New Year’s Resolutions

There’s been plenty of misery over the past twelve months. America continues to grapple with the coronavirus pandemic, and daily deaths have seldom slipped under 1,000. Meanwhile, households have struggled to get by amid 6 percent inflation and a supply chain bottleneck that has impacted virtually all products. Lawmakers and the Biden administration can help America get beyond the worst of the pandemic and economic malaise, but only by ending harmful, counterproductive policies holding the country back. The Taxpayers Protection Alliance (TPA) has some New Year’s Resolutions for policymakers to boost prosperity and halt the sorry slide into mass misery.

A Diet for Members of Congress

The national debt is a bloated $29 trillion, or about $220,000 in red ink for each household. Back at around this time last year, the national debt stood a tick above $27.5 trillion. Massive binge spending over the past year has been driven by poorly targeted “recovery” and infrastructure packages that have proven of little assistance to struggling people and communities.

The year started out with a $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill. In November, Congress bellied up to the trough to pass a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that includes $7.5 billion for a nationwide network of 500,000 charging stations for electric vehicles (EVs). This construction effort will primarily serve well-off households because more than 70 percent of EV owners make more than $100,000 per year. President Biden has failed to address why this effort is an urgent priority for taxpayers, nor why charging stations can’t be developed commercially. After all, the roughly 150,000 gas stations across America were developed mostly with private capital and didn’t require a costly federal building effort.

Meanwhile, “recovery” spending has left states and localities awash in aid money they don’t really need. According to an October report by Marc Joffe of the Reason Foundation, public sector recipients of federal monies have only spent around 3 percent of $172 billion in allocated funds.

Maryland is set to receive $3.7 billion in COVID relief money while the state has a surplus of $2.5 billion.  This not only demonstrates a lack of need by governments who have found themselves with more tax revenue than expected, but also feeds into future inflation fears. If states and localities spend these resources over the next couple of years, it will ensure a continuation of the inflation currently gripping the country.

Washington can work with local and state governments to ensure that these funds are used conservatively, or better yet, given back to the people. Tax cuts would allow residents to save and invest the money prudently, a welcome alternative to reckless spending proposals being floated by local officials. Or, if the money remains in government hands, it should at least be put into rainy day funds. But, the most important thing is for the avalanche of red ink to stop from the top.

Get Moving

So, you’ve put on a few pounds and need to start exercising again.  It’s not easy to get moving again. Well, everything is moving kind of slow right now anyway. For the first time in (at least) a generation, Americans have had to deal with the goods they regularly rely on not being in stock and taking weeks or months to arrive at their front doors. This scarcity has in turn fueled inflation. For example, Proctor & Gamble raised prices across 9 out of 10 product categories, and home appliance company Whirlpool announced that supply chain dysfunction added $1 billion in product costs this year.

Some of this logistical chaos can be contributed to continued COVID restrictions around the globe. Both Canada and China (two leading importers into the U.S.) have kept strict pandemic restrictions in place according to Oxford University’s Covid-19 Stringency Index, with both countries scoring at least a 60 out of 100. And when coronavirus mitigation strategies are constantly changing along different margins all around the world, supply chain dysfunction will surely result.

But while U.S. policymakers cannot control other countries’ responses to the pandemic, they can take steps to minimize the fallout for U.S. consumers. One way to keep goods moving into the U.S. is to repeal the outdated Jones Act which requires that ships picking up and dropping off goods from American ports are U.S. built, owned, flagged, and manned. Unsurprisingly, port traffic is made lots worse when companies try to avoid the Jones Act by “‘port hopping’ up and down U.S. coasts using larger, foreign‐​flagged ships that take longer to offload and are prohibited from picking up additional cargo while they’re in port.” President Biden can also work with lawmakers to finally end former President Trump’s tariffs, which cost the average American family $600 per year in higher prices.

…and that includes the Postal Service too

Not all of America’s logistical problems are international. The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is currently changing its service standards, a move which could slow down 40 percent of first-class mail (i.e., letters and cards) by up to 2 days. The agency has argued that the move could stem rising red ink and make a dent into large annual net losses. But the National Postal Policy Council notes, “The Postal Service’s own estimate (which in past cases have materially overestimated the actual cost savings it experienced) is that the net effect of the service standard degradation would be an annual increase in net income of $169.5 million…That equates to only 0.23 percent of the Postal Service’s annual $73.1 billion in revenues.”

