A Billion Here, A Billion There, Soon You’re Talking about Real Money.
This reprises the First Step in Causing Inflation.
Chapter Three
When last we visited our hard-working legislators, they had just paid school teachers unions nearly $200B to reimburse teachers who have had to suffer from being paid while not working, and to combat threats that our Centers for Disease Control have determined don’t exist. Follow the Science. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.
The anticlimax consisted of $11M in support for the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, and another $11M in support for Gallaudet University for the hearing impaired. We learn new things about COVID19 every time we turn the page in the bill. It appears that COVID19 is implicated in the causation or exacerbation of hearing difficulties. I have searched a number of scientific databases and cannot locate the studies that provide a scientific basis for this, but I’m sure they’re around somewhere.
There is $20M in funds for Howard University, perhaps the best-known Historically Black University or College (HBUC). I have no objection to this because HBUC were short-changed for years until December 2019 when President Trump signed legislation providing HBUC with a yearly specific appropriation of $250M. I’m sure there’s a rationale for a man who was described daily as a racist and white supremacist being the president to provide additional funding for HBUC; perhaps someone could wokesplain it to me. Lucy, you got a lotta wokesplainin to do.
Protecting Us After We’re Dead
We now come to Homeland Security, which is keeping us safe from COVID19, but only beginning this past January. There’s $2B for FEMA to provide assistance with funeral expenses for victims of COVID19, and conveniently waives the 25% required state match. Since centers of deaths attributed to COVID19 are nearly all located in states whose governors shut down schools, leading to marked increases in childhood suicide, and closed businesses that didn’t contribute to the governor’s political party, leading to an increase in adult suicide, waiving the state match is . . . interesting. Seniors who died as a result of governors’ orders to nursing homes to accept patients with COVID might question the waiver. But, hey, Mom and Dad are dead, what difference does it make where they died?
Not included for FEMA is any money for testing the six thousand immigrants a day crossing the border. That’s left to the states, if they have the chance. Nor for FEMA’s current deployment to the border, where the National Emergency Management Agency is for the first time in its history not responding to an emergency, because there is none. Nor money for facilities to handle these people because the House of Representatives insisted on reducing number of beds authorized for detainees. Nor for FEMA to notify state and local governments when a bus is dispatched to a town carrying 40-50 illegal migrants, many who tested positive for COVID19 and some of whom were released without a notice to appear for an immigration hearing.
Keeping the Skies Safe for Dropouts
Transportation Department gets its share. There’s $2B for airports, including for communities with small airports. Small airports are usually general aviation or executive airports. 90% of the 3,000 general aviation airports have no air traffic control towers. The cost to operate an air traffic control tower ranges from $250K-$400K/year 24/7, although most general aviation airports need significantly less. Construction costs are difficult to track down, although minimum requirement is an enclosed room with radio transceiver and a controller. We can rest assured that the controller will be well-qualified, since the effort to improve diversity led the Federal Government to change qualifications for air traffic controller so that a commercial airline pilot who has completed certified ATC training is deemed less qualified than a high school dropout who has experienced long periods of unemployment. Fortunately, most of this foolishness was revoked in 2017. On the other hand, the $2B would fund one runway at Saint Louis, Missouri.
Shovel-Ready Pork
There is $10B for state highway projects. This is to replace funds lost for maintenance, operations and personnel due to COVID19. Strangely, nearly every US auto insurer reduced rates and gave its policyholders rebates due to reduced driving in 2020. I had foolishly thought that highway maintenance, operations and personnel costs were driven by traffic. It seems they are, like so many other things, driven by a virus. I’m sure there’s no shortage of shovel-ready projects, as we were assured to gain passage of the economic recovery package in 2009.
The World Bank states unequivocally that “(R)oads projects around the globe remain plagued by fraud, corruption, and collusion. A Transparency International poll ranked construction as the industry most prone to corruption and a survey of international firms revealed that companies in the construction industry were more likely than firms in any other sector to have lost a contract because of bribery.” The people who gave us this bill assured us repeatedly for five years that there is nothing special about our country, so this must apply here, as well. We’re due another multi-trillion-dollar bill to fund infrastructure. Why is this in a COVID Relief Bill and not there?
Votes are expensive
There’s $1B in support to Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor, whose states provided more than 100% of the winning electoral vote margin in the last presidential election. When passenger rail traffic was in the domain of private industry, a downturn was met with cost savings and efficiencies. For the past 50 years, Federally-subsidized Amtrak has had a monopoly, thus no need for such measures. Some of the money goes to states and commuter rail lines, but must be used to pay required fees to Amtrak.
There’s $14B in an emergency relief fund for transit, both urban and rural based on operating expenses. The costs to operate a transit system include maintenance of right-of-way, maintenance of engines and rolling stock, maintenance of control systems, fuel and people. The real money is in acquisition of right-of-way, control systems, engines and rolling stock. It is unclear if actual operating expenses, historical operating expenses, or required operating expenses will be the measure. In any event, they are invariably higher for urban systems. Their development costs and costs of heavier-duty equipment raise public expectations of performance, and urban personnel costs are higher than in rural areas.
