When economist Milton Friedman observed mine workers in China digging a canal using shovels, he asked why they were not using modern machinery. He was told that this was a “jobs program” and that using shovels employed more workers. Friedman then quipped that they should give the workers spoons, not shovels.  China had lost sight of the fact that the purpose of the work was to build a canal to increase commerce and enhance the lives of the citizens.  Using machinery would lower the cost of the project and benefit the taxpayers.

When the government hires someone, the goal should be to provide for the common good and benefit those who are footing the bill.  Value needs to be a primary consideration, as creating a job for the job’s sake only robs the taxpayer. Every dollar that is taxed or borrowed makes the taxpayer less free and less able to spend his own money on the needs of his own family.  Taxes should be carefully spent.

With medical care, the first question must be, “Is providing medical care the proper role of government?”  Then secondly, “If the government is going to provide a safety net for the poor, what is the most efficient way to do this?”

When Medicaid began in 1965, poor patients were given a card that entitled them to go to a doctor with the doctor sending the bill to the government. At first this seemed to work. The government paid the going rate—the rate the doctor needed to pay his staff and office overhead. This continued for about 20 years or so, until the law of unintended consequences overwhelmed the system.

Government money flowed. Medical costs went up, and the economy struggled. The government responded by ratcheting down the fees, and physicians dropped out. By 1990, the Medicaid payments were below the cost to provide the service, so patients on Medicaid had difficulty finding a physician.

Along came the idea of the Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs).

FQHCs are privately owned clinics that are non-profit. If they can prove they will be providing care in an underserved area, they are given $600,000 in federal dollars to start. This does not represent good value to the taxpayer. Key employees are well compensated and the board is often given extravagant expense accounts. Travel and “recruitment expenses” can reach hundreds of thousands of dollars without attracting notice.

FQHCs lobby for money from the federal and state governments, get “enhanced” Medicaid dollars, and have full medical malpractice coverage by the federal government. They see the poor, but also see people with insurance or who pay cash. They claim costs of $140-160 per patient visit, so constantly ask for more taxpayer dollars. Politicians, not wanting to appear callous toward the poor, comply.

State budgets are over-stretched, with Medicaid taking one-third, more than the cost of education. Today one in seven Americans is on Medicaid. And bureaucracy inflates the cost by a factor of ten.

It is time to recognize that government charity is too expensive, with minimal funds spent on actual care and a lot spent on paperwork, eligibility determination, fraud and abuse, and attempts to root out fraud and abuse.  We could accomplish the same goal of caring for the poor while costing the taxpayer a lot less.

Why not provide protection to physicians who choose to volunteer their services to treat the poor in non-government free clinics? Patients who find themselves ill and poor would know that there is a clinic nearby, staffed by volunteers. The taxpayers would be relieved of having to pay billions in wasteful Medicaid dollars.

If the state covered the liability of such physicians, they would order fewer tests, and this in turn would lower wasteful expenditures, and thus perhaps lower everyone’s health insurance premiums.

Relieving the tax burden leaves more money to use for creating lasting, productive private jobs.

But we will have to convince our President, who thinks that extending unemployment benefits is a way to create jobs. The unemployed aren’t even digging with spoons. They aren’t digging at all!

About the author:

Dr. Alieta Eck, MD graduated from the Rutgers College of Pharmacy in NJ and the St. Louis School of Medicine in St. Louis, MO. She studied Internal Medicine at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, NJ and has been in private practice with her husband, Dr. John Eck, MD in Piscataway, NJ since 1988. She has been involved in health care reform since residency and is convinced that the government is a poor provider of medical care. She testified before the Joint Economic Committee of the US Congress in 2004 about better ways to deliver health care in the United States. In 2003, she and her husband founded the Zarephath Health Center, a free clinic for the poor and uninsured that currently cares for 300-400 patients per month utilizing the donated services of volunteer physicians and nurses.  Dr. Eck is a long time member of the Christian Medical Dental Association and in 2009 joined the board of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. In addition, she serves on the board of Christian Care Medi-Share, a faith based medical cost sharing Ministry. She is a member of Zarephath Christian Church and she and her husband have five children, one in medical school in NJ. 

Reporting from Washington, Richard Serrano with the L.A. Times is broke details on newly obtained emails that show that the White House was better informed about a failed gun-tracking operation on the border with Mexico than was previously known or currently admitted – officially.

Three White House national security officials were given some details about the operation, dubbed Fast and Furious. The operation allowed firearms to be illegally purchased, with the goal of tracking them to Mexican drug cartels. But the effort went out of control after agents lost track of many of the weapons.

