Taxes & Spending

Our government representatives have driven us off a cliff, and are slapping each other on the back in celebration.

Under the current budget plans, Congress and the Obama administration will put us in debt by 18 trillion dollars over the next decade, accumulating more debt during that time than the total accumulated debt of the United States throughout our previous history as a nation. This will amount to $60,000 each per man, woman and child. This estimate does not even include the impending financial failures of social security and medicare, as well as the additional trillions that will service the costs and bureaucracy of the new health care reform bill.

The money required simply to pay the interest on that debt will cripple the nation. The massive increases in taxes on our citizens and businesses will impoverish our economy, making investment in technology, research, and hiring impossible. We are facing a more permanent and structural high level of unemployment. As the government prints more money, inflation is next.

The government’s obligation to pay this massive debt will disable the government from making investments in its services: infrastructure, the military, education and scientific research. We have already witnessed the sacrifice of our space program, as we have to hitch rides with the Russians, and the Chinese are moving into manned space exploration.

Higher taxes are coming. We are funding a new income tax middle class entitlement, as almost 50% of Americans pay no income tax, but the middle class will not escape this assault on our economy. The economic stagnation will lead to fewer jobs, and our children will have poor prospects for their future. Cap and trade, if passed, is simply a tax on energy, and every American will pay whenever they turn on their light switch or buy any product requiring energy for manufacture. The value added tax is looming, which is in essence a huge national sales tax, and it will hit every American.

But we can stop before we go off that cliff, but it will take a different kind of representative in congress.

We need to start with a moratorium on new federal spending.  If you’re in a hole, you first stop digging. Next, any money not already spent on the TARP bailouts and the stimulus bill should immediately be used to pay down the deficit. All proceeds from the loan repayment and stock sales that come out of the bailout and TARP expenditures also must be dedicated to the paying down of the national debt. We must eliminate earmarks and pork barrel spending.  All bills containing further spending must have sunset provisions, which require that these bills expire at a given time, and must then be renewed by congress. This prevents spending bills from continuing on indefinitely.

It is not enough to stop the growth of this government, but we need to make it smaller, more efficient, and less of a drain on the economy and the taxpayers. We need to shrink the large federal agencies and their bloated payrolls, and so an across the board fixed percentage reduction of the agency budgets should be passed by Congress.

We must act as soon as possible. It is our responsibility to our nation and to the legacy we leave to our children.