Snooker -- Democrats' Favorite Pastime | Richard W. Rahn | Cato Institute: Commentary

Snooker -- Democrats' Favorite Pastime | Richard W. Rahn | Cato Institute: Commentary: 'Republicans should prepare a specific list of spending non—starters and make it known to all. They need to be clear that if any of the items are contained in a future appropriations bill or continuing resolution, they will make sure it is defeated. The list should contain only those items that would cause the president to have a politically impossible public—relations problem if he threatened to veto the specific appropriation bill or continuing resolution and thereby shut down the government if the items were not included.

Republicans could start by insisting that no expenditure for salaries could be made for people not properly appointed with the advice and consent of the Senate as called for in the Constitution — that is, phony, non—recess appointments would not be funded.

A number of the international organizations for which the United States provides major support have gone rogue and spent monies on programs of which most fiscally responsible Americans disapprove (or would disapprove it they knew about them). These programs should be cut. Examples are the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (which ignores much sound science), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Fiscal Affairs Committee (which is attempting to create a high tax cartel) and possibly the International Monetary Fund, which keeps flirting with bailing out European economic mismanagement.

The GOP and others have rightly complained about regulatory excess, but they need to put some teeth in these complaints by refusing to allow funding for regulations that have not been justified by a truly independent cost—benefit analysis, so the Environmental Protection Agency could not get away with unnecessarily attempting to shut down many needed power plants. The cost—benefit requirement also should be applied to the Internal Revenue Service and Treasury so they could not continue such outrages as making it almost impossible for Americans living abroad to get bank accounts and driving hundreds of billions of dollars of foreign capital out of the United States.'