The supervisor of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives operation in Phoenix specifically mentioned Fast and Furious in at least one email to a White House national security official, and two other White House colleagues were briefed on reports from the supervisor, according to White House emails and a senior administration official.

But a senior administration official said the emails, obtained Thursday by The Times, did not prove that anyone in the White House was aware of the covert "investigative tactics" of the operation.  

"The emails validate what has been said previously, which is no one at the White House knew about the investigative tactics being used in the operation, let alone any decision to let guns walk," said the official, who was not authorized to speak about it publicly. "To the extent that some [national security staff members] were briefed on the top lines of ongoing federal efforts, so were members of Congress."

He identified the three White House officials who were briefed as Kevin M. O’Reilly, director of North American Affairs for the White House national security staff; Dan Restrepo, the president’s senior Latin American advisor; and Greg Gatjanis, a White House national security official. Apparently, proving something at the White House requires a court of law.

"The emails were not forwarded beyond them, and we are not aware of any [additional] briefings related to that email chain," the official said.

The emails were sent between July 2010 and February of this year before it was disclosed that agents had lost track of hundreds of guns. Many are thought to have fallen into criminal hands, and some have turned up at crime scenes in Mexico and the United States, including at the fatal shooting of a U.S. Border Patrol agent.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista) and Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) are trying to determine what the Justice Department and the White House knew about the program.

According to the emails, William D. Newell, then the ATF field supervisor for Arizona and New Mexico, was in close contact with O’Reilly and sought the White House’s help to persuade the Mexican government to let ATF agents recover U.S. guns across the border.

After earlier emails from Newell to O’Reilly surfaced, Newell testified to congressional investigators in July that the two were friends and acknowledged that he probably should not have sent them to him. But the new emails indicate that Newell and O’Reilly were in deeper discussions about gun operations on the border.

To read the entire story from the L.A. Times, click here.

U.S. Senator Jim Inhofe today in Tulsa introduced, “someone that I really believe will be the next President of the United States and someone that I have gotten to know over many years, Texas Gov. Rick Perry.”  

“There are many very close friends of mine running for president this year, but Rick Perry has something that no one else has – the experience not just as governor, but in doing the right things [as governor] in cutting deficits, increasing jobs, and reducing government regulation,” Inhofe said.

“Fourteen months ago, I called Rick and told him that I thought he was the only guy that could really win this thing and when the time comes, I will be the first U.S. Senator to endorse you.  So I present to you the next President of the United States, Rick Perry.”

Gov. Perry said, “Senator, I thought you were way outside the realm of possibility when you called as I told you, but Anita and I are humbled today to be with you and to accept your support.  

“As Anita and I have traveled even in this early part of the campaign, we have found a clear thirst for leadership in this country.  Americans don’t believe our country is in decline, but that Washington is in decline.  They don’t want to settle for record debt, downgraded credit, and devalued dollars or one-in-six Americans eligible, but who can’t find a job.  That is not an economic recovery – that’s an economic disaster,” Perry added.

“As president, I’m going to get America working again.  We are going to stop spending hard earned paychecks on so-called stimulus.  Instead, we are going to let Americans and their employers keep more of what they make.  That’s how you jump-start this economy.

“We are not going to accept entitlement programs that are bankrupting our children’s future.  How will we explain anything less to our children?  That we created seventeen debt and entitlement commissions in the last thirty years?  Is that working hard on saving their future?  We are going to address this morass of debt that is driving our economy down and threatening our children and our grandchildren’s future.  We are going to stop or repeal bureaucratic regulations that kill jobs and harm our economy.  You don’t grow economy by growing government.  

“You grow economy by cutting and simplifying taxes, by reducing debt, controlling spending, by passing tort reform, and by implementing fair and predictable regulations.  That’s how you grow economy.  That is my record as Governor in Texas and that will be my record as President of the United States.   

Asked how he would improve the debt situation in America, Perry answered, “There is $14.7 trillion of debt, $46,000 for every man woman and child in this country.  In the next few seconds as a child is born in Oklahoma, they start their life with $46,000 of debt.  “The way you fix that is to free up the American entrepreneurial spirit.  You don’t over tax them, you don’t over regulate them and you don’t litigate them.  You say to small businesses across America, we are going to free you from over taxation and over regulation and we are going to let you do what you know how to do – create jobs which in turn creates wealth,” Perry said.

“Just in the energy industry alone, if you remove the boot of regulation that this administration has taken to a new level in this country – the job creation that will occur will be phenomenal.  It, singularly by freeing up these entrepreneurs, will create wealth like we have never seen in this country before and that wealth will pay off that debt,” Perry said.

