Benchmarks, Timetables, and Deadlines, Oh My!

by Kerry Thomas

September 5, 2007

Have you noticed how liberals keep demanding benchmarks, deadlines, timetables, and expiration dates for programs that actually work, but they exempt themselves and their own liberal programs from such scrutiny? Successful programs and policies come to an end; those that are a waste of time and money just keep going and going, with bigger Congressional appropriations every year.

Liberals are demanding a date certain for American armed forces to pull out of Iraq. I guess they must assume that a war can be fought on a timetable. Funny how no one is calling for a pullout from Germany or Japan, even though World War II formally ended 62 years ago.

Under a mutual defense treaty, America maintains a force of approximately 33,000 active duty military personnel in Japan, and an additional 5,500 civilian DoD personnel.

We also have approximately 60,000 military personnel stationed in Germany. And we still maintain roughly 30,000 troops in South Korea, as the uneasy ceasefire there has lasted now 55 years.

The liberals are demanding benchmarks be met by Iraq. They’re demanding a civilian government form itself, train a new army and peacekeeping forces, and find a way to share Iraq’s oil revenues. They want a timetable measured in months, or at least before the nest president takes office in January 2009.

These liberals seem to forget just how long it took the United States of America to even organize it’s first Constitution. We declared our independence July 4, 1776. We managed to draft our Articles of Confederation by November 15, 1777, but they weren’t ratified until March 1, 1781. Our Constitution wasn’t signed until September 17, 1787

When President Bush took office, he managed to get Congress to adopt his plan for cutting income tax rates for everyone who pays income taxes. But there was a problem. In order to garner enough votes to actually pass the plan, Congress made the tax cuts temporary. They expire in a few years. So even though the tax cuts have spurred our economy, and the Treasury is collecting more tax money faster than anyone had projected, the liberals in Congress refuse to even allow a vote on making the tax cuts permanent.

Unless Congress votes to make the tax cuts permanent, Congress will, in effect, raise your taxes by doing nothing.

That’s something this Congress has gotten pretty good at.

On the other hand, Congress has had very little success enacting programs that actually deliver on what they promise. Congress has declared numerous phony “wars” over the years, enacting laws and policies that attack human behaviors.

Take, for example, the “War on Poverty.” Since this “war” was declared more than 40 years ago, Congress has spent more than $5 Trillion of your tax dollars on the various programs in this “war.”

Today, people who are officially determined to be in “poverty” still account for about 12% of the population, the same relative percentage of our population that were in poverty when the “war” began. Looking at it from a different perspective, about 88% of Americans live above the poverty level. The raw numbers of people in those percentages has risen, but the rise has been proportional over time.

Today’s “poor” are a lot better off than even the middle class were in America just a generation ago. According to Robert E. Rector of the Heritage Foundation:

• 43% of all poor households actually own their own homes. The average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau is a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage, and a porch or patio.

• 80% of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, in 1970, only 36% of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.

• Only 6% of poor households are overcrowded. More than two-thirds have more than two rooms per person.

• The average poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens, and other cities throughout Europe. (These comparisons are to the average citizens in foreign countries, not to those classified as poor.)

• Nearly 75% of poor households own a car; 31% own two or more cars.

• 97% of poor households have a color television; over half own two or more color televisions.

• 78% have a VCR or DVD player; 62% have cable or satellite TV reception.

• 89% own microwave ovens, more than 50% have a stereo, and more than a third have an automatic dishwasher.

Maybe we should demand the liberals come up with benchmarks and a timeframe for ending the “War on Poverty.”

It’s time we declare victory in the “War on Poverty” and return the responsibility of looking out for “the poor” to where it belongs – to legitimate charities and our churches. If you think the above statistics are impressive, just think what could have been accomplished in 40 years had that $5 Trillion been left in the private sector, in the hands of honest charitable organizations, without the bureaucracy of government.

As for Congress’ “War on Drugs,” that’s been about as successful as Prohibition was. Only more expensive. We tell the kids “Don’t do drugs.” But then we subsidize drug use for seniors. We’ve fallen victim to our own propaganda, ignoring any real science showing evidence contrary to the official government propaganda. We’ve seen what works when it comes to alcohol, yet we refuse to enact similar policies concerning possession or recreational use of “illegal” substances.

That’s one policy the Libertarians have right. If a pothead wants to sit at home smoking dope, it’s his life. But if he goes out in public under the influence and causes harm to someone else, then triple the penalties (or more) for that crime, because he was under the influence of drugs.

Congress needs to revisit the lessons of Prohibition and see if they can learn something.

Now, liberal policy makers are gearing up for a forthcoming war on manmade “global warming.” They’re going to use the same ammunition and the same tactics they use in all their liberal policy wars. Save the Earth. Do it for the children. And, of course, it’s going to involve raising taxes. Just one more tried and true liberal policy that will be permanent, with no benchmarks to measure it’s success or failure.

Smart liberals (yes, there are a few) have come up with “carbon credits” to offset your “carbon footprint.” And they actually have suckers environmentalists lining up to buy into this whacko scheme. Someone’s going to get rich off this one.

I have an idea. Let’s combine the “War on Poverty” with the war on “global warming” and hire “the poor” to plant trees. We pay them off with “carbon credits” and everybody’s happy. They could even plant industrial hemp and really be happy.