Budget battles have heated up recently throughout the United States, and President Obama’s budget proposal has not been exempted from the intense discussion.
The current proposal by the President pushes our national debt to $15.476 trillion or 102.6 percent of our GDP. Furthermore, there are no cuts to entitlement spending which consist of 57 percent of the spending in the budget, or approximately $2.14 trillion.
NJ Governor Chris Christie: “Today, we come to terms with the fact that we cannot spend money on everything we want.”
Lord Acton: “There are many things the government can’t do – many good purposes it must renounce. It must leave them to the enterprise of others. It cannot feed the people. It cannot enrich the people. It cannot teach the people. It cannot convert the people.”
Both of our major political parties have missed what seems so obvious. One says that we need more tax cuts to strengthen the economy. This is correct. The problem is that they are not willing to also make serious budget cuts. That party has spent more than any previous administration. The other political party wants to expand federal government by spending more of our money by raising taxes. The first plan helps the economy in the short run but not in the long term. The second is an even worse disaster I think.
Last night the President spoke of “the challenge of entitlements” and said that “Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid are commitments of conscience — and so it is our duty to keep them permanently sound.”
As noted at WorldMagBlog (among many other places), the incoming Democratic majority in Congress is suspending the process of earmarking, at least temporarily.
Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., and Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., the incoming chairmen of the House and Senate Appropriations committees, have pledged that “there will be no congressional earmarks” in the upcoming budget.
NBC Nightly News has long had a special feature titled, “The Fleecing of America,” which investigates various instances wasteful spending by government officials.
To get a visual clue about the massive size and diversity of the federal budget, check out “Death and Taxes”, the 2007 edition, “a representational graph of the federal discretionary budget. The amount of money that is spent at the discretion of your elected representatives in Congress. Basically, your federal income taxes.”
“The political left in America is emerging victorious,” writes Patrick Chisholm, and its true because “the era of big government is far from over. Trends are decidedly in favor of that quintessential leftist goal: massive redistribution of wealth.”