Asked about a specific jobs plan, Perry said, “I’m going to be broad and brief for you.  I have governed with four guiding principles: don’t spend all the money, have a tax system that is as light on the job creators as you can while still delivering essential services, have a regulatory climate that is fair and predictable, and have a legal system that doesn’t allow over suing.”

“As I have said time and time again, I want to go to Washington D.C. and make it as inconsequential in people’s lives as I can,” Perry said.

“The most important thing we can do for the monetary system is to stop printing new money.  All that is doing is reducing the value of what dollars we have in our pockets.

“One of the ways you can get your arms around my philosophy of governing is to understand that I really believe in the U.S. Constitution – in particular the Tenth Amendment.  It is simple and elegant.  Free the states to compete with one another.

Referencing an earlier conversation with Senator Inhofe, Perry said, “We were talking about the absolute lunacy of having education policy that is the same for Oklahoma as it is for New York or California or North Dakota.  Americans don’t want that approach.  They want local control of how they educate their children.  Should the Department of Education be deciding how they educate their children?  No!  Should they be a repository of best practices to help states?  That’s an idea, but to have a department of education that is setting up there passing out money with strings attached will not occur with a Perry Presidency.”

In reference to their long friendship Perry said to Senator Inhofe, “Thank you for your endorsement and your friendship and your prodding and cajoling.”

In a story published late last week in The Daily Mail which followed another by the National Enquirer, First Lady Michelle Obama’s vacation habbits including expensive massages, top shelf vodka and five-star hotels are under attack.  Critics have discovered over $10 million tax dollars has been spent on her personal recreation – in the last year.

Just as the Obamas’ summer break on Martha’s Vineyard has already been branded a PR disaster after the couple arrived four hours apart on separate government jets, The Daily Mail published new reports of extravagances.

White House sources claimed that the First Lady has spent $10 million of
U.S. taxpayers’ money on vacations in the past year alone. 

Branding her ‘disgusting’ and ‘a vacation junkie’, they say the 47-year-old mother-of-two has been indulging in five-star hotels, where she splashes out on expensive massages and alcohol.

The ‘top source’ told the National Enquirer: ‘It’s disgusting. Michelle is taking advantage of her privileged position while the most hardworking Americans can barely afford a week or two off work. ‘When it’s all added up, she’s spent more than $10 million in taxpayers’ money on her vacations.’

The First Lady is believed to have taken 42 days of holiday in the past year, including a $375,000 break in Spain and a four-day ski trip to Vail, Colorado, where she spent $2,000 a night on a suite at the Sebastian hotel.

And the first family’s nine-day stay in Martha’s Vineyard is also proving costly, with rental of the Blue Heron Farm property alone costing an estimated $50,000 a week. The source continued: ‘Michelle also enjoys drinking expensive booze during her trips. She favors martinis with top-shelf vodka and has a taste for rich sparking wines.

‘The vacations are totally Michelle’s idea. She’s like a junkie. She can’t schedule enough getaways, and she lives from one to the next – all the while sticking it to hardworking Americans.’

GIRLS’ TRIP TO SPAIN: AUGUST 2010

The exact cost is unclear as Mrs Obama and her 40 friends footed many personal expenses, such as hotels and meals themselves.  But the U.S. taxpayer would have paid for the First Lady’s 68-strong security detail, personal staff, and use of presidential jet Air Force Two. Per diems for the secret service team runs at around $281 each – nearly $98,000 for the length of the summer break.

Use of Air Force Two, the Air Force version of a 757, comes in at $149,900 for the round trip. This does not include time on the ground.

Mrs Obama’s personal staff, of which there are an unknown amount and might cost considerably more per day, should also be taken into account.

CHRISTMAS BREAK IN HAWAII: DECEMBER 2010

According to the Hawaii Reporter, the bill for the $1.5m trip included:

$63,000 on an early flight bringing Mrs Obama and the children to Hawaii ahead of the President.
$1,000,000 on Mr Obama’s return trip from Washington on Air Force One.
$38,000 for the ‘Winter White House’ beach property rental.
$16,000 to rent nearby homes for Secret Service and Navy Seals.
$134,000 for 24 White House staff to stay at the Moana Hotel.
$251,000 in police overtime.
$10,000 for an ambulance to be on hand at all times

SKI TRIP TO VAIL: FEBRUARY 2011

Mrs Obama and her daughters stayed at the Sebastian hotel on Vail Mountain, where rooms cost more than $2,400 for multi-bedroom suites.
The family appear to have flown there on Air Force Two.
They were escorted to the resort by a motorcade of about a dozen vehicles, including 15 state and local law enforcement officers

SUMMER HOLIDAY ON MARTHA’S VINEYARD: AUGUST 2011

The Blue Heron Farm estate, where the Obama family stayed, rents for about $50,000 a week.
According to U.S. News and World Report, the Coast Guard is required to keep ships floating near the property, the presidential helicopter and jet remain at the ready and security agents will be on 24-hour duty.

