There still appear to be US citizens who support Obama’s “raise taxes and have the Federal Reserve print more money for me to give away” fiscal policies.
It appears that the deficit reduction “super committee” will fail; no shock. Their goal was to reduce deficits by $1.2 trillion over 10 years. If they did nothing more than reduce federal spending to 2008 levels, the claimed deficit reduction would be $6-7 trillion. The self-serving scum in DC only care about raising taxes, increasing the size of government and getting re-elected.
Facts don’t seem to deter the support of the big spenders. The information below is from Obama’s 2010 budget proposal.
Federal Spending Defense Spending Social Spending Per Capita Spending
Year as % of GDP as % of GDP as % of GDP (1) in 2010 dollars1965 17.2 7.4 2.8 $4,176
1970 19.3 8.1 4.5 $5,3652000 18.2 3.0 7.2 $8,049
2010 25.4 4.9 12.5 $11,920
(1) Social spending does not include Social Security
If one looks at the data it is apparent that the major problem with the budget is the tremendous increase in welfare (social spending) over the past 45 years. In addition to Social welfare there is a lot of other welfare in the federal budget. One example is Agriculture Department spending, it has increased from $4.0 billion in 1965 to $26.6 billion in 2010. A substantial portion of this increase funds the massive welfare payments to farmers, many of whom enjoy a far higher standard of living than the average citizen. AMTRAK has been on the federal teat for 40 years, it has NEVER made a profit. In 2010 AMTRAK subsidies cost taxpayers $1.5 billion. I have read that it would cost taxpayers less money if we bought every interstate AMTRAK traveler a first class plane ticket.
With all the government programs rewarding negative behavior (become an unwed mother and get on the gravy train, buy more house than you can afford and get on the gravy train, stay unemployed and collect unemployment (welfare after the first year) for two years, etc.) it is no wonder that we see an increase in such behavior. (In conservative Indiana taxpayers now pay for over half of all births.) The most significant result of the massive increases in welfare spending is the development of an “entitlement mentality” underclass which actually believe that it is the governments job to take the income of one person and give it to them.
Welfare is only one example where massive cuts could be made in federal spending. We no longer need a federal Department of Transportation, let the States handle their own road building. Reduce the federal gas tax to zero and let States increase their gas taxes as required. We certainly don’t need a federal Department of Education whose budget has increased from $14.0 billion in 1980 to $63.0 billion in 2010, unless maybe we actually believe that the people who run our State governments are to stupid to deal with education issues in their own states. The list of wasteful federal government spending goes on forever.
We absolutely don’t need higher taxes and more federal intervention. We need far lower federal spending and the transfer of power back to the States where it belongs.
Please write your Senators and Representative and tell them you support Senator Mike Lee’s balanced budget amendment. It would cap federal spending at 18% of the GDP and the support of two-thirds of Congress would be required increase this limit. Basically all this would require is that government go back to spending the same amount of the GDP that it did in 2000. This would allow the federal government to spend 49% more now than it did in 2000. How many of you think you could manage to survive this year if you could only spend 49% more than you did in 2000?
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