Belzer

Conventional wisdom within the Republican Party is that we must cut spending in order to put the brakes on the growth of the federal deficit. The higher our deficit, the greater our unproductive spending on interest to service the debt. Under the assumption that cuts to Social Security, Medicare and defense are off the table, this would leave us to cut civilian agencies such as Commerce, Transportation and Treasury.

Personally, I believe that we need to increase spending on our civilian agencies and that we can do so while reducing the deficit. If you believe that I am off base, let me ask a simple question: How well do you think that our government is doing in protecting us from corporate misdeeds? Do you believe that there is adequate regulatory enforcement on railroad companies and banks? How well do you believe that we are doing in enforcing aircraft certification regulations?

Without going into detail on the corporate misbehavior I have witnessed in over 40 years of employment with for-profit corporations, mostly publicly traded, my firmly held conviction is that companies will violate any regulation that they believe will not be enforced. Profits come first; after all, the greater the quarterly earnings, the higher the stock price. The higher the stock price, the more cash that flows to executives when they flip their stock options that vest on a quarterly basis. That is a whole lot of incentive to cut corners.

Government regulations are enforced by civilian agencies which, over decades, have seen little in the way of budget increases. Accounting for inflation, the ability of these agencies to adequately enforce regulations has decreased significantly over time. Let’s take the FAA which is contained within the Department of Transportation. It has many functions defined in U.S. law, the most visible of which is operating our Air Traffic Control (ATC) system. As a pilot with a commercial license, I have experienced the excellence of our ATC, especially when compared with the European system. Our ATC is considered the best in the world although we have, of late, seen slipups which resulted in near-misses on the ground plus a shutdown caused by a failure of the FAA’s NOTAM system.

For the FAA overall, however, when its budget decreases it never cuts ATC but looks to other less-visible functions.

Another critical FAA responsibility is to certify new aircraft designs as well as modifications to existing designs. In order to accomplish this task, the FAA maintains Aircraft Certification Offices (ACO’s) that work with U.S. aviation companies, from Boeing to Cessna.

Keeping it simple, budget cuts to the FAA over time led to staff reductions at the ACO’s which led to a lack of responsiveness to airplane companies. Finally, pressure from these businesses pushed the ACO’s to develop a “self-certification” program which provided for improved responsiveness with fewer staff. This worked for a while; then management pressure on engineers at Boeing led to a mistaken certification of the 737-MAX. Hundreds died in two crashes.

If we are to adequately fund our civilian agencies so they can enforce our regulations, it will require increased spending. How do we accomplish this without increasing the deficit? The answer is simple; we increase funding for the Treasury Department which it would pass along to the IRS so it can enforce our existing tax laws. Tax returns of the wealthiest Americans are highly complex and the IRS simply does not have the resources to audit their returns. Just like corporations that choose to ignore regulations because they know they won’t get caught, many of our wealthiest citizens cheat on their taxes because they are confident that they won’t be audited.

The IRS estimates that from 2014 to 2016, taxpayers underpaid by $496 billion per year. If we want to protect Americans from predatory corporations, we can do so without debt increases by simply collecting the income taxes we are due.

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