by,
Nancy Tengler
http://www.wiseandfrugalgovernment.blogspot.com
If the budget/debt ceiling debate doesn’t focus voter’s on 2012 nothing will. After cramming ObamaCare through Congress using a parliamentary procedure (Reconciliation) meant for routine spending bills not massive entitlement bills; after cajoling and threatening and “rewarding” (we call it something else in the private sector) loyal party members with scads of taxpayer money for pet projects if they voted to support ObamaCare; after listening to Nancy Pelosi so aptly declare: “We have to pass the bill to know what’s in it…” if you were still sitting on the sidelines, now is the time to engage in the debate.
Let’s set aside the $1.whatever Trillion spending boondoggle that is ObamaCare. Let’s focus instead on the question of spending and the sustainability of spending of our federal government.
Fact: in 2011, the US is projected to spend $772.4B on pensions, $874.4B on health care (before the effects of ObamaCare spending kick in in 2014), $417.1B on welfare, $254.5B on interest on the accumulating debt (projected to be in excess of $15 trillion by the end of FY 2011) and $830.9B on defense. Compare the budget in 2011 to the budget in 1961.
Just fifty years ago federal spending on pensions was $12.8B ($760 billion less than we pay each year to retirees in 2011). Health care costs were $1.6B ($872.8 billion less than 2011, and this is before the enormous costs of ObamaCare commence. It should also be noted here that despite exponential growth in health care payments since 1961, our health care system and availability of health care to the poor was so egregiously wanting, that we had to pass Obama‘s $1 trillion solution to fix it. What we couldn’t do with $872 billion surely we can accomplish with $1 trillion more! ) Welfare costs were $3.2B. Our interest payment on debt outstanding was $7.5B and our defense spending totaled $57.0B.
Consider: Since 1961 the federal budget has expanded 3,735%. According to the government’s own cost of living calculator. $10.00 in 1961 is worth the equivalent of $75.49 in 2011. In other words, while the average citizen in the United States has experienced a 654% increase in living expenses since 1961, the government has expanded its budget by 3,735%.
And is borrowing over 40 cents for each dollar spent.
This is the debate of 2012. Obama wants tax increases–more of your money–rather than to temper spending. And this is before the effects of the inflationary monetary policies of QE2 etc. seep into the economy and turbo charge consumer prices. The question for each of us: are his policies sustainable, effective, or for that matter, constitutional.
What is the primary purpose of government after all?
To protect her citizens from harm. And that includes reckless economic harm.
by,
Nancy Tengler
http://www.wiseandfrugalgovernment.blogspot.com
Or how Americans put a serial narcissist in the White House.
Some day when the historians are chronicling the national disaster that is this Administration, I wonder if someone will think to take note of the thousands, nay millions of times this president has used the word “I.” It is difficult to recall any public figure so self-referential, so self-absorbed and self-satisfied as this president. And will the historians take particular note of the fact that rarely, if ever, have such a civilized and intelligent populace willingly granted so much power to such an unaccomplished individual. Nor one so economically ignorant.
Point in fact: the president’s press conference on Monday where he remarked: “And I do not want, and I will not accept, a deal in which I am asked to do nothing, in fact, I’m able to keep hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional income that I don’t need, while a parent out there who is struggling to figure out how to send their kid to college suddenly finds that they’ve got a couple thousand dollars less in grants or student loans.” (emphasis mine)
What the president seems to forget, or perhaps never understood, is that he has the free will to donate that “hundreds of thousands of dollars” in extra income directly to that struggling parent. He doesn’t need to wait for the IRS to come and get it and run it through the horrendously and inefficient grinder that is the government bureaucracy. He is free to do with what that money he doesn’t need whatever he wants to. That was the whole idea of the American Revolution: the right to produce and earn and keep the fruits of our labor. A rejection of arbitrary taxes imposed by a distant and out of touch and self-absorbed monarchy…We seem to have become a reflection of all that we rejected and fought for over 200 years ago.
We seem to have come full circle.
by,
Nancy Tengler
www.wiseandfrugalgovernment.blogspot.com
A man who knows and concerns himself with his own interests is regarded as a man of practical wisdom, while men whose concern is politics are looked upon as busybodies.
Aristotle
A: Ever since the democrats–most notably under
FDR–have used the wealthy minority as red meat for their socialist policies.
There is no reason to dance around the issue. Confiscating money from those who earn it to spend it on whatever a few people in power deem appropriate is definitely not the trait of a free and democratic society. Remember that our founders did not include a direct tax (
income tax) in the constitutional power of government because doing so would create the ideal opportunity for the many–the poor(er)–to tyrannize the few–the rich(er).
Why does our government require ever-exponentially-increasing-historically-unprecedented levels of cash? Because our politicians–and especially the left-leaning ones–are convinced they know better than you how to spend your money. They know this because most of them have never accomplished anything other than being elected to office. Where, here again, they spent other people’s money to do so.
So while the national busybodies are wrangling over how much of our money we get to keep in the coming years; while they ignore the fact that they just implemented one of the most profligate spending sprees in
American history and unemployment, instead of declining as promised, has relentlessly increased as economic growth has sputtered. While they ignore these pesky facts they are once more arguing for yet higher
taxes slamming the rich in an attempt to somehow claim the moral high ground.
Let us not be deceived. Before Congress and the President do anything the following tax increases are set to kick in according to an editorial in today’s
Wall Street Journal:
- Starting in 2013, the bill (ObamaCare, or as the pols named it: the Affordable Care Act) adds an additional 0.9% to the 2.9% Medicare tax for singles who earn more than $200,000 and couples making more than $250,000.
- For the first time ever, the now 3.8% Medicare tax will also be applied to investment income, including dividends, interest income and capital gains. That doesn’t just hit the rich, this implementation of the Medicare tax goes after every American with any assets at all.
- Also in 2013, a 2.3% excise tax will be imposed on medical device makers. Which means medical devices will become 2.3% more expensive for everyone. Not just the rich. And if you want a real laugh take a look at what constitutes a medical device to these infernal busybodies. They have no shame. They want to tax your toothbrush and feminine care products included in their taxing scheme.
These taxes just scratch the surface of the scheduled taxes increases to fund the “Affordable” Care Act. The WSJ summarizes the affects ofObamaCare taxes and the current wrangling in Washington:
“There are numerous other new taxes in the bill, all adding up to some $438 billion in new revenue over 10 years. But even that is understated because by 2019 the annual revenue increase is nearly $90 billion, or $900 billion in the 10 years after that. Yet Mr. Obama wants to add another $1 trillion in new taxes on top of this.”
Voters overwhelmingly repudiated this kind of
Gladys Kravitz peer-through-the curtains invasion into our lives in the fall. Let us hope the freshman Congressional class will have the courage to stand their ground against the nosy ruling class in Washington.
