President Obama who usually misses required dates set out in a 1921 law to submit a national budget to Congress recently proposed $1 trillion in new taxes for the next ten years. Here is where our nation stands economically: The national debt is $18.1 trillion. Interest on the debt is currently $238 billion. GDP for 2014 increased less than 3% in real dollars, the ninth straight year of growth of less than 3%. With a population of 320 million, our workforce of 148 million is 5 million less than 2000 when the nation’s population was 275 million.
In 2000, there were 78 million able workers not in the workforce; in 2014 the non-workers numbered 93 million. Government employs about 16% of the workforce or about one of every six workers. Government benefits are distributed to 158 million people, or almost exactly ½ of the total population. It is not a robust economy when half the population has to work to support the other half. It is easy to declare that the unemployment rate is 5.7% for January, 2015, but where did the 93 million able men and women go that are not in the workforce? Logic would suggest that many have switched over to being on the government list of people receiving benefits. Common sense should tell us that every person working and supporting another who is not working is unsustainable.
Balancing of the national budget is a political conflict year after endless year. Realistically, however, it should not be contentious. Private companies know that too much debt will cause their enterprise or corporation to run into trouble in the future, perhaps even causing liquidation or reorganization. Much of our debt is held by foreign countries. That means essentially that we are borrowing operating capital from China, Japan and other countries that hold our treasury securities. Deficit spending is not serious unless it becomes habitual and there is no plan to ever pay the money back. Instead, interest payments just keep demanding more of taxpayer dollars. This is mismanagement disguised as benevolent government.
The answer to this dilemma is to change from a government that takes money from citizens and spends it on specious causes back to causes and programs that reduce debt and alleviate taxes. Examples abound; welfare to work programs, take the USPS private, sell Amtrak to one or more railroads, switch mortgage guarantees (FHA, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac) to banking organizations that are already over-regulated, get out of the college loan business, close the U.S. Department of Education that has become the Uncle Sam National School Board, adopt a new simpler tax code, replace the misnamed Affordable Healthcare Law with health savings accounts and other ingenious methods of funding healthcare and take food stamps (SNAP) away from the Department of Agriculture and allow the states to determine who qualifies for subsidized subsistence. Now that was easy to understand wasn’t it?
Fearing to lose their grip on power, politicians turned government officials act like they are busy doing good things by spending their time passing laws that are often aimed at fixing problems that don’t exist and vice versa. Each elected, appointed and many career government officials are accompanied by a plethora of assistants, secretaries, managers, supervisors, field operatives and people with other titles that create a bewildering bureaucracy. The good news for nearly all of these more than 23 million workers is that they have no accountability, it is virtually impossible to lose their jobs and they thrive on bureaucratic inefficiency.
That my friends is the basis for the President’s budget. Don’t be deceived by the wonderful things politicians do for you and your community, you paid dearly for whatever you received. Is it going to change? Not significantly of course but let’s hope that the Congress that took their oaths and seats in January 2015 will spend more time finding ways to save money rather than squandering our hard-earned tax payments.
A symbolic comparison is one half of workers digging holes while the other half is filling them up; that is not progress, that is self delusion and deception.
– Dick Baynton