Lawmakers should work with USPS leadership to reverse these counterproductive measures and continue to build on the progress made over the past year to get the mail moving again (after a sharp drop in performance in 2020). The key to postal reform lies not in widespread slowdowns, but rather network consolidation and a unified logistics platform that ensures one hand knows what the other is doing. It also requires proper pricing for packages, which consume an increasing share of the agency’s overall haul. But this cannot be done without the USPS opening its books to the outside world and allowing independent analysts to examine the agency’s cost and price assumptions.

Exercise Common Sense and Protect the Baltimore County and City IGs

It’s not easy to maintain accountability in Baltimore, a city known for terribly run public schools, jailed leadership, and preciously little financial transparency. Fortunately, Baltimore City Inspector General (IG) Isabel Cumming remains determined to make Baltimore a better place and ensure that no corruption remains unaddressed.

Days after being chosen as Baltimore’s IG in 2018, Cumming made clear that “nobody is off limits. Overtime situations, theft of time. Purchase cards. There are so many areas that need to be looked at…I love going after white collar criminals.” At the time, then-Mayor Pugh sung her praises, stating Cumming “knows how to operate independently to be fair and just.” Maybe Pugh would not have been so effusive if she knew that Cumming would be actively investigating the Mayor’s Office for fraud. After media reports revealed that then-Mayor Pugh had cozy financial ties to the University of Maryland Medical System (UMMS), the IG’s office began to take a closer look at the city leader’s money dealings and ultimately found critical evidence of wrongdoing that was key to Pugh’s eventual conviction.

IG Cumming has also maintained a close watch over Marilyn Mosby, the State’s Attorney for Baltimore City. As the IG’s office has repeatedly pointed out, Mosby’s office has maintained questionable finances and ethics over the past few years. First, there was Mosby’s travel spree on the taxpayer’s dime despite Mosby’s false insistence that taxpayer dollars were not spent on these trips. Then, there was the federal investigations pertaining to dubious tax liens and real estate dealings. Cumming hasn’t wavered in her quest to hold Mosby responsible for her actions, even amid pressure by Mosby to alter damning IG reports.

The IG’s office has had to deal with these shenanigans, all while having to deal with city leadership’s attempts to rein in Cumming through a political “advisory board.” That’s right, the politicians who are supposed to be held accountable by the IG are using a taxpayer-funded body to hamper the IG’s activities without any real transparency.

Similar issues have plagued Baltimore County IG Kelly Madigan, who has taken a courageous stand to retain her independence after Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski tried to strip her of power when two council members, Julian Jones and Cathy Bevins, criticized her for buying new business cards.

It’s up to residents of Baltimore City and County to say enough is enough and tell city leadership to do the right thing and fix the advisory board.

Kick the Habit of a Slow FDA

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been at the front and center of the pandemic. Despite the quickness of the vaccines, the FDA has dropped the ball with slowly approving home testing kits and not allowing new life-saving tobacco harm reduction products to come to market.

Despite being more than 95% safer than combustible cigarettes, e-cigarettes and other technology (such as heat-not-burn products) are revolutionizing the way people around the world are quitting smoking.  Earlier this year, millions of premarket tobacco applications were submitted to the agency, yet only a handful of applications were approved.  Millions of people will try to quit smoking in 2022 and the FDA needs to be a part of the solution, not a part of the problem.

In conclusion….

New Year’s Resolutions are never easy.  It’s important to have resolutions that are decisive yet pragmatic enough to give people the opportunity to improve.  The same is certainly true for Congress, state, and local officials. Between supply chain woes, runaway inflation, and state-and-local accountability issues, it is easy to despair at the current state of affairs. But, Americans can get through this turmoil by working together and putting pressure on leaders at all levels of government to enact the right reforms. Change will only happen if taxpayers and consumers tell public officials to stick to their New Year’s Resolutions.