'A plan or schedule adjusting expenses during a certain period to the estimated or fixed income for that period'Based on that definition, I'm not sure what the government does every year is considered a budget, as their expenses far exceed their income for the year. The whole purpose of a budget is to constrain your spending to that of your income. Can you imagine creating a household budget of $100,000 when your total household income for the year is $75,000? Unless you have a bunch of money in savings or hiding under a mattress, it won't take long for you to figure out that your 'budget' isn't working.......
According to the numbers in the 2011 budget released by the President this week, the government is expected to spend at least $3.8 trillion during the fiscal year of 2011, but only bring in $2.2 trillion during the same time frame. That leaves a projected $1.6 trillion deficit for the year. That means the government is projecting to spend at least 72% more money that it brings in.... I'm fairly certain that is not a good way to run a home, business or a government.
This deficit just gets added right to our national debt - a number so staggering it defies comprehension. The debt is so big, that the interest alone will be over $500 billion this year alone. It is projected that in the next few years, if nothing changes, all the income generated by the government from individual tax returns will do nothing more than pay the interest payment on the debt. If that is the case, how can the government fund any program??
Things will obviously have to change. The government can spend less, or they can try to generate more revenue. As one congressman put it the other day - "We have to spend our way out of this recession...." Based on that comment (which is absurd anyway you look at it) - I'm guessing they ain't gonna spend less.... So that means they'll tax more.
Let's look at some personal income tax statistics based on 2006 - the latest year I can find data. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the top 1% of all individual wage earners made 18.8% of all the income in the United States. However, they paid 39.1% of all income taxes. The top 5% of all wage earners made 30.1% of all income, yet paid 61% of all the taxes. The top 10% made 41.6% of all wages, and they paid 72% of all taxes. Finally, the top 50% of all wage earners paid over 99% of all the taxes.
Read that last sentence again. In 2006, half of all taxpayers did not pay federal income tax. These people receive all the same perks, benefits and services as the other 50% of the country yet do not contribute anything towards them. When fewer and fewer people have to pay a larger and larger share of the taxes you do not have to be a mathematician to figure out this is another recipe that won't work. Here's another little statistic for those who say we need to tax the rich more... If we were to take all the money away from everyone who is in the top 1% of wage earners, those making more than $332,000 in 2006, we'd have about $800 billion. A lot of money to be sure, but no where near enough to pay off the debt, the deficit or even pay for the health care bill. And since all their money has been taken away - who picks up their tab the next year???
So who do you think will get their taxes raised? The 50% of the people that don't pay anything, or the 50% that do? How much do you think the rich should pay in order to pay 'their fair share'? Remember, the top 1% already pay 40% of all taxes, even though they only account for 18% of the income. How about corporations and businesses? They should pay their fair share, right? Did you know the United States has the highest corporate tax rate in the industrialized world? And when they do get taxed more, do you think it hurts them or the customers that they have to pass the cost off to?
If you or I were running the government like a normal household, we'd have to slash spending. No one in our homes would like it. We'd be grumpy, but understand that we just didn't have the money to do the things we normally liked to do. We know if we didn't do it, we wouldn't have a house to live in, a car to drive and all of our prized possessions would be taken away.
The government doesn't think this way. They think they can keep spending forever with no regard to anything. Their talk about being financially responsible is smoke and mirrors. The current proposal to freeze discretionary spending takes effect next year - and only after they raise current discretionary spending from something like $600 billion to $715 billion. Only then, after the huge raise, will the freeze spending. Doesn't sound like financial stewardship to me.....
Finally, the talk about spending our way out of our problems should provoke our strongest outrage. And yet the public doesn't quite get it - so let me use a sports analogy. Athletes with some injuries to knees, elbows, shoulders and the like may opt for a cortizone shot to help relieve pain and allow them to continue to play. When the cortizone wears off, the pain comes back, often even worse. They may elect to get another shot. However, they know that this cortizone shot, while making the pain go away for awhile, does not solve the problem. In fact, if they keep getting cortizone shots, the problem and injury becomes much worse - potentially career ending. The only way to solve many of these types of injuries is surgery.
Now let's look at the government and their pain - namely recessions. Their idea is to give the injury a shot of cortizone - in this case a bunch of money. The next recession comes along, and the injury hasn't been fixed yet because the government hasn't changed their spending ways, so they inject more money into the system. The difference between the athlete and government is the athlete finally has surgery to fix the problem. Government doesn't. It simply adds more cortizone to the problem. Sooner or later that injury to our economy won't be able to be fixed.
Benjamin Franklin said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. You make the determination how insane our government is. I'll be holding on to my wallet......
Posts
