The Daly Weekly (12/12)

Government fraud, Tina Peters, Bennie Thompson, and more.

Hi everyone.

Welcome to this week’s Daly Weekly, where I answer whatever questions you throw my way.

Let’s get right to it…

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John: Government spending seems to be a giant cookie jar that continues to be raided by fraudsters and then replenished at taxpayer expense for the benefit of the crooks and politicians (I know, kind of redundant). Pandemic fraud was of Ruthian proportions a few years ago, and this is now followed by unbelievable swindling among the Somali immigrant population in Minnesota. We all get the sense that this is just the tip of the iceberg at both the state and federal level. Similarly, neither party (and their voters) is giving even lip service to our ballooning federal deficit and national debt. This puts me in the mind of moral hazard. The incentive structure seems to encourage “more cowbell”. How do we put an end to this culture of endless spending and replenishment of bloated, fraudulent programs? I know this is the Christmas season, but Santa Claus doesn’t exist. Waste is incompetent, but fraud is immoral and criminal. — Steve R.

The answer, in very broad terms, is to shrink government. The less intervention our government (especially our federal government) has in people’s lives, and the less dependent people are on government, the less government fraud and runaway spending we’ll have.

While it should be noted that individuals defrauding the government, in the grand scheme of things, accounts for very little of our nation’s deficit and debt problems, our government should be diligent in tracking down and prosecuting such people, while at the same time winding down and eliminating (or at least narrowing the scope of) programs that the private sector, or private-charity sector, can more effectively and efficiently handle (if they even need to be handled).

The much larger contributor to our debt problem, as people are probably tired of me pointing out, is the refusal of our leaders — out of fear of the electorate — to reform our major entitlement programs. I can think of only two people (both of them Republicans), in this century, who led serious attempts to do so: President George W. Bush (during his second term) and Congressman Paul Ryan (at multiple times throughout the Obama administration). Independent studies have since shown that had any of their proposals been turned into law, we’d be in a far better fiscal situation right now (and on a healthy trajectory). But the unfortunate reality is that in 2016, with the nomination and election of Donald Trump, the Republicans joined the Democrats in fiercely opposing such reforms, jacking up our spending to unprecedented levels, and letting our debt crisis spiral beyond containment.

You’ll occasionally see some camera-posturing on the debt by a handful of Republican representatives (like Chip Roy), but all the serious legislators, who were actually interested in addressing the problem, were branded “RINOs” and chased out of politics. Fiscal conservatism is essentially dead. We’ve squandered every opportunity to right the ship, and when we run aground, it’s going to hit very hard. And because no one left in leadership cares about our country’s fiscal health, issues like fraud aren’t taking as seriously as they should be either.

What did you think of Trump granting a pardon-non-pardon to your state’s most infamous election interferer, Tina Peters? — Alex D.

I like the “pardon-non-pardon” phrasing, Alex. Yeah, I don’t know if Trump actually thought he had the power to pardon people convicted under state law, or if he just wanted the headline, but I think the directive made him look foolish either way. Peters is behind bars (where she should be), and will remain there until her time’s up.

Did you see Bennie Thompson (Democratic congressman) call the murder of those two National Guardsmen an unfortunate “accident,” and Noem go after him on it? If you did, thoughts? — Ben G.

Yes, I did see it, and I found Thompson’s words breathtaking (in a bad way). The best case scenario for him is that it was a horrendously bad gaffe. And there was evidence to suggest that it was, in fact, a gaffe, and that he meant to say “unfortunate incident” (which is still weak phrasing, but at least not deranged). But Thompason did say “accident”, and Noem was totally justified in calling him out on it.

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Thanks everyone! You can send me questions for next week by leaving a comment in the comment section.