Graft by Other Means
At the request of the outsourced operator of the Dallas public bus system I looked at operations, purchasing and opportunities for cost savings. The barrier was in the contract. The operator was required to spend a specific percentage of the contract value (not of spend for goods and services) with approved minority contractors. The contract required the operator to pay drivers, maintenance workers and other system employees from its payroll, and bill the city for the costs. This artificially inflated the contract value while not increasing the operator’s margin. It became evident quickly what the issue was: No savings was possible on personnel, and minimal savings were available in maintenance and cost of supplies and services. The only area large enough in which spend could be managed to meet the minority set-aside was fuel, which had to be obtained from a minority supplier because switching all other goods and services purchases to minority suppliers was insufficient to meet the percentage-of-contract requirement.
Only one fuel supplier in the city was both minority-owned and large enough to handle the required volume; it was owned by a well-off and politically well-connected man, who could dictate price of fuel, and the operator had no choice but to pay it.
Discussions with the Philadelphia and Chicago public transit authorities revealed similar stipulations and high costs.
Disparate Impact
Rural transit systems cost less to operate in part because they are able to add and remove capacity more easily than urban systems. Reducing frequency of service or number of rail cars can be done easily in either rural or urban systems, using accurate historical data to project ridership. The problem is that urban areas are characterized by self-segregation, which has been the case since the 19th Century. Irish neighborhoods, Italian, Greek, Arab, black, Hispanic. The more “anti-racism” there is, the starker the self-segregation in urban areas. There is little to no self-segregation in rural America. Whites, Hispanics, blacks, Native Americans, intermingle. So, when an urban transit system tries to save money, it affects neighborhoods disparately. Since there is really only one neighborhood in rural America, there is no disparate impact.
Using expense totals favors contributions to urban systems, which support districts more likely to vote for Democrats.
Healthcare is expensive
We’re approaching the most important part of the COVID19 Relief Bill, dealing with the virus directly. Title I of Division N, Healthcare, contains two technical rules concerning Medicare which, by extension, also apply to Medicaid and any other Government funded healthcare. One creates a year-long suspension in a 3.75% reduction in reimbursement to providers, the other extends a Medicare payment sequestration exemption for three months. Yawn? Hardly. These are the methods whereby the government reduces the cost of Medicare. They do not include novel therapies or reductions in cost of compliance. Rather, they are accomplished via fiat. Government simply decides to pay providers less There is no money appropriated for this, but there does not have to be. There is a cost associated with it, though, which I estimate at $27B+ for Medicare and almost $17B for Medicaid.
Introducing the “Why Work?” Phenomenon
Help for the unemployed comes next. Unemployment is nationwide, exacerbated by state government orders to keep businesses closed. One might think that being unemployed simply means losing one’s job, and that everyone who has lost a job through no fault of her/his own will be treated equally. Not so under slicing and dicing of the public to allow for unequal treatment. Benefits for the self-employed and business owners are screwy already. Self-employed and business owners get $300 a week extra for eleven more weeks, except if you’re a combination of employed and self-employed, you get $100 a week, period. If you’re unemployed, you get an extra 11 weeks, too, but your total benefit period is longer although the benefit is the same. Minimum unemployment benefits in most states, when adding the federal benefit, exceeds minimum wage. Why anyone making minimum wage would bother working is beyond my comprehension.
Bend the Curve, Bend the Mind
There are separate programs for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation, Railroad Employees, Emergency Unemployment Relief for Governmental Agencies and Nonprofits, Federal Funding of the first week of unemployment compensation for states with no waiting period, Temporary Financing of Unemployment Benefits for States with a Program in Law, and a separate program for states without a program in law. There are also separate programs for financing interest for states which have taken advances due to low balances in their unemployment compensation funds, for full federal funding of extended unemployment for states with high unemployment (most of which voted for Biden for President) and up to 79-86 weeks of total unemployment benefits (what happened to two or so weeks to “bend the curve?”).
What, Fraud? Impossible
There’s a requirement for identification to receive benefits (isn’t a requirement for identification racist? It’s hard to keep up with the latest version of what is racist), provisions applying to the Commonwealth of the Marianas Islands (which, with the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of the Marshall Islands and others are eligible for federal benefits programs), a provision to allow states to waive recoupment of overpayments and the list goes on. Given the confusing array of programs and varying instructions, it appears that the biggest certain unemployment assistance will be hiring new federal workers to staff the dizzying number of programs. In addition to which, a cybersecurity company has offered the opinion that $200B has been lost to fraud, with California, Washington and Massachusetts leading the way.
This does not appear to be a COVID Relief Bill so much as using Federal money to reward favored constituencies. We are in the midst of an orgy of spending other people’s money. I learned that I am eligible for the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance. I don’t need the money, don’t want the money, and will refuse the money if offered.
No one else is doing this. Thank you.
A revisit restores bad memories.