To read more from The Daily Mail, click here.

Edit Note: The following article was crafted by 39 U.S. House Republican Freshmen including Oklahoma Congressman James Lankford and published this morning by Politico.

Just over a week ago, the creditworthiness of our country was officially called into question, for the first time since the United States’ “full faith and credit” was established in 1790.

This could have been avoided.

Over the last few months, the House and the Senate have received the same dire warnings from Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s and the other ratings agencies.

The House led by crafting solutions to our debt problem. Months ago, the House passed a budget that reduces short-term deficits by more than $4.4 trillion and addresses the unsustainable, long-term structural deficits that threaten this nation.

Just a few weeks ago, the House passed a bipartisan bill, “Cut, Cap and Balance,” that could have cut federal spending by $111 billion next year, capped future expenditures and required passage of a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution.

In doing so, the House twice met the requirements that Standard & Poor’s laid out to avoid a downgrade.

The Senate, on the other hand, did nothing. So far this year, the Senate has failed to adopt a budget or pass “Cut, Cap and Balance.”

In fact, it has been more than 850 days since the Senate passed a budget. Given the fiscal crisis we are facing as a nation, the Senate’s failure to act is unacceptable — both to our creditors and to all Americans, who must ultimately shoulder the burden of paying our debts.

While Americans understand the Senate will have its own opinions on legislation that the House passes, the Senate cannot escape from its obligation to govern. The Senate has a responsibility to pass a proposal of its own that addresses these issues.

Every moment the Senate has spent deriding the House for taking bold and decisive action was time that should have been spent working toward solutions.

President Barack Obama, his debt commission, the pundits, our creditors and many in the Democratic Party all agree that reforms to Medicare and Social Security are necessary to prevent the insolvency of those programs — and this nation. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), however, chooses instead to play games by telling the American people that the House wanted to “end Medicare as we know it.”

Reid chose scare tactics — saying that the House was “trying to balance the budget on the backs of seniors to pay for tax loopholes for the rich.” He knows full well that the House-passed budget not only saves Medicare, but also closes the tax loopholes he and his fellow Senate Democrats keep talking about. With 21 Senate Democrats up for re-election, Reid chose to place a higher value on political theater than on protecting seniors, job creators and the “full faith and credit” of the United States of America.

The consequences of Senate inaction are real and have led to continuing resolutions, threats of government shutdowns and, now, the nation’s first credit downgrade.

There is no more time for dithering. There is no more time for politics. It is time for the Senate to act.

The Senate must present its plan — if it has one, or figure out how to work with the House to solve America’s challenges. As a first simple step, the Senate should do what 75 percent of the American people want it to do: It should join the House in passing a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution — so that U.S. taxpayers can never be put in this position again.

We, the Republican freshmen, were elected to fundamentally change the way things are being done in Washington. We are making the tough decisions necessary to ensure that we remain the greatest and most prosperous nation in the world.

We simply need a Senate that will get to work and join us in this effort.

This is signed by the following 39 members of the House Republican freshman class: Rich Nugent (R-Fla.), Raúl Labrador (R-Idaho), Austin Scott (R-Ga.), Bill Flores (R-Texas), Mike Kelly (R-Pa.), Steven Palazzo (R-Miss.), Bob Gibbs (R-Ohio), Rob Woodall (R-Ga.), Tim Scott (R-S.C.), Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.), Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), Tim Griffin (R-Ark.), Andy Harris (R-Md.), Jeff Landry (R-La.), James Lankford (R-Okla.), Chris Gibson (R-N.Y.), Robert Hurt (R-Va.), Nan Hayworth (R-N.Y.), Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.), Bill Huizenga (R-Mich.), Blake Farenthold (R-Texas), Martha Roby (R-Ala.), Sean Duffy (R-Wis.), Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), Ann Marie Buerkle (R-N.Y.), Allen West (R-Fla.), Bill Johnson (R-Ohio), Scott Rigell (R-Va.), Joe Walsh (R-Ill.), Randy Hultgren (R-Ill.), Steve Pearce (R-N.M.), Frank Guinta (R-N.H.), Jeff Denham (R-Calif.), Diane Black (R-Tenn.), Kristi Noem (R-S.D.), Reid Ribble (R-Wis.), Sandy Adams (R-Fla.), Steve Womack (R-Ark.) and Steve Stivers (R-Ohio).