee was pretty straight forward in practice. The proposed deal would have granted Rock Island County Public Building Commission the rights to fund the building’s demolition and replace it with green space. A similar proposed resolution died earlier this year because it imposed a hard-and-fast date of July 18 for those demanding the courthouse’s survival to come up with a way to pull it off.
This time, the resolution didn’t have a date. It just created a mechanism to transfer the building to the commission. It would have been a tiny step toward ending perhaps one of the region’s most ridiculous chest-thumping contests in recent memory.
But this time, citing the lack of an effective date, the very same county board members whom blasted the July deadline, cried foul and killed the whole thing.
And, in so doing, dissenters again exposed themselves as a gaggle completely incapable of good-faith-bargaining. No deal, unless it meets their every demand, will ever be acceptable. This past week’s proposal was, after all, a compromise package. It was intended to offer preservationists one last shot at finding a private entity that might assume the burden.
This is personal. It has been since Chief Judge Walter Braud started pushing the issue of the courthouse’s condition and the county’s rampant neglect for it. And the preservationist faction sink the county’s finances in service of the ego-driven crusade.
But foisting a boondoggle on the taxpayer isn’t their aim, they say. Finding a private entity that might pour tens of millions into the building for whatever reason is the ultimate goal, they pledge.
Yeah, well, that approach is years old now. And it’s failed.
The old courthouse is just too far gone. Its guts are just too out of date. Its structural issues are just too costly. The only way that building is brought up to spec is if Rock Island County taxpayers foot the bill. And then what, exactly?
The market has spoken and preservationist pipe dreams will never become reality.
But a handful of Rock Island County Board members, wielding outsized influence, are unable to distinguish fact from fantasy. And their delusions do little but guarantee more petty squabbling instead of meaningful governance